By james art 
The South Carolina athletic department has apologized to LSU women’s basketball star Flau’jae Johnson and her family after the Gamecocks’ arena DJ played her late father’s song during South Carolina’s win against LSU on Friday.
In a statement, South Carolina described the song choice as “inappropriate” and revealed that the DJ, who is known as DJ TO, has been suspended for the Gamecocks’ next home game.
“Her actions were understandably upsetting to Flau’J Johnson and her family and disrespectful to the LSU program and fans,” South Carolina said in a statement. “Conference rivalries and passionate fan bases should only serve to improve the sport and not be used to personally target individual players. We regret that this has come to our facility after a game in which both teams have garnered the level of national attention that women’s basketball has earned.”
No. 2 South Carolina defeated No. 5 LSU in one of the most anticipated games of the regular season. After the game became final, DJ TO played an instrumental version of “Cut Friends,” which was a song by Johnson’s father, Jason, who was a rapper known by the name “Camoflauge” in the early 2000s.
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Jason Johnson was shot and killed in May 2003, which was six months before Flau’J Johnson was born.
Flau’Jae Johnson took to social media to weigh in on the situation, and her post included a screenshot of an Instagram story by DJ TO where she posted the caption “my bad” about the song choice.
“I’ll take my L on the chin, but this is just nasty behavior,” Johnson wrote. “Nun funny in that respect.”
After Johnson called out DJ TO, she apologized for playing the song and stated that “it was never meant to disrespect anyone or offend anyone.”
Johnson finished Friday’s game with 13 points on 6-of-18 shooting while also grabbing four rebounds and a pair of assists. LSU ended up shooting just 29.9% as a team in the loss.
Johnson was named second-team All-SEC for her performance during the 2023-24 season.