Over the past several days, Alabama Crimson Tide men’s basketball coach Nate Oats has faced heavy criticism for his decision to allow Alabama star Brandon Miller to continue to play even after it was revealed that Miller delivered an alleged murder weapon to teammate former Darius Miles. But Oats continues to defend that decision.
During a press conference on Friday, Oats said he and athletic director Greg Byrne “feel like we’ve done the right thing in this case.”
“We’ve been taking it very seriously from Day 1. The first minute that I got the information, I called [Alabama athletic director] Greg [Byrne] and we talked about it and the severity of it. Greg, I thought, did a great job addressing those comments on Wednesday, and I really don’t have much to add to it. We feel like we’ve done the right thing in this case. So I’m going to leave it at that with Greg’s comments,” Oats explained in a Friday press conference, according to Outkick.
Oats went on to say that this is an opportunity to “educate” his players.
“Life’s fluid. Different circumstances bring up different areas to talk about. There’s different areas you need to educate your players on. The world changes. As we’ve come across different situations, it’s hard to predict everything that everybody is going to get into. We’ve taken the opportunities as a basketball program and as an athletic department and as a university as a whole to address situations that have come up and taking that opportunity to educate our guys on different things like this. So the answer is yes, we’re using this as an opportunity to educate our players on stuff that hopefully will help them for the rest of their lives,” Oats said.
Despite a connection to the incident, it’s worth noting that Miller has not been charged with a crime.
[Outkick]
