Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley's teams will meet for the first time since the two coaches had a tense exchange at the end of their Final Four matchup.
UConn and South Carolina will play at the annual Basketball Hall of Fame Women's Showcase at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut on Nov. 24.
Defending champion UCLA will play St. John's in the other game of the women's doubleheader. This past year the Showcase was a two-day event with teams playing a pair of games. This season it's back to one night.
The South Carolina-UConn matchup had been announced in November while the Bruins and Red Storm game was made official on Tuesday.
Auriemma has since apologized to Staley after he was visibly upset in the final seconds of South Carolina’s 62-48 victory last month. Earlier this month Auriemma said he felt “dumb” for how his heated postgame exchange played out in front of a national audience.
“When I walked into the locker room afterward with the coaches, you are just shaking your head, thinking five more seconds, you couldn’t keep it in for five more seconds,” Auriemma said in his first news conference since then.
“You just feel dumb for the way that it played out,” he added. “We are all human and we all do dumb (stuff).”
Staley said in a social media post a few days after the incident that she urged fans to turn the page.
“With the college women’s basketball season behind us, it’s time to move forward and close the chapter on how our semifinal game with UConn ended,” Staley wrote in her statement. “I spoke with Geno and I want to be clear — I have a great deal of respect for him and what he’s meant to the game. One moment doesn’t define a career and it doesn’t change the impact he’s had on growing women’s basketball."
UCLA beat South Carolina for the national championship — the Bruins first. Cori Close's team lost its top six players to graduation with all of them getting drafted into the WNBA.
“We are so excited to take part in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase again," Close said. "This event always helps us prepare to be at our best and compete at the highest level. To have a national platform to grow the game, we couldn’t be more thrilled.”
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FILE - UCLA head coach Cori Close celebrates after cutting down the net after UCLA defeated South Carolina in the women's National Championship Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament game, April 5, 2026, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein's defense urged jurors Tuesday to acquit him and put an end to a #MeToo-era rape case that has gone to trial three times, while prosecutors pressed to restore a onetime conviction that got unwound.
Weinstein, the former Hollywood honcho who has been imprisoned on various sex crime convictions since 2020, watched quietly as the two sides made their closing arguments about whether he raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in a New York hotel in March 2013.
“She has taken on a false narrative about all of this,” Weinstein lawyer Marc Agnifilo said.
“She has absolutely no motive to lie. None,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg countered, noting that Mann went through five days of grueling, deeply personal testimony.
Jurors are expected to start deliberating Wednesday. They will have to sift through the complexities of a yearslong relationship between Weinstein, 73, and Mann, 40.
They met in early 2013, when she was trying to make it big in Hollywood. She testified that she anticipated a professional connection, was taken aback when he started making sexual advances but decided to have a relationship with the then-married, Oscar-winning producer.
A few weeks later, according to Mann, Weinstein abruptly took a room at a hotel where she and a friend were staying. She testified that she accompanied Weinstein upstairs to tell him she didn't want a sexual interlude, but he trapped her in the room, grabbed her arms, insisted she undress, went into the bathroom for a time, and then raped her.
“He just treated me like he owned me,” she testified last month.
Weinstein didn't testify, but his defense contends the encounter was consensual and part of a caring, if on-and-off, relationship that Mann valued until Weinstein’s #MeToo downfall in 2017. That was when news reports about allegations against him propelled a global campaign against sexual assault and sexual harassment. He has said he behaved “wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.
He was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann, got the conviction overturned, then saw a jury deadlock on it at a retrial last year.
In summations Tuesday, Agnifilo portrayed Mann as an unreliable witness making an ill-supported, implausible accusation. He cited her uncertainty about various dates and details in the years-old events, and he recalled a point when she said she was struggling to stay focused during cross-examination, prompting court to end early for the day.
Agnifilo underscored Mann's warm email exchanges and get-togethers with Weinstein before and after the alleged rape — and a musing, diary-like note she wrote to herself two days after the encounter. In the note, she expresses her misgivings about her emotional attachment in a nonexclusive relationship, asks whether she loves “him or the idea of him,” questions her “woulds and would nots,” and worries about being “a ‘bad’ person.”
The note doesn't name the man, but Agnifilo asserted that it was about Weinstein and that its silence about the alleged assault spoke volumes.
“This is how she's falling in love with him,” the defense lawyer argued.
The prosecutor's rebuttal: “She’s burying what the defendant did to her, and she’s struggling with the good parts of the defendant and the awful, the evil parts of the defendant.”
Over the years, Weinstein encouraged Mann’s acting ambitions, helped her land a hairstyling job, provided emotional support during her father’s terminal illness and tried to send her money — which she declined — when she was broke, according to trial testimony and exhibits.
To Weinstein's attorney, it amounted to “a sweet, loving, supportive relationship.”
But to Blumberg, “This was a woman who got manipulated by that man.”
While Mann acknowledged she loved “a part” of Weinstein, she testified that she begged him not to do anything sexual that day in the Manhattan hotel.
“No means no — to everyone except Harvey Weinstein,” Blumberg said, adding: “Jessica Mann deserves closure and justice.”
At points during her summation, Weinstein shook his head slightly and exchanged glances with his lawyer.
Whatever the outcome of the trial, the former studio boss still will stand convicted of other sex crimes in New York and California, though he is appealing those convictions. If convicted in the current trial, Weinstein could face up to four years in prison — less time than he already has served.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in New York. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in New York. (Eduardo Munoz/Pool Photo via AP)
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in New York. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in New York. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)
