Eight players from the
Ole Miss men's basketball team knelt during the national anthem before Saturday's home game against
Georgia in response to a Confederacy rally near the arena.Minutes before the game, both teams formed lines for the anthem. As "The Star-Spangled Banner" began, six Rebels players -- who appeared to be
KJ Buffen,
D.C. Davis,
Brian Halums,
Luis Rodriguez,
Devontae Shuler and
Bruce Stevens -- knelt one by one. Two more players -- appearing to be
Breein Tyreeand
Franco Miller Jr. -- took a knee on the song's final line.The game was being played while two pro-Confederacy groups organized a march onto the campus in Oxford, Mississippi."The majority of it was we saw one of our teammates doing it and we just didn't want him to be alone,'' Ole Miss scoring leader Tyree said after his team's 72-71 victory. "We're just tired of these hate groups coming to our school and portraying our campus like it's our actual university having these hate groups in our school."
Various student groups held counterprotests on campus on Thursday and Friday. Saturday's march, led by pro-Confederate groups Confederate 901 and the Hiwaymen, also drew counterprotesters. The march began at the Confederate monument on the city square and ended at another Confederate monument in the heart of the Ole Miss campus.Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said he wasn't aware beforehand that players were going to kneel."This was all about the hate groups that came to our community to try to spread racism and bigotry," Davis said. "It's created a lot of tension for our campus. Our players made an emotional decision to show these people they're not welcome on our campus, and we respect our players' freedom and ability to choose that.''
Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork said he had a discussion with the players about the on-campus protest. "These people that come here and they spill hate and bigotry and racism, we don't want them on our campus. Our players stood up for that," Bjork said. "It had nothing to do with the anthem. It had nothing to do with anything beyond, 'We don't want those people here. They're protesting during our game, and that's not right because that's not the Ole Miss that I know.'