USC women's basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb suffered a bitter defeat Saturday as her team lost 79-51 to top-ranked UConn. But after she left the court, she thought about a more important question: fatal shooting at his alma mater, Brown University.
“It’s all about the guns,” Gottlieb said as she began her postgame press conference at the Ivy League school. “It doesn't have to be this way.”
Gottlieb said she returned to the locker room Saturday after the No. 1 USC Trojans' home game. University of California, Connecticut Husky and received “a million text messages” from Brown's former teammates. A gunman opened fire killed two students and wounded nine others during final exams.
“We are the only country that lives this way,” Gottlieb said, her voice shaking as she noted that she knows people who have children at Brown. “Parents should not worry about their children.”
Gottlieb, who graduated from Brown University in 1999, was a member of the women's basketball team and served as a student assistant coach during her senior season.
She said one of her former teammates flew to Providence on Sunday because she had a daughter holed up in the library basement and “she doesn't know what's going on down there.”
Oscar Perez, Providence police chief, said Sunday that a suspect in his 20s was in custody. No charges have been filed, he said, noting that “we are in the process of gathering evidence.”
Students and faculty spent the night on lockdown Saturday, locked in classrooms and dorms as law enforcement fanned out across Providence searching for the shooter.
“I hope everyone is safe and praying for peace for those who have lost people,” Gottlieb said before assessing her team’s performance against the Huskies. “And that's it. It's more important than basketball. We can all get better.”
Brown University has canceled all remaining classes and exams for the fall semester.
“The last 24 hours have truly been unimaginable,” Christina Paxson, the university’s president, wrote in an email to graduates. “This is a tragedy for which no university community is prepared.”
