Ohio State moves on from the middle fingers momentarily taking over the Cotie McMahon search engine results.
Put the name “Cotie McMahon” in a search engine over the past three years and a number of highlight plays, shows of pure emotion and accolades popped up. On Monday, those shifted to a different kind of result with opportunistic news outlets looking for clicks “reporting” on the middle fingers given by the junior forward to the Maryland Terrapins’ student section in Sunday’s 93-90 Buckeyes loss.
Look past the obvious intentions of outlets like Fox News writing an article about a successful black woman in a moment of frustration and the moment fit into a game that had tension on both sides, a technical foul and an environment in College Park that sounded like a powder keg about to explode.
On Thursday, one day before Ohio State women’s basketball heads to Indianapolis to play in the annual Big Ten Tournament, head coach Kevin McGuff addressed the situation.
Here is coach McGuff’s full statement:
“Good to have everybody here. It’s good to see you guys. And just real quickly, we obviously took a tough loss against Maryland on Sunday. And we had an unfortunate incident with Cotie [McMahon] where she kind of lost control of her emotions there for a moment and did something out of character for her. And we are addressing that internally with her.”
Thursday evening, Ohio State released a statement from McMahon, who was not at media availability earlier in the day.
“I acknowledge that I made a mistake with my reaction during the game. I’m sorry this happened and I’m sorry if I offended anyone. That’s not who I am as a person or as a competitor. I’m putting this behind me.”
While opposing fans and people with their own heinous motivation for going after McMahon are likely on the side of punishing the junior, McGuff followed that up with confirmation that the team, the Big Ten and the NCAA are not taking the situation any further, which is the right thing to do.
Look further into the game, the moment, and the response and it is not something that would normally garner the same attention if it were in the pro ranks, or even if it happened elsewhere in college sports. Ohio State has history, with former football player Marcus Hall showing the middle finger to Michigan fans in 2013, resulting in a reprimand from the conference but nothing additional.
Emotion is part of the sport, and McMahon shows more than most. Over the years, McGuff is known for his fair share of jokes at McMahon’s personality that is beloved by fans and grates opposing fans, but McGuff continued on Thursday talking about how that emotion isn’t a detriment — it is a benefit.
“We talk to her, we talk to all of our players,” said McGuff. “When she’s got really positive emotion going in the right direction, it really drags the whole team with her. Her being mindful of that, and that energy is really powerful and we want to use it in a positive way and it’s extremely impactful for us.”
Now it’s time to go back to the reality that much worse things have happened in a basketball game than a player sending their thoughts back to a college basketball crowd, and now spend time watching great basketball.