WATCH: Washington AD releases statement on Jimmy Lake, player sideline altercation

Washington athletic director Jen Cohen has released a statement after Huskies head football coach Jimmy Lake was seen having a sideline altercation with one of his players during Saturday night’s game against No. 4 Oregon.

“We are aware of an interaction between Head Coach Jimmy Lake and a student-athlete during the first half of Saturday’s game,” Cohen’s statement read, according to a tweet posted by Christian Caple of The Athletic. “We have high expectations of the conduct of our coaches and we are working to gather more information on this matter.”

In the video of the altercation, Lake can be seen hitting redshirt freshman linebacker Ruperake Fuavai in the helmet and then shoving him after Fuavai got into it with Oregon senior wide receiver Jaylon Redd following a play.

Jimmy Lake pops Ruperake Fuavai in the helmet and shoves him for getting into it with Jaylon Redd on the sideline pic.twitter.com/7AdSuugGe3

— Ralph Amsden (@ralphamsden) November 7, 2021

Washington trailed by just a point at 10-9 at halftime but was outscored 16-7 in the second half to lose 26-16, dropping the Huskies to 4-5 on the season and 3-3 in Pac-12 play.

Jimmy Lake makes controversial comment on Oregon and recruiting

During his Monday press conference previewing Washington’s meeting with Oregon, Lake was asked if he viewed the Ducks as a recruiting rival. Instead of just answering the question with a simple answer, he went on to say that he views Oregon’s recruiting rivals as schools with high “academic prowess.”

“That is way more pumped up than it is,” Lake said. “Our battles are really the schools we go against – that have academic prowess – like the University of Washington, Notre Dame, Stanford, USC. We go with a lot of battles, toe to toe, all the way to the end, with those schools. So I think that’s made up and pumped up in [the media’s] world. In our world, we battle more academically prowess teams.”

After making that comment Monday, Lake tried to clean up the mess he made during his weekly radio show on Wednesday, saying he has the “utmost respect” for Oregon “as an academic and athletic institution.” He added that his “academic prowess” comments weren’t a shot at Oregon, but instead about his own program’s recruiting.

No matter what Lake was trying to say, his Washington recruiting class for 2022 is ranked far lower than Oregon’s. According to the On3 consensus team rankings for the class, the Ducks come in at No. 11 with one five star and 15 four stars, while the Huskies are at No. 31 with no five-stars and three four-stars.