Villanova basketball star Donte DiVincenzo has deleted his entire Twitter account after a post resurfaced on Monday night containing the N-word.
The 21-year-old led his college team to victory on Monday, winning 79-62 over Michigan in the national championship game. As DiVincenzo received media attention for his incredible playing, Twitter users began combing through his old posts. The timeline was filled with more than 17,000 tweets, though most were from DiVincenzo’s years in high school, and he seemed to have lost interest in the platform more recently.
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According to TMZ, the most inflammatory tweet came from August of 2011, reading: “Ballin on these n—s like I’m derrick rose!” Some pointed out that this was a lyric in a Meek Mills song, which was released just a week before the tweet was posted.
14 year old Donte DiVincenzo was an absolute Twitter monsterhttps://t.co/lXJQbpP56M pic.twitter.com/AJcPC8qcVy
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) April 3, 2018
However, according to ESPN, there were numerous posts containing the racial slur. Many were reportedly attributed to rap lyrics, though for some, that didn’t excuse anything. The feed also reportedly contained derogatory terms for people in the LGBTQ community.
The outlet noted that DiVincenzo’s last post on the platform was dated June of 2016, which made some people forgive his statements as the awkward expressions of a younger man. Others, however, didn’t want to let DiVincenzo off of the hook so easily.
Donte Divincenzo aint tweeted a damn thing since 2016…. yall went back 8 years to when the dude was 13…….. and found out he said Nigga….. Yall need to seek help immediately
— Problematic Potts (@Tre_Potts) April 3, 2018
“Donte Divincenzo aint tweeted a damn thing since 2016…. yall went back 8 years to when the dude was 13…….. and found out he said N—….. Yall need to seek help immediately,” one person wrote.
Since Donte Divincenzo deactivated his account, I managed to put together all his funny tweets from last night. Here yall go pic.twitter.com/GbrLmabeey
— #TankSzn (@DeRxZan) April 3, 2018
The Villanova basketball Twitter account made a statement after the game on Monday, suggesting that DiVincenzo’s account had been hacked.
“None of the statements attributed to Donte are his,” read the statement in part. However, the school later retracted the statement entirely and deleted the tweet.
DiVincenzo, for his part, admitted that the Twitter account was his, but said that he didn’t remember using racially charged language at any point.
“It’s my account, yes… but I never remember doing that,” he said.
