Mike Price says he shouldn’t have confronted fans at UTEP basketball game

UTEP men’s basketball has been struggling lately.

Not only did forward Terry Winn leave the team, but the Miners have lost back to back home games against Southeastern Louisiana and Northwestern State.

At the latter home game against Northwestern State on Saturday, some fans held up individual letters that read “Fire Floyd.”

After the game was over, as first reported by Miner Rush, former UTEP football coach Mike Price confronted the fans holding the letters, ripping one away, and reportedly yelling something at the fan. He was then escorted away from the group of fans, according to the site.

Price, who reportedly still lives at least part-time in El Paso, admitted Monday in an interview with the El Paso Times that he probably wouldn’t repeat his actions from Saturday night if he had it to do all over again.

Price told the Times in their article, “I didn’t give it too much thought. If I had thought about it a little longer, I wouldn’t have done it.”

He went on to say, however, that he felt the sign “showed a great deal of disrespect for our school, our team, our city, our coach.”

UTEP basketball has been reeling the past two weeks, with two bad home losses and the loss of forward Terry Winn, who bashed the program for not being “family-friendly” when he left. Adrian Moore also left the team recently to be with his mother, who had recently fallen ill.

The fans who held the signs, however, said in a series of tweets and interviews following the incident that they support UTEP basketball and want to see it succeed.

One fan involved tweeted, “And just a heads up we got more ‘Thank you’s for speaking up’ than we did ‘You’re disrespectful’ comments for this.”

UTEP head coach Tim Floyd is expected to address the media on Tuesday at 1 p.m. The Miners next play at New Mexico on Wednesday evening.

New Mexico head coach Craig Neal praised Floyd Monday afternoon. He said, “Tim does a great job. He always has. He’s coached all over the country and the NBA at the highest level, so I’m sure he’ll have his guys ready.”

UTEP’s next home game is against New Mexico State on Tuesday, Dec. 13.