Report: USC basketball players involved in Downtown Spokane, Wash. fight

Several members of the USC basketball team brawled in Downtown Spokane Saturday night, according to witnesses in a report by KREM.

Police are now looking into those claims after four people were sent to the hospital because of the fights.

Witnesses list several basketball players who may be involved, but officers have yet to confirm any identities.

“I’m not going to guess at why, but there’s no justification for their actions. There’s no reason why,” Noel Macapagal of The Wave on First Avenue said.

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The USC basketball team has had some issues this season with its head basketball coach being fired mid-season.

UTEP head basketball coach Tim Floyd met with USC Athletic Director Pat Haden about the Trojans’ vacant basketball position a few weeks ago in Phoenix.

Floyd told the Los Angeles Times that Haden had contacted him and that their three-hour meeting “went well.”

Haden declined to comment until the coaching search is complete. Floyd told the media March 5 that he had not been offered the USC job but did not answer if he would take it if offered.

UTEP Athletic Director Bob Stull said in a statement March 5 that he “was contacted six weeks ago by Pat Haden, who was interested in talking to Tim Floyd about the USC coaching job. The meeting took place. Coach Floyd has always indicated to me that he is happy working at UTEP, and until he tells me otherwise he is our coach.”

Floyd coached USC from 2006-’09 and then resigned in the midst of the NCAA investigating the USC basketball program.

“I chose not to try my case in the media,” Floyd told ESPN in March 2010. “I left because of lack of support (at USC).”

He was hired as UTEP’s head coach in March 2010, signing a five-year contract and earning $600,000 a year.

The NCAA didn’t attach any violations to Floyd when it released its findings and sanctions on USC on June 10, 2010.

The NCAA report’s most damaging statement toward Floyd was that he sat in on a meeting with runner Rodney Guillory, who was pushing USC to recruit O.J. Mayo, and that the USC staff continued to recruit Mayo through Guillory even though they had “Googled” to find out that Guillory was identified as a “runner” for a sports agent in a case involving another NCAA member institution. Floyd has maintained he did nothing wrong.

During Floyd’s UTEP radio show in Nov. 2010, he said that after 24 years away from UTEP that it was the right time to return. He said he and his wife, Beverly, were finally ready to plant their feet in El Paso. Floyd was previously an assistant coach at UTEP from 1978-’86 under Don Haskins.

One of the country’s top freshmen classes was recruited to UTEP under Floyd and will start playing for UTEP next season.