Fight on, Part Two.

A day after my speculation that UTEP head coach Tim Floyd laid into USC's Andy Enfield mostly because of what Enfield's comments in the Men's Journal did to sully the reputation of his city, his school and Floyd himself, Floyd stated that was exactly the point.

Then he took it further. A lot further.

After the Miners upset a talented Tennessee team in the Battle for Atlantis, 78-70, Floyd roasted Enfield in the post-game press conference, alleging that Enfield all but admitted to tampering to get UTEP's McDonald All-American recruit Isaac Hamilton to back out of his National Letter of Intent.

This was Floyd before the game with Tennessee...

But, as relayed by Iowa beat writer Scott Dochterman in The Gazzette, the opinion Floyd expressed in the video -- that you just don't go public with certain things -- must have changed.

In the post-game press conference Floyd went straight for Enfield's shiny new reputation. Dochterman quoted him saying, "I lobbed a call into Coach Enfield back in April and felt like there was tampering going on with our McDonald’s All-American Isaac Hamilton. Sure enough, three months later with USC on his Facebook page, (Hamilton) backed out of his letter of intent.

"(Enfield) called, we discussed that in a very serious vein. He asked me not to turn them in and that they just wouldn’t take him. But we didn’t end up with him and that was a lick.”

Boom.

The ball is in Enfield's court, but with that statement Floyd has flung something sticky all over Enfield and the USC program. Regardless of whether or not Enfield denies all or part of Floyd's allegation, the doubts will be there.

Much like the city he calls home, Floyd is tired of people who would like to put El Paso and UTEP into a box of their choosing.

“I damn didn’t sure 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,” Floyd said.

“We’re not going to just sit back and take it in the shorts, OK? Just not going to do it. Not going to do it. We’ve done it enough.”

Despite Floyd's obvious temper, don't doubt the UTEP coach knows exactly what he's doing. This isn't flying off the handle, this is getting a handle on things.

As I stated before, it's about reputation and recruiting. Floyd is not letting Enfield control the conversation, whether it's in relation to the city the Miner coach calls home or his ability to be taken seriously when he recruits the next Isaac Hamilton.

The other thing we shouldn't doubt? That if some El Pasoans weren't Tim Floyd fans before, they sure as hell are now.

 

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