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An armed security guard escorted Alabama star Brandon Miller to the site of the Crimson Tide’s upcoming NCAA tournament game on Wednesday.
“If you saw what I saw, you would understand why that is,” Alabama coach Nate Oats told reporters.
“If you saw what I saw, you would understand why that is.”
Nate Oats was asked about an armed guard who followed Brandon Miller into training at the NCAA tournament in Alabama in Birmingham. pic.twitter.com/U0VsOvgTTA
— Alabama Crimson Tide | AL.com (@aldotcomTide) March 15, 2023
Alabama, No. 1 overall in the men’s tournament, meets 16th seeded Texas A&M Corpus Christi in the first round on Thursday in nearby Birmingham. The guard, wearing red team uniforms, was seen by Legacy Arena court with a holstered firearm as well as a badge pinned to his waist.
The 6-foot-9 Miller, who was named both SEC Freshman of the Year and Conference Player of the Year, has been under scrutiny since revealing his connection to a fatal shooting involving a former teammate last month fans have been mocked. Darius Miles, who was released from the program and the Alabama campus in January, and another man were charged with murder by a grand jury last week after the death of a Birmingham woman who was visiting Tuscaloosa.
Police have claimed 23-year-old Jamea Harris was in a car when she was fatally shot by a friend of Miles’s, Michael Davis. Miles is accused of handing the gun that shot Harris to Davis after retrieving it from a car he asked Miller to drive to the scene, according to police.
A lawyer for Miller called in January that the player “never touched the gun, was in no way involved in its exchange with Mr. Davis, and never knew any illegal activity with the gun would occur.”
Lawyers for Miles and Davis have said their clients, who have been unattached in a Tuscaloosa jail since the shooting (via AL.com), have pleaded innocent and acted in self-defense.
Oats and Alabama sports officials faced criticism from Harris’ parents, among others, for refusing to punish Miller, who led the SEC in scoring and the Tide to their first NCAA Tournament top spot. The coach first told reporters that Miller was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and that he couldn’t “control everything everyone does outside of practice,” before issuing a statement calling those comments “unfortunate.” .
University officials have stressed that Miller and another teammate placed at the scene, freshman guard Jaden Bradley, are being considered by authorities as witnesses and not suspects in the case.
On Wednesday, The New York Times quoted a person familiar with the case as reporting that a fourth Tide player, newcomer Kai Spears, was also at the scene. Spears, a walk-in guard, was reportedly in the car with Miller when gunshots erupted.
In a statement (via AL.com), Alabama Athletics called the Times story “inaccurate,” adding that based on information available to the school, “other than Miller and Bradley, no current student-athletes were present at the scene.”
At a pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday, Miller said the ability to “lean on my teammates” helped him focus on basketball amid an ongoing off-court story that in many ways marked the remarkably successful season overshadowed by the tide.
When asked about the security guard, Miller replied, “I feel like we always travel with security. That’s all I can say about that.”
Oats said the situation surrounding Harris’ death was “just heartbreaking in every way,” and told media at the press conference that the security measures being taken on Miller’s behalf were “reasonable.”
“Some of the news [to Miller] of people who can be behind fake email addresses — but who knows if they’re real or not — that I’ve seen is something no one would ever wish on their son [to receive]’ said Hafer. “I treat my players like my own sons – I have no son, I have three daughters but I put myself in his parents’ shoes – and our administration has seen the things I have seen.”
“It’s not something a college kid should go through,” added the 48-year-old coach, who is in his fourth season at Alabama. “If you could see what I saw, you would understand why this is happening.”