The 2023 championship rematch between Iowa and LSU on this 12 months’s Elite Eight was a scintillating manufacturing that stockpiled reward from celebrities, athletes and followers alike, whereas shattering the file for the most-watched girls’s school basketball sport ever.
However Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was unimpressed earlier than a basketball even bounced Monday after LSU was not current for the nationwide anthem, calling for a coverage to be put in place that dangers a student-athlete’s scholarship if the participant is absent throughout “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“My mom coached girls’s highschool basketball in the course of the top of desegregation, nobody has a higher respect for the game and for Coach Mulkey,” Gov. Landry wrote on X on Tuesday. “Nevertheless, above respect for that sport is a deeper respect for those who serve to guard us and unite us beneath one flag! It’s time that every one school boards, together with Regent, put a coverage in place that pupil athletes be current for the nationwide anthem or danger their athletic scholarship! It is a matter of respect that every one collegiate coaches ought to instill.”
My mom coached girls’s highschool basketball in the course of the top of desegregation, nobody has a higher respect for the game and for Coach Mulkey. Nevertheless, above respect for that sport is a deeper respect for those who serve to guard us and unite us beneath one flag !
It’s…
— Jeff Landry (@JeffLandry) April 2, 2024
LSU coach Kim Mulkey stated postgame that she was unaware of what time the anthem performed and that her workforce’s routine is to go from the court docket into the locker room on the 12-minute mark. Iowa was current for the anthem and lined up alongside its foul line with all gamers holding palms.
“I’m sorry, hear, that’s nothing deliberately finished,” Mulkey stated postgame.
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South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley and her workforce confronted comparable criticism in 2022 — when the Gamecocks took residence the title — for not being on the ground in the course of the nationwide anthem for his or her Last 4 win over Louisville. Staley defined that their absence was unintentional, calling her gamers “creatures of behavior.”
“I believe (the nationwide anthem) was performed on the 12- or 10-minute mark, and that’s simply not the time that we’re out on the court docket due to our pregame ritual,” Staley stated on the time. “If the nationwide anthem is at 0:00, prefer it was right now (for the nationwide championship), we had been on the market standing for the nationwide anthem.”
In school sports activities, it’s not required to be current for the nationwide anthem or unusual for one or each groups to be of their respective locker rooms throughout it. School soccer groups usually are not sometimes current for it throughout regular-season matchups and even bowl video games. For the Large Ten school soccer championship between Iowa and Michigan in December, each the Hawkeyes and Wolverines didn’t look like on the sidelines in the course of the taking part in of the nationwide anthem at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. When Iowa soccer performs at residence, nonetheless, it’s sometimes on the sector for the anthem.
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(Picture of American Airways Heart earlier than the 2023 girls’s NCAA Match championship: Ron Jenkins / Getty Photographs)