A report surfaced on Thursday evening, that the South Carolina women’s basketball team declined President Trump’s invite to the White House.

According to Doug Feinberg of the AP:

Well @POTUS invited @GamecockWBB to White House for NCAA celebration tomorrow and they declined — Doug Feinberg (@DougFeinberg) November 17, 2017

Lady Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley went on to explain the team’s reasoning for not going to the White House. Sort of:

“We did hear from the White House about attending tomorrow’s event, but we will not be able to attend" — Doug Feinberg (@DougFeinberg) November 17, 2017

"As I’ve been saying since our practices for this season started, all of our focus is on the season ahead."… — Doug Feinberg (@DougFeinberg) November 17, 2017

"The only invitation we are thinking about is to the 2018 NCAA Tournament.” – Dawn Staley — Doug Feinberg (@DougFeinberg) November 17, 2017

By saying the team will not “be able to attend” because they have to “practice,” in order to make sure they get their invitation to the “2018 NCAA Tournament.” That allows the Lady Gamecocks to say that their decision to not go to the White House has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with basketball practice.

That strategy, in addition to being strongly disingenuous, has the unfortunate result of making Staley’s team political orphans. The left can’t truly embrace them because, while they refused Trump’s invite, they didn’t say they’re not going for political reasons. And the right can’t embrace them because they refused the invite, most likely for political reasons, but didn’t have the guts to say so.

Kind of a weird strategy.