PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) a' Two Rutgers hockey players on Mike Rice's staff say the dismissed coach was not the violent tyrant he appears to be on a widely viewed video that finally cost him his work. "You can not allow these individual occasions define what he was," senior forward Wally Judge said during a phone interview Thursday. "In my past two years, me becoming an older person and being under different instructors, I've developed as soon as I arrived in these opportunities, not merely as a player but also as an individual because of how he's handled me." Sophomore forward Austin Johnson agreed. "He did a whole lot for all of us off the court, academically, socially," he said during a split up phone conversation. "I need to say I loved my time, even it had been an emotional rollercoaster." Rice was dismissed Wednesday, the day after having a movie broadcast on ESPN showing him pushing, grabbing and throwing balls at people used and using gay slurs. "I experience if people had to be able to begin to see the other parts of practice, or had been at practice, their wisdom wouldn't be as severe," Johnson said. "I am maybe not saying what he did was not wrong, because I really do believe it was wrong. But it is also difficult because it was a reel of his worst moments. "I never expected because of this to elevate as quickly since it did," Johnson said. "We need certainly to cope with this and it is new for plenty of younger guys." Judge believes some of these moments encounter worse on camera than they really were. Eric Murdock, former director of player progress at Rutgers, assembled the video that showed clips of a number of different practices over 3 years. In November, he confirmed it to athletic director Tim Pernetti. "Honestly, lots of the things that have been seen have been removed from context. A lot of items that are not seen are whenever we grab him and baby around," Judge said. "Like I explained before, when people ask me why did I play for him, I told them 'He is a people ' coach.' "Mike was almost like a government. He'd get on the ground with us and proceed through drills with us. He made exciting to it. When you've a big brother-type of figure, you know you could mess around that way. I've got Mike and set him in a and child and we joke around. That has been the sort of relationship he constructed with his players." Pitt guard Travon Woodall also defended Rice, who hired him when he was an assistant coach there. "They are getting at my man Mike Rice too hard," Woodall tweeted. "He is the reason I found Pitt." Woodall later added Rice is "not the only coach to place his practical a new player, or speak the way he did." Murdock played in the NBA and was considered in the program as a person who could coach participants. His contract wasn't restored. "I have plenty of value for him. When he was here, he was someone I'd keep in touch with since he knew of my aspirations for playing at another level and he was a man who'd performed it," Judge said. "He was an excellent man to speak to. So far as this example goes, I understand everything that is certainly going on; I can certainly not be mad at him, but it is been broken out of proportion. There are specific means of going about things and this was not the way." Where his record was 44-51 over three months, grain left Pitt to coach at Robert Morris before landing at Rutgers. He published a mark in the Big East, after going 73-31 in three times at Robert Morris. The Bright red Knights went 15-16 this year and 5-13 in the category. Grain was employed by Rutgers in May 2010, and he produced assistant Jimmy Martelli with him from Robert Morris. On Thursday, Martelli resigned. In November, when athletic manager Tim Pernetti first saw the record, Rice was suspended three games for improper conduct, fined $75,000 and required to just take anger management classes. However, Judge insisted Rice was not a "villain." "He was not a guy we hated or despised," Judge said. "After exercise, we would all go in the locker room and laugh. It had been never a sad face or perhaps a hung head. What he did was he separated the courtroom and life was separated by him. When we were on the court, we were closed in and on the court. Why you see so many extreme times when he was so locked in on turning this program around that's. We were a family when we got in the locker room. We laughed." Brown hopes Rutgers' next coach would bring success to an application that's not gone to the NCAA tournament since 1991. "I feel like winning eliminates everything," he said. "If we are able to get somebody in and transform the culture, I feel like all of this stuff is going to be forgotten." Said Judge: "We do not want a white-collar, clean-cut man. We wish someone who understands us and can drive us every single day, like Rice did."
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