BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - California coach Mike Montgomery said Tuesday there was no excuse for him shoving star player Allen Crabbe during a game and the action was completely out of character for him.
"It's obvious I made a mistake and I feel very badly about it," Montgomery said at his weekly news conference Tuesday. "There's no place in sports that you can basically put your hands on one of your student athletes. Got a little carried away in the heat and emotion of a basketball game so I apologized to Allen, I apologized to the team. I feel very badly. In 30-plus years of coaching it's never happened before. It's something I deeply regret. It's not going to happen again."
Montgomery has been publicly reprimanded by the Pac-12 conference and his own athletic director for pushing Crabbe with both hands during a timeout in the second half of Cal's 76-68 win against USC on Sunday night.
Montgomery sounded a very different tone than the one he had in the same room two nights earlier, when he downplayed the event by calling it a motivational tactic and saying he would do it again because it worked.
He acknowledged he didn't initially recognize the gravity of the event. He first saw video of the shove when he got home that night and later issued an apology through the school.
He then endured what he called "a couple of sleepless nights" as he watched coverage of the event that to his shock became national news.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," he said. "It was a little bit surprising the legs that it got. I made the bed. I have to lay in it. I regret the incident. I thought Allen handled it very well. I'm really appreciative of that. Allen and I have a great relationship."
Crabbe spoke before Montgomery on Tuesday and tried to move past the controversy, saying the whole thing had been "blown out of proportion" the past two days and he and the team have moved on from it.