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UPDATE: Security footage from the hallways has been released
The security tapes of what happened after the USU VS. NEVADA GAME ARE OUT!!! And they are damning for Nevada, Caroline, and Musselman. Oh my lord.https://t.co/B2RfE86QXPhttps://t.co/z4MQZSHTMs
— Aaron Peck (@AaronPeck) March 5, 2019
he Mountain West released an official statement on Monday regarding the incident that occurred at the end of Utah State’s 81-76 victory over Nevada.
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The first important statement here is:
“...the Mountain West has concluded the situation was not caused by the court rush.”
Amongst the many rumors of how this incident started, one of the more popular theories was that Nevada players were approached, touched, and had disparaging comments said to them by Aggie fans rushing the court.
At the moment, there’s no proof to this claim and the Mountain West itself has said the situation did not originate from the rushing of the court.
However, there isn’t much evidence to disprove all of this theory either. There are videos circling Twitter of the court rush and there doesn’t seem to be any discernible proof of fans touching Wolfpack players, but there’s almost no way to tell if there were or were not any unpleasantries shouted at them.
“Rather, inappropriate conduct by individuals in the postgame handshake line and subsequently in the locker room areas created the unfortunate circumstances.”
This is the other major theory out there: assistant coaches were being abrasive and immature whilst the handshake line took place. At the time of this writing, the MWCConnection hasn’t been provided with any evidence that proves that this theory is indeed the correct one.
All we know is that the Conference has decided, upon further review, that the handshake line altercation was the prime cause of the outrage by Nevada’s Jordan Caroline and a select few staff members as seen in the video circulating across sports Twitter.
As the release states, both schools athletic departments will be in charge of deciding the ensuing punishments for those involved in the action.
Clearly this is the right path to take, as handing down a punishment for acting unprofessionally, no matter the cost to the program, is the right thing to do.
It should not be long until we get word of what each school will do in response tot he situation and to the Mountain West’s release.