Arizona head coach Sean Miller issued a statement Monday afternoon to clarify comments he made regarding Saturday’s brawl between Xavier and Cincinnati.

“I made comments following our win Saturday over Clemson regarding my former team, Xavier University,” Miller said in the release. “These remarks were in response to a question as to whether I have been following Xavier’s on-the-court successes this season.

“My comments were directed toward my admiration of their on-the-court toughness and their respective approach to giving great effort as a team. In no way was I condoning a fight.”

ESPN college hoops writer Eamonn Brennan was most likely the one to spark Miller’s clarification. In a Monday morning blog post Brennan took a shot at Arizona’s head coach for his comments following the Wildcats’ victory over Clemson.

After the win the former Musketeer head coach said, “If Cincinnati tries to do what they did (Saturday) they’re going to get a fight. So I’m proud of those guys. They have a chance to win it all,“It’s just such a great story. I’m really proud of those guys and I watch them any time that I can. No one’s going to bully those guys.”

With the brawl earning reaching a national stage and leading to multi-game suspensions, Brennan wrote that Miller was speaking out of turn on a sensitive matter. Miller’s statement Monday afternoon said he was simply answering a question about the success of his former team, but Brennan thought otherwise.

“Were I a college basketball coach, I would probably want to stay as far away from Xavier and Cincinnati as possible right now,” Brennan wrote. “Apparently, Sean Miller disagrees.”

Brennan went on take another jab at Miller, tying the postgame comments from Xavier’s Mark Lyons and Tu Hallaway about “zipping (Cincinnati) up” back to their former head coach.

“How could Miller be proud of that? How could he support anything he saw on Saturday? How does that even compute? That’s the biggest criticism we’ve heard in the past few days, especially of Xavier — that “these guys just don’t get it,’” Brennan wrote. “If their former coach is ‘proud’ of what he saw Saturday, well, no wonder.”