Former Detroit Assistant Carlos Briggs Says He Was Wrongfully Fired

Hey, remember all that stuff about the Detroit AD leaving, along with an assistant coach, and then another assistant coach left the next day?

Yeah, that weirdness has been eerily quiet in the past month, as everyone supposedly went their own ways.

Only we come to find out it might not be as quiet a resolution as we thought.

Former assistant coach Carlos Briggs is now saying that he was wrongfully fired. According to a USA Today report, Briggs says he notified the school of wrongdoing by others in the athletic department, and that is what ultimately led to his dismissal.

Briggs did not say who committed the wrongdoings, but only that they occurred and that the individuals were no longer employed there:

Briggs, in his sixth season at Detroit Mercy, did not mention names in his statement, but wrote that "on Oct. 31 the wrongdoers in the athletic department who were the subject of my August disclosure were separated from service of the university."

That was the day that Keri Gaither and Derek Thomas resigned, supposedly to pursue other interests.

Of course, this was odd since the basketball season was starting in just a couple of days (so Thomas would have seemed to have been needed), and school had only just begun which begged the question why Gaither would leave then as opposed to over the summer.

According to a Detroit Free Press story, the two might have been conducting an inappropriate relationship during away games:

Four former basketball players - LaMarcus Lowe, Donavan Foster, Brandon Romain and Xavier Keeling - told the Free Press in recent interviews that the behavior of Gaither and Thomas on road trips in recent seasons led them to believe they had an inappropriate relationship. Gaither ran the department in which Thomas worked. They both have spouses.

This sounds very shady and reminiscent of the recent scandal involving Tyler Hansbrough's mother, only she wasn't involved with an assistant coach.

Briggs was reportedly told to report his statements through an internal page for identifying these circumstances and his identity was supposed to remain anonymous. He says that somehow Gaither found out about his implications and harassed him because of it.

[Ed. Note: A previous version of this article referenced Tyler Zeller's mother. This should have been Tyler Hansbrough's mother. We apologize to the Zeller family, especially his mom.]