USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb weighs in on Brown shooting: “It’s the guns.”
USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb suffered a bitter defeat on Saturday as her team lost 79-51 to a top-ranked UConn team. But after leaving the field, he focused on a more pressing issue: fatal shot at Brown University, his alma mater.
“Because of the guns,” Gottlieb said as he began his postgame press conference at the Ivy League school. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Gottlieb said he returned to the locker room on Saturday after the USC Trojans played the No. 1 seed at home. UConn He received “a million text messages” from Huskies and former Brown teammates. An armed attacker opened fire during final exams, killing two students and wounding nine others.
“We’re the only country that lives this way,” said Gottlieb, who noted that he knew people who had children at Brown. His voice was shaking. “Parents don’t need to worry about their children”
Gottlieb, who graduated from Brown in 1999, was a member of the women’s basketball team and served as a student assistant coach during her senior season.
He said one of his former teammates flew to Providence on Sunday because he had a daughter sheltering in the library basement and “didn’t know what was going on there.”
A suspect in his 20s is in custody, Providence police Chief Oscar Perez said Sunday. He stated that no charges had been filed and said “we are in the process of gathering evidence.”
On Saturday, students and faculty spent the night in lockdown, stranded in classrooms and dormitories as law enforcement officials fanned out across Providence to search for the shooter.
“I hope everyone is safe and praying for peace for those who lost people,” Gottlieb said before reflecting on his team’s game against the Huskies. “That’s it. This is bigger than basketball. We can all get better.”
Brown University has canceled all remaining classes and exams for the fall semester.
“The last 24 hours were truly unimaginable,” university president Christina Paxson wrote in an email to graduates. “This is a tragedy for which no university community was prepared.”
