Texas Longhorns men’s basketball coach Rodney Terry ripped UCF Knights players after they celebrated with the infamous “horns down” gesture in front of his team Wednesday night.
Terry’s Longhorns gave up a 15-point lead in the second half en route to their 77-71 loss as Knights players huddled around each other and started to mock Texas’ fans in the crowd with the celebration.
Terry, agitated at the gesture, can be heard calling out the opposing players when he lined up to shake hands.
“That’s classless!” Terry shouted as he made his way down the handshake line. “That’s classless! Don’t do that s–t! That’s classless!”
Terry elaborated during his postgame conference on why he was upset over the gesture that’s been frowned upon in college sports.
“I’m a big believer in you win the right way, you lose the right way…. You carry yourself the right way,” Terry said. “You don’t go through the handshake line, or prior to getting to the handshake line, and have about six or seven guys putting the horns down. We don’t do that.”
“When you do those kind of things it looks very classless and it also looks like you were just hoping to win,” Terry continued. “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 expect to win. We don’t jump up and down, act like we won a national championship. We sure don’t step on anyone’s home court deal and act crazy and try to show them up in any way. We don’t do that.”
The Big 12 conference banned teams from using the “Horns Down” symbol in 2019, deeming it an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
The imposed ban on the gesture has since been put into effect, though it’s obvious many fans and players, today, don’t seem to care about the ruling.
The “Horns Down” symbol was first used by a Baylor student in 1963, bringing massive attention to the now-infamous gesture, according to the Daily Texan.
Fans on social media had a field day after coach Terry went viral for barking at Knights players.
“Being a grown man cursing at kids on the opposing team in the handshake line after you lost could also be called classless,” an X user replied.
“Yeah it’s so “classy” to bark at another team after you just got stomped at home,” another fan under the clip.
“That aint classless.. haha they put yall down… so lower them horns hahahaha,” a fan joked under Bleacher Report’s post of the video.