UTEP coach Tim Floyd and USC Coach Andy Enfield were involved in a heated exchange that led to a verbal altercation at a pretournament reception at Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas on Wednesday night when the two coaches and their staffs exchanged barbs after months of back-and-forth heated words between the two programs came to a head, but Floyd insists that it's over.
According to ESPN, Enfield was reaching out to Floyd, who coached for USC from 2005-09 to apologize to him but the mood quickly turned. Floyd said Thursday that he was unlikely to accept the apology and that he was moving on from the verbal spat.
"I don't see any reason why we'd talk [in the future]," Floyd said per ESPN. "It's over with, that's for sure."
The bad blood between the two arose in April when Floyd called Enfield because he believed USC was tampering with UTEP recruit Isaac Hamilton, sparking a feud between the two programs.
"I lobbed a call into Coach Enfield back in April and felt like there was tampering going on with [Hamilton], and sure enough, three months later he put USC on his Facebook page and backed out of his letter of intent," Floyd said Thursday per ESPN. "I called and we discussed that in a very serious vein. [Enfield] asked me not to turn him in, and [he said] that they just wouldn't take [Hamilton]. But we didn't end up with him, and that was a lick."
Hamilton looked to back out of his letter of intent in July, but Floyd initially denied the release and accused USC and Enfield of tampering. Hamilton was eventually granted a release and ended up with UCLA where he will sit in 2013-14 after the NCAA denied his waiver request.
The feud was taken a step further after Enfield criticized Floyd in a Men's Journal article that was released last week.
"Tim Floyd shows up every day at work and realizes he lives in El Paso, Texas," Enfield told the publication, according to ESPN. "And he's pissed off that he didn't get the USC job two months ago. I told him, 'Tim, if I could have all this power to somehow convince a fami y to do this, why the heck didn't the kid come last spring, when I first got the job?' "
Floyd responded Thursday and was angry over the comments Enfield made of El Paso.
"I damned sure didn't appreciate the comments that he made last week publicly about the city of El Paso, Texas, where my grandparents were born and raised, where my father was born and raised and played at Texas Western, and where I lived 22 years of my life," Floyd said Thursday per ESPN. "It's a fabulous city, and my reaction yesterday was more about the city of El Paso than the previous part."
Floyd said that the timing of Enfield's apology was off since the article had just come out.
"As far as him saying he was just trying to apologize yesterday, it would've been really nice if he had apologized three weeks ago when that magazine article came out. His timing wasn't very good," Floyd said via ESPN.
Enfield expressed regret but also insinuated that the team is moving on.
"I regret that the situation happened and I apologize to the USC fans, but this is about the players," Enfield said. "We're moving on."
It seems that the bad blood between these two coaches still exists despite the fact that both coaches insist they're moving on.
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