Iowa college basketball player removes social media due to ‘hate comments

Before Sunday’s NCAA women’s basketball championship between the University of Iowa and the University of South Carolina, one of the players from Iowa said she deleted her social media accounts because of negative comments directed toward her.

Iowa’s Gabbie Marshall told reporters during a press conference before Sunday’s game that she received “hate comments” because of a controversial foul call in the closing seconds of Friday’s Final Four win over the University of Connecticut. During that game, UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards was called for a moving screen foul on Marshall with under five seconds left and UConn trailing 70-69. Many viewers of the game were upset with the foul and thought it should not have been called.

Marshall was asked if she had experienced any negative fallout.

“Yeah, a little bit. I kind of deleted social media,” Marshall replied. “I feel like it just kind of overlooked the fact that I played my butt off the whole game trying to guard her. I tried to get over screens the whole game and I feel like that one play kind of just consumed everything. I feel like that’s all anyone’s talking about. They’re not talking about the fact that it was a great game between two great teams.”

“I’ve gotten a lot of hate comments,” Marshall added. “I don’t know. I’m not the one that made the call. So I’m not sure why they’re mad at me personally.”

Lisa Bluder, Iowa’s head coach, defended her player after hearing about the attacks on Marshall.

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“It’s unbelievable to me that you’re going to criticize a 22-year-old kid for something that she had no control over,” Bluder said. “I thought we handled that really well. We switched out onto it. I thought we were there to contest. I can’t believe people would be so immature as to attack a 22-year-old on doing their job and doing really, really well.”

Iowa lost to the University of South Carolina in the NCAA women’s championship on Sunday, 87-75. Sunday’s championship game was the last of Marshall’s college career. She officially graduated from the University of Iowa in May 2023 and was in her last year of eligibility to play college basketball.