Saturday’s fatal shooting at Brown University hit especially hard for USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb.
After a 79-51 loss to top-ranked Connecticut, Gottlieb found out that at least two people were killed and several others wounded in the Dec. 13 attack on the campus of her alma mater.
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Gottlieb received word of the shooting after the game from a group chat with her former Brown teammates. She addressed the incident before taking questions from the media in her postgame news conference.
“It doesn’t need to be this way,” a tearful Gottlieb said. “Sending thoughts and prayers to my teammates who have kids there. To the parents who have to worry about their children … we’re the only country that lives this way. The college football cycle has been in the news a million times, and are we going to report about this? Like, it’s the guns. We’re the only country that lives this way.”
The shooting at the Ivy League University happened shortly before 4:05 p.m. on Saturday in an engineering building with unlocked doors as final exams were underway.
Authorities in Providence, Rhode Island, confirmed early Sunday that a person of interest in the shooting has been taken into police custody.
USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb has been the head women’s basketball coach at USC since 2021. Before taking the USC job, she was an assistant coach from 2019-2021 with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
Gottlieb played at Brown from 1995 to 1999, and served as a player and student assistant coach in her senior season.
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“Hopefully, everyone is safe and praying for peace for those that have lost people,” she said in concluding her initial remarks after the game. “And that’s that, it’s more important than basketball. We can all be better.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USC women’s coach Lindsay Gottlieb mourns Brown shooting victims
