Alabama coach Nate Oats provided more detail Friday about the recruitment of former Tide player Darius Miles, who was removed from the university’s campus after being charged Sunday with capital murder.
“There was zero off-the-floor character issues when we recruited him,” Oats said. “Nobody saw this coming.”
After holding a brief news conference Monday in a sport coat and dress shirt, Oats’ wide-ranging news conference Friday marked a shift toward normalcy for Alabama five days after Miles’ arrest for his alleged role in the shooting death of 23-year old Jamea Harris on Tuscaloosa’s Strip. According to court documents, Miles admitted to police he provided the gun that witnesses saw Michael Davis, also charged with capital murder, use to shoot Harris.
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Oats publicly detailed for the first time his process of recruiting Miles, a member of the 2020 recruiting class who played high school basketball in Washington, D.C. before spending a postgraduate season at IMG Academy in Florida.
“We recruited Darius during COVID, when you couldn’t go visit him. It was all done via Zooms and phone calls,” Oats explained. “You get the typical, ‘He’s so talented that sometimes he takes plays off.’ That had nothing to do with his character off-the-floor at all.”
Oats said Miles comes from a “really good family,” noting that Miles’ father David is retired military and his mother, Tracy Palmer, is a police officer in the Washington, D.C. area.
“She’s a great woman,” Oats said of Miles’ mother. “I just feel awful for both of them. This really isn’t anything anybody really ever anticipated Darius getting caught up in.
“I love the kid. He’s super easy to talk to. He still is. He’s one of my favorite kids I’ve coached.”
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The bond reduction motion filed by Miles’ attorney this week stated he had no prior criminal history, and Oats said there were no off-the-court issues during Miles’ two-and-a-half seasons at Alabama, either.
“Part of the whole shock of this thing, to be honest with you -- I can’t speak to the ongoing investigation, because it’s an ongoing investigation, it’s just a tragic situation -- if we would have seen anything like this coming, we would have tried to do something,” Oats said Friday. “Nobody saw anything like this coming, to be honest with you.
“Even when he was here, we had no real issues with him off the floor. He’s a likable kid that everybody liked. The only issues we had were just trying to get him motivated, play a little harder in process, be more consistent. Basketball stuff, to be honest with you.”
For all recruits, Oats said Alabama tries to talk to people other than their high school coach to learn more honest opinions about players they are considering adding to their program.
“The coach usually doesn’t want to say anything poorly about the kid and we get that,” he said. “You get a little more honest when you start calling the teachers, the principals, the guidance counselors, you’re in a school visiting a kid.”
That included Oats and assistant Bryan Hodgson talking to a school custodian when they recently visited a recruit in Ohio.
“They had practiced in the evening. That’s the custodian that’s around the team all the time when nobody else is around,” he said. “You find a lot more about kids, doing some research about that. So we tried as hard as we can to do the most background we can to make sure we get high-character kids. And I love our group. And this year’s group is unbelievable. I love them.”
AL.com’s Carol Robinson contributed to this report.
Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.
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