TAMPA, Fla. — It seems as if almost every week another coach is getting accused of abuse by their players.

Georgia Tech, North Carolina, and now Northern Kentucky are the latest schools to generate headlines over the past month. Women’s basketball coaches have started to change the way they communicate with their players out of fear of being the next one to be accused.

“The majority of coaches in America are afraid of their players,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said on a conference call Tuesday.

“The NCAA, the athletic directors and society has made them afraid of their players. Every article you read: `This guy’s a bully. This woman’s a bully. This guy went over the line. This woman was inappropriate.’

“Yet the players get off scot-free in everything. They can do whatever they want. They don’t like something you say to them, they transfer. Coaches, they have to coach with one hand behind their back. Why? Because some people have abused the role of a coach.”

Auriemma’s own players have noticed a change in him and the way he handles the younger players on the team.

“He doesn’t yell at them as much,” UConn All-American Napheesa Collier said in an interview last month with the Connecticut Post. “He explains things a lot more than he did when we were freshmen. They get more chances, I would say. They get more chances than we did.”

With the women’s basketball world descending on Tampa, Florida, for the Final Four, the topic of abuse was at the forefront of many conversations at the convention center and in the coaches’ hotel.

Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said she had fielded a few phone calls and texts over the past week from other coaches to see if it was being discussed this week.

The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association sets its convention agenda months in advance so there wasn’t a specific panel or round table about the recent headlines that have sent shockwaves throughout the sport. There have been discussions for years about how to communicate with this generation’s players as well as ways coaches can handle adversity.

“The last few years mental health has become really big,” WBCA president Jen Rizzotti said. “We partner with a lot of professionals to talk about mental health and how it’s equally as impactful as physical health.”