South Carolina athletics has issued a statement and addressed a controversial situation that occurred with the women’s basketball game against LSU on Friday night.
Arena DJ T.O played the song “Cut Friends” by Camouflage, LSU star guard Flau’jae Johnson’s father who died in May 2003 before she was born in November 2003.
Late Saturday night, Johnson posted a screenshot of the DJ’s Instagram story post that revealed the song was played. She wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “I’ll take my L on the chin, but this just nasty behavior. Nun funny bout that.”
On Sunday, South Carolina revealed it has suspended DJ T.O. for the next home game, which is Feb. 2 against Auburn, and will “meet with her to provide further education on our expectations of her in the future.”
“We are addressing Friday night’s inappropriate in-game song selection and subsequent Instagram post by the DJ who is hired to work our women’s basketball games,” the statement read. “Her actions were understandably upsetting to Flau’Jae Johnson and her family and disrespectful to the LSU program and fans. Conference rivalries and passionate fan bases should only serve to enhance sports, not be used to target individual players personally. We regret that it came to that in our venue after a game that saw both teams capture the level of national attention that women’s basketball has earned, and we apologize to Flau’Jae, her family and LSU.”
People from both fan bases expressed their unhappiness with the decision to play the song. DJ T.O. apologized on X before South Carolina released its statement.
“I apologize for playing Cut Friends Instrumental at the game yesterday,” she wrote. ” It is never my intent to disrespect anyone or offend anyone when my job is to have fun and make sure other people have a good time. I’m from the Lowcountry/C-Port area so I’ve been playing it for years, even at other games, but I shouldn’t have played it at yesterday’s game. I play it on every radio station I’ve ever done from NC, GA, & SC & grew up on Camoflauge so it’s never played with ill intent or as a joke. I can’t control how anyone takes it but I can take responsibility & apologize.”
Johnson scored 13 points and had two steals and four rebounds in Friday’s game. South Carolina won 66-56.
