Mike Rice Still Coaching 12-Year-Old Daughter's AAU Team Despite Being Fired From Rutgers for Abusing Players

Mike Rice‘s coaching antics were too much for NCAA basketball to allow, but apparently it’s all right for him to coach 12-year-old girls in AAU basketball.

Rice was spotted this weekend still coaching his daughter’s AAU team in Neptune, N.J., according to Deadspin. Rice was as wild as ever, yelling at coaches and players, according to HoopsCritic.com.

On Sunday afternoon, Rice told one of his players, “I can’t even look at you.” Rice has been involved with his daughter’s team “for some time,” according to the Asbury Park Press and parents of the AAU team supported Rice on Twitter.

Obviously, Rice may treat 12-year-old girls differently than he treated 18-year-old men at Rutgers, but after video surfaced of the coach throwing basketballs, heaving verbal assaults and pushing players, it would seem highly inappropriate for him to be coaching at the youth level. If reports are true that Rice is still out of control and acting like a “lunatic,” as HoopsCritic.com relayed, maybe coaching just isn’t for him.

One can only wonder why parents of Rice’s AAU team are allowing him to stay on, except that he’s obviously overqualified for such a gig. It sounds like a bad Onion headline that Rice could get fired from coaching 18-to-22-year-old men, but that he’s perfectly allowed to lead 6th-and-7th-grade girls. Let’s hope this coaching gig doesn’t last as long as his three-year tenure at Rutgers.