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Villanova basketball hero Donte DiVincenzo deletes Twitter account after offensive tweets surface

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Donte DiVincenzo became a national star Monday night after he scored a career-high 31 points to lead Villanova to a 79-62 win over Michigan in the NCAA championship game.

But not all the questions he received from reporters after the game had to do with his stunning performance. On the biggest night of his college career, DiVincenzo found himself having to answer for using a racial epithet in a tweet that appeared on his Twitter account in August 2011, when he was 14.

That account has since been deactivated. The tweet quoted a song by rapper Meek Mill that had recently been released at the time.

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The Big East Conference’s sixth man of the year acknowledged that the Twitter account was his but said he knows nothing about that particular tweet. “I didn’t do that,’’ he told reporters.

“It’s my account, yes,’’ DiVincenzo added. “But I never remember doing that.”

When asked who might have written it, DiVincenzo answered, “That’s a good question.’’

But that reportedly wasn’t the only offensive term used on DiVincenzo’s account. According to ESPN, there were other tweets that used the same slur, some from rap lyrics, as well as tweets that used derogatory terms for gay people and other crude language.

Villanova's Donte DiVincenzo talks to reporters after the Wildcats' win over Michigan in the NCAA championship game on April 2..
(Ronald Martinez / Getty Images )

The account contained more than 17,000 tweets, mostly from the player’s high school years, ESPN reported. The last tweet posted on the public account came on June 3, 2016, according to multiple media reports.

Villanova released a statement after the game. “Unfortunately a Twitter account belonging to Donte DiVincenzo was hacked tonight,” it read. “None of the statements attributed to Donte are his — he has not used the account for months. The account has been deactivated. Please disregard any of these false tweets.”

The university later withdrew the statement because the tweets in question came years ago rather than within recent months, as the statement implied.

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charles.schilken@latimes.com

Twitter: @chewkiii

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