Louisville center Malik Williams, a team captain, has been suspended indefinitely by interim coach Mike Pegues. Pegues made the announcement tonight on his radio show. The Courier-Journal’s UofL men’s basketball beat writer Brett Dawson tweeted the news and a couple of quotes from Coach Pegues below.
Pegues: “It’s one game for now.” Says he hopes Williams will be “the guy he’s been at times,” which is a good leader, and can return.
— Brett Dawson (@BDawsonWrites) February 1, 2022
While the reasoning mentioned by Coach Pegues was the suspension was due to Williams failing to meet Louisville’s standard throughout the year, CSZ’s Jeremy Wahman had more information about the suspension.
Message i got:
— #Ble55ed™ (@Jeremy_CSZ) February 1, 2022
Today shocked me the most. You try to fight a coach, get kicked off the team, ask to be reinstated and get suspended indefinitely. Makes no sense. Suppose to be a leader.
This is what I gif'd about earlier for those who asked.
According to a source of Jeremy’s, Williams was kicked off the team, but the punishment was downgraded to an indefinite suspension after Williams asked to be reinstated. This may allow Malik Williams to see the floor sometime within the final 9 games and whatever games the Cards play in the ACC Tournament.
This is more bad news for a program desperately in need of good news. Having a team captain try to fight a coach, the interim head coach to boot, shows the sad state of affairs in the program. It’s incredible that Malik is the player that was guilty of this. The coaching staff praised him universally throughout his time here. He always carried himself well and took leadership both on and off the floor. So, it is quite shocking to see how this has all gone down. Despite what has happened, hopefully he will work his way back on the team and be able to finish out his career as a Cardinal on a high note.
Sounds like something fishy to me what happened. If he stepped out of character what did the coach do to make that happen I guess he was being a good coach right. Coach had some culpability in the situation. You just don’t try to fight a coach unless he is FOWL.