Vanderbilt Coach Kevin Stallings was upset with how Commodores freshman guard Wade Baldwin IV celebrated his team’s 73-65 win over Tennessee on Thursday night. But he handled it in the worst possible way, publicly and profanely berating his player and at one point saying, “I’m going to [expletive] kill you.”
It all was caught by ESPN’s cameras.
Stallings initially did not address his actions in the postgame news conference, instead focusing on Baldwin’s lack of sportsmanship. Only later did he apologize in comments made to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman:
Stallings told ESPN “he did not mean his words literally” when confronting Baldwin, who had taunted a Tennessee player in the postgame handshake line.
“I handled it completely inappropriately and I apologized to Wade — and I need to apologize to our fans and the Vanderbilt administration,” the longtime coach told ESPN. “Having said that, and it may seem as though I’m trying to rationalize my behavior, sportsmanship will continue to be a high priority. I did not mean it in the literal sense and I’ve never touched a player in all my years as a coach. That’s not me. I will learn from this and handle this situation differently in the future.”
He apologized again in a statement released by the school:
“One of our players acted inappropriately and violated what we believe to be is good sportsmanship following the game. In my haste to resolve the situation, I made a very inappropriate comment. While obviously it was not meant literally, it was still inappropriate. I apologized to the player immediately following the game.”
According to Goodman’s sources, Stallings has had problems with Baldwin’s sportsmanship “multiple times this season.” On Wednesday, before the game, Baldwin called out Tennessee star Josh Richardson with comments published in the Tennessean. Richardson said the Vols were “a little bit tougher” than Vanderbilt after their overtime win over the Commodores earlier this month. Baldwin took exception:
“To call us punks and (say) they out-physicaled us — from an opposing player, you are not supposed to be treating people like that after a game,” Baldwin said. “You should show some sort of respect for your opponent, especially since you have to play them again. That comment that he made really offended me, offended coach Stallings and I think offended a lot of kids on my team.” …
“We are going after (Richardson),” Baldwin said. “We’re going after Tennessee. We’re going after their fans — all of that. This is a big rivalry for us.”
Baldwin expressed a desire to put the incident in the past on Twitter:
Stallings has been Vanderbilt’s coach since the 1999-2000 season and is the winningest coach in program history, leading the Commodores to six NCAA tournament and two Sweet 16 appearances (the last regional semifinal appearance coming in 2007). But at 16-12 and 6-9 in a weak SEC, it’s looking as if Vanderbilt will miss the NCAA tournament for the third straight season, a period in which the Commodores have posted just a 47-45 record.
After spending the first 17 years of his Post career writing and editing, Matt and the printed paper had an amicable divorce in 2014. He's now blogging and editing for the Early Lead and the Post's other Web-based products.
No comments:
Post a Comment