Pat Forde shares how Darius Miles arrest could impact Alabama basketball program

As the Tuscaloosa community mourns the death of Jamea Jonae Harris in a shooting over the weekend that led to forward Darius Miles‘ arrest, the Alabama basketball program is grappling with the impacts the shooting might have going forward.

Darius Miles, a junior at Alabama, was charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting.

“Just a horrible, awful situation and one that certainly didn’t seem to ever make any sense,” long-time college athletics reporter Pat Forde said on the ‘Best Of’ the Paul Finebaum Show podcast. “Just a senseless act of violence, a minor altercation turns into a gun battle and this is what you end up with, a lost life.”

Miles had been in and out of the lineup for Alabama during his time as a player, but the Crimson Tide wasted little time cutting ties with him as the capital murder charge surfaced.

Whether the shooting will continue to linger as something the basketball program must deal with is less clear.

“We don’t know what the impact will be long-term,” Forde said. “We don’t know all the circumstances here. Darius Miles had been kind of in and out off the team. He had gone home for a personal matter, he had been suspended a couple of times. Nate Oats said yesterday those were completely unrelated matters to this.”

How will Darius Miles arrest impact Alabama?

Miles played in 53 games at Alabama before he was dismissed following his arrest on a capital muder charge.

He averaged 4.2 points and 2.3 rebounds in his career. All of that will be quickly forgotten. Any lingering impacts to the program due to his association with it may not be.

That remains to be seen.

“Alabama not only removed him from the team but removed him from campus as a student,” Forde said. “You wonder just kind of what the ripple effect of this is going to be, not just the human loss but beyond that. It’s a hard, hard thing to deal with. I feel for, obviously, the family of the victim and for the teammates of Darius Miles, who saw one of their own led off in handcuffs with a capital murder charge. Just a terrible turn of events.”