Bob Knight did some crazy things during his Hall of Fame career as a college basketball coach, but even he had limits. He may have tapped a player under the chin and thrown an occasional chair, but I can never remember him assaulting a player to the extent that John O’Connor assaulted Matt Kravchuk of his Holy Family University men’s basketball team.
Kravchuk, a sophomore, was participating in an intense 1-on-1 rebounding drill in late January when O’Connor lost his cool and shoved him over, causing him to hurt his wrist and drawing blood from his mouth. O’Connor has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation, but after seeing Fox 29 in Philly’s exclusive footage of the incident it would be tough to imagine the coach not getting in serious trouble with the university and the law. Check it out:
Once you see the video, there really isn’t much that needs to be said. The swearing and yelling is one thing, hitting a player like that is another. Now that a video is floating around, we can expect the typical apology from O’Connor once he realizes there’s no way to restore his image — one that shouldn’t be accepted. O’Connor will likely say he made a mistake, but someone with that type of temper doesn’t deserve to be a coach. If Holy Family University doesn’t realize that, the police should.
