Idaho Racists Menace Visiting NCAA Basketball Team

March 27, 2024 Racism, Sports

Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the FBI are investigating after a team in the NCAA Women’s basketball tournament said they were racially harassed while staying in the city.

Members of the University of Utah women’s team told police someone in a truck displaying a confederate flag yelled racial slurs and revved the engine in a menacing way as players and staff walked to dinner last Thursday. They say that same truck and a second were waiting as the team returned from dinner and followed them back to their hotel.

Utah’s team, and the women’s team from the University of California, Irvine, were staying in the north Idaho town to participate in the basketball tournament in nearby Spokane, Wash.

CNN reports:

The Utah women’s basketball team had to switch hotels after experiencing what head coach Lynne Roberts called “racial hate crimes” ahead of its first NCAA tournament game. Roberts said the Utes switched hotels after just one night before their games in Spokane.

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA tournament environment, it’s messed up, and so we moved hotels,” she explained. “The NCAA and ([host university) Gonzaga worked to get us in a new hotel and we appreciate that. That’s what happened. It was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate.

Axios reports:

Officials in Idaho tried to apologize Tuesday for the racism the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team faced in Coeur d’Alene before an NCAA tournament game at Gonzaga.

They abruptly shut down the news conference when a far-right operative began shouting questions at a human rights advocate. Spokesman Review reporter Alex Duggan identified the agitator as Dave Reilly, a far-right activist and consultant with the powerful Idaho Freedom Foundation.

The harassment “was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate,” Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said Monday in a news conference following the Utes’ loss to Gonzaga.

This you? https://t.co/4UvYkrKz5A pic.twitter.com/0OUvZ2BrDi

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) March 26, 2024