College Basketball

Texas basketball coach yells at UCF players over ‘classless' postgame celebration

Longhorns coach Rodney Terry took issue with UCF players making the "Horns Down" gesture

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The handshake line in college basketball has produced some heated scenes over the years, and the latest example was on display Wednesday night.

The UCF Knights rallied for a 77-71 comeback victory over the Texas Longhorns at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas. Following the final buzzer, some UCF players celebrated the victory by making a "Horns Down" gesture, which is the inverted version of Texas' "Hook 'em Horns" signal.

But Texas head coach Rodney Terry didn't appreciate the Knights trolling the Longhorns, and he let them know about it.

As the two teams went through the handshake line, a video from local station KVUE captured Terry shouting at several UCF players.

"That's classless!," Terry yelled multiples times.

"Don't do that s***," he said at one point.

Terry, who's in his first full season as Texas head coach following an interim stint last season, later explained why he took issue with the celebration.

"I always tell my guys, whether you win or lose, you win the right way, you lose the right way, you carry yourself the right way," Terry told reporters. "You don't go through the handshake line, or prior to getting to the handshake line, and have guys putting the horns down. We don't do that.

"When you do those kinds of things, it looks very classless and like you were just hoping to win. We never go into games trying to hope to win, we go into games expecting to win. So we don't act like that. We don't jump up and down and act like we won a national championship. We sure don't step on anyone's home court and try to show them up in any way. We don't do that.

"So that's what I was angry about and I was letting those guys know, you don't do that. You guys won, we shake your hand, tip my hat to you. But we're not going to let you act that way in our building. You're not going to put your horns down and do all that nonsense."

UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins, meanwhile, said he didn't see his players making the gesture but planned to review the incident.

"That's not the type of program we run, so if I see that I will be addressing that personally," Dawkins said. "I know Coach Terry, he's a great man, I have a lot of respect for his program. ... We're all about having class as a program so I'll go back and review what happened and if there's any action that needs to be taken on my end I will do that."

This was far from the first time an opponent of Texas used the "Horns Down" gesture to mock the Longhorns. In some instances, the signal has been treated by the Big 12 as an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in football.

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