The Golden State Warriors won't be the only champions to turn down President Donald Trump's White House invitation.
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According to the Associated Press, the South Carolina women's basketball team has turned down an invitation to visit the White House:
Well @POTUS invited @GamecockWBB to White House for NCAA celebration tomorrow and they declined
— Doug Feinberg (@DougFeinberg) November 17, 2017
Mississippi State upset UConn in the Final Four, but fell to South Carolina, 67-55, in the Championship game.
USC released a statement following Thursday night's win over Clemson, via the State:
"We did hear from the White House about attending tomorrow's event, but we will not be able to attend," Staley said. "As I've been saying since our practices for this season started, all of our focus is on the season ahead. The only invitation we are thinking about is to the 2018 NCAA Tournament."
According to the report, the White House is holding a Collegiate National Champions Day on Friday.
The NBA Champion Golden State Warriors decided not to take a White House visit earlier this year.
Following a public war of words between President Donald Trump and Warriors star point guard Steph Curry, the team released a statement on Saturday saying that will not be making the visit after Trump "rescinded" the invitation to Curry.
"While we intended to meet as a team at the first opportunity we had this morning to collaboratively discuss a potential visit to the White House, we accept that President Trump has made it clear that we are not invited. We believe there is nothing more American than our citizens having the right to express themselves freely on matters important to them. We're disappointed that we did not have an opportunity during this process to share our views or have open dialogue on issues impacting our communities that we felt would be important to raise.
In lieu of a visit to the White House, we have decided that we'll constructively use our trip to the nation's capital in February to celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion — the values that we embrace as an organization."
The Warriors had announced before that they were going to discuss the potential visit as a team, but Curry's comments this week escalated the situation with the President himself eventually getting involved by making remarks on Twitter. At the same time, Trump is also facing a battle with athletes from the NFL after Trump called out players protesting the national anthem.
Clemson visited the White House in June.
The war of words between the sports and political worlds rages on.
