Alabama Coach Apologizes to Krzyzewski
Alabama coach Nate Oats issued a public apology to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski for criticizing Coach K’s comments last week regarding the pandemic.
Krzyzewski questioned whether college basketball should continue, calling for the sport’s leaders to reassess the situation. Duke cancelled its remaining non-conference schedule a short time later.
Oats responded to a question about Coach K’s comments by implying that Krzyzewski was only calling for the sport to pause because Duke had lost a pair of home games.
Several coaches, most notably Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, spoke out against Oats, and the Alabama coach backed down.
"I want to publicly apologize to Coach K for what I said," Oats said. "I assigned a motive to him and a decision made for his team, which I shouldn't have done. I actually felt terrible about it. After I got out of the press conference, I reached out to him. He was gracious enough to return my call. We had a good talk on the phone. I have the utmost respect for him as a coach."
Oats, who initially said, “We definitely should be playing basketball,” also clarified those remarks.
"I definitely wasn't trying to say COVID's not serious," he said. "Some people may have taken that. I know the numbers aren't great right now. We need to take all the precautions we can. I think our training staff, our medical staff at the University of Alabama has done an unbelievable job with all that. But one lesson I learned is to just speak for our program. I can't speak for what's going on elsewhere. That's wrong and unnecessary."
Earlier in the week, Boeheim brought up the issue during a press conference.
"I would like to address one thing here that's important," he said. "First of all, everybody knows Mike Krzyzewski is a friend of mine. But Mike said in the summer and September, and October that we should delay the season. For some young coach who should know better, but didn't, to suggest that Mike Krzyzewski didn't want to play because he lost a couple games? Yeah, he's only won 1,100. Anybody who knows anything about college basketball knows that Mike Krzyzewski said that in the very beginning. In the very beginning, looking into a delay of the season, a delay of the tournament. … Mike Krzyzewski -- anybody who thinks that he might not play because his team lost two games, it really is sad. I feel bad for somebody that would make a statement like that. I can understand how bloggers do that because they don't -- that's what they do. But Mike Krzyzewski isn't saying that because he doesn't want to play or he doesn't have a good team. He said that consistently from the beginning of the year and it's sad to see somebody say something like that. It really speaks to somebody's character."
