Arizona Wildcats Baseball Head Coach Andy Lopez reacts to Ed Rush controversy

"I feel bad for Sean and I feel bad for the PAC-12."

That was the general sentiment from Arizona Wildcats baseball head coach Andy Lopez on Wednesday before practice. He took a couple of minutes to talk to me about his take on the Ed Rush controversy surrounding the Arizona Basketball program and Sean Miller.

"I didn't even know about it until yesterday when after practice my assistant coaches told me."

"I hope it was in jest," said Lopez. "My god, I mean, c'mon, we're not curing cancer out here. It's athletics, I know there's a lot on the line....but the hard reality is that no one's losing their life out here. I hope it was in jest."

"There's a lot of things you say in jest, but you shouldn't say it," Lopez continued. "I mean there's things that I could say to these guys (pointing to the players) right now that I could say in jest that could cost me my job. There's something that I could say to my wife or to a good friend of mine in jest and we would both laugh about it, but yeah the timing was pretty poor."

When I asked him if he's ever dealt with anything similar: "I can't honestly say that I have. I'm pretty quiet though. I have a kind of stupid saying with my guys 'You gotta get every call to be a good player? Are you that bad?'"

"Some calls are going to go for you and some calls are going to go against you."

"I got thrown out of a game last year against Oregon , I don't know why, same thing, but you know he threw me out, but that's life."

"I feel bad for Sean. I feel bad for the PAC-12. It doesn't come off very well for the PAC-12. And I feel bad for the gentleman who said it because he obviously doesn't understand the power of the word. You gotta be careful what you say."