Utah women’s basketball team forced to move hotels after racial hate crimes during NCAA Tournament

SPOKANE, Wash. — Usually, the most upsetting part about exiting the NCAA Tournament is losing before you want to. That wasn’t the case for Utah women’s basketball.

Head coach Lynne Roberts revealed in her postgame press conference after the Utes lost to Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA Tournament that her team experienced racism toward the beginning of their trip that forced them to move hotels.

“Our team hotel was in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which is not very close,” Roberts said. “It’s 35-40 minutes, so that was a little strange, but whatever. We had several instances of some kind of racial hate crimes towards our program and it was incredibly upsetting for all of us.”

Coach on Utah women’s basketball experiencing racism

Roberts detailed what her team experienced calling the incidents “shocking” in an athletic and academic setting.

“There is so much diversity on a college campus and so you just are not exposed to that very often,” Roberts said. “When you are- you have people say, ‘man, I can’t believe that happened,’ but racism is real, and it happens. It’s awful.”

Related: Here are the top seeds for the men’s NCAA basketball tournament

The incidents, which took place Thursday night when the team first arrived for the NCAA Tournament, happened “a few times” before the team moved hotels on Friday, March 22, according to Roberts.

Read the full story at KSL Sports.