Geno Auriemma’s Petty Beef With 17-Year-Old Arike Ogunbowale Is Officially Over After 10+ Years

Geno Auriemma and Arika Ogunbowale officially squashed their beef. It lasted more than a decade!

They hugged it out after the Dallas Wings beat the Golden State Valkyries.

Ogunbowale technically started the back-and-forth exchange as a 17-year-old in 2014. She just didn’t know it. The five-star college basketball recruit announced her top five on July 13, 2014. It did not include the UConn Huskies.

My Top 5 (alphabetical order):
Louisville
Notre Dame
Ohio State
UCLA
Wisconsin

— @Arike_O / X on 7/13/14 at 6:06pm

Auriemma responded less than 14 minutes. He did not address Ogunbowale by name but it was obvious.

Stay tuned for my list of the 5 players I saw the past 7 days that I have zero interest in recruiting…. #whatajoke

— @genoauriemma / X on 7/13/14 at 6:20pm

The head coach of the Huskies was 60 years old at the time. For him to post such a petty response to the decision of a high schooler was wild. He was so salty. It was a really bad look for a grown man, and the backlash to the post ultimately led him to delete his account all together.

Ogunbowale has since laughed off the exchange, probably because she got the last laugh in 2018 when Notre Dame defeated UConn during the Final Four. The 5-foot-8 point guard hit a deep step-back triple right before the buzzer to secure the win. Auriemma went home sad.

Neither party discussed the initial social media exchange during their postgame interviews but everybody knew it lingered in the back of their minds. Arike Ogunbowale beat Geno Auriemma after he tried to claim he would not recruit her. That had to feel good!

Now, five years later, Ogunbowale is WNBA teammates with Paige Bueckers. Bueckers and Auriemma had a very special relationship at UConn. The latter showed up to support the former on Tuesday.

Auriemma and Ogunbowale shook hands and hugged it out after the win.