Alabama standout freshman Brandon Miller was in the starting lineup and scored a career-high 41 points in a win over South Carolina on Wednesday.

It came a day after police said he delivered a gun to a teammate who is charged in a fatal shooting near campus. It also came hours after the university said Miller would remain an “active member” of the No. 2-ranked team and isn’t considered a suspect.

Miller’s status mattered little to South Carolina Gamecock fans at Colonial Life Arena who booed every time Miller touched the ball the student section chanted, “Lock him up,” and “Guilty!” several times.

His presence has also stirred a debate around the country about Miller’s status for the Tide.

“I will applaud Brandon Miller the basketball player, from the standpoint that to endure what he was enduring last night,” Stephen A. Smith said on ESPN’s “First Take” on Thursday. “And to go out there as a freshman and to put on that show on the road, absolutely showed a level of mental toughness that I believe NBA scouts, people on the next level will look at – assuming there’s nothing that comes from this from a legal perspective for him – they’ll look at that level of mental toughness and find a way to applaud that. …

“But as a young man, I want Brandon Miller to think about this – you didn’t pull the trigger, you didn’t shoot anybody, and it’s important to say that. But it’s also important to say this – if you didn’t have that firearm to provide for Darius Miles and the person that he was with, a 23-year-old young lady probably would still be alive. And for you to have anything to do with that, it’s something that should make it very, very, very difficult for you to sleep at night as opposed to pumping your chest at people who were booing you.”

Meanwhile, Paul Finebaum said Thursday, while appearing on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 in Mobile, that “Alabama has lost control of this story.”

“The real question is should they have gotten this out in the open,” Finebaum asked. “I want to say yes. But here’s the danger. If they had told us on Day 1 what they alluded to yesterday, then Brandon Miller would have been the story. A lot of damage would’ve been done since Day 1. Not saying a lot of damage hasn’t been done, it has.

“I think they were trying to protect him vs. telling the story of what really happened.”

Like Smith, Finebaum said the real question isn’t whether Miller should be charged, it is whether he should be playing at all.

“That’s a judgement call by everyone,” he said. “Ultimately, this is a university decision.”

Still, Finebaum said Alabama ”doing nothing turned out to be the right thing” as there are only a few weeks left in the college basketball season and the Tide has its guy in the lineup.

Check out the full interview here.

Mark Heim is a sports reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim.