Speaking publicly for the second time since Sunday’s arrest of Darius Miles for capital murder, Alabama men’s basketball coach Nate Oats revealed Tuesday he spoke to former NFL linebacker Ray Lewis in the wake of the incident.

“His daughter went to Alabama a year-and-a-half ago,” Oats said during an interview with Crimson Tide Sports Network before Tuesday night’s game at Vanderbilt. “He went through a similar situation in Atlanta. He played in the NFL. He told me what he thought guys needed to hear.”

Lewis is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who played linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens from 1996-2012. Lewis and two of his friends was charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two men outside an Atlanta nightclub after Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000.

The murder charge against Lewis was dropped months later after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice in exchange for his testimony against the other two men. Lewis received one year probation, and his two friends were later acquitted of their murder charges.

Lewis’ daughter, Diaymon Lewis, graduated from Alabama in 2020, according to her LinkedIn biography.

Miles, a now-dismissed Alabama basketball player, and another man, Michael Davis, were arrested Sunday and were both charged with capital murder for the early-morning shooting death of 23-year old Jamea Harris on Tuscaloosa’s Strip. Court records released Tuesday stated witnesses told police that Davis fired the shot that killed Harris and Miles admitted to police that he provided the gun.

Oats revealed his conversation with Lewis when he was asked during his pregame interview which people he has leaned on after Sunday’s arrest. He mentioned athletics director Greg Byrne and team sports psychologist Brett McCabe, in addition to Arizona State men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley, whom Oats coached under at Buffalo, and Lewis.

“Just different people have reached out and I’ve been able to gather different things from different people,” he said. “I wouldn’t say there’s one guy, necessarily. This wasn’t covered in the ‘Coaching Basketball’ class back in college. This is one you’ve got to get a really good feel for where your guys are at. Even going into the team meetings, you’ve got to kind of play it a little bit by ear and see where they’re at, where their heads are at, and kind of go from there.

“Lot of prayer. Read them some bible verses on how to handle types of things like this. And really, we’ve kind of reiterated, like, your choices. We can learn from this, too. Don’t lose a learning lesson. Let’s learn what we can from this. Hopefully the rest of the team makes better decisions moving forward and they can really learn from this.”

In his pregame Crimson Tide Sports Network interview, Oats also walked through the team’s response to learning the news Sunday.

“We talked as a team. Obviously very emotional,” Oats said. “We had Scotty Hollins, our team chaplain in there. Greg Byrne, the AD, the staff. Kind of talked through some stuff. I told the team, I would just give them some time on their own. We had just pushed the team meeting back, back, back until we had some type of answers.

“After they talked for a little while, they came to me and said they weren’t in the right frame of mind to practice [Sunday], which I totally got. I had kind of left it up to them as to what we were going to do that night. So we gave them the night off. They said they would be ready to go [Monday]. A lot of them hadn’t slept.

“So, came in Monday. Went through the Vanderbilt personnel, Day 1 edit. We had [deputy] chief [Severn ‘Sebo’] Sanders from the Tuscaloosa PD. Then we had practice. I thought the practice was good. I thought guys were locked in. I thought it was a little reprieve, if you will, from thinking about all the things they had been thinking about. So we went right from practice to getting on a plane and coming down here [to Vanderbilt].

“We shot in here last night. Thought it was good. Did some video after that. Just more — because we typically would have done some on Sunday. We had to make up [some] time on that. And then told them to get to bed.

“We got up [Tuesday] morning. Pretty similar to a regular game day. We just did a tad more video. We just got more video in than we normally would have, with us missing Sunday’s deal. We did a little [Monday] night, a little bit more than we would have [Tuesday]. We got it in. I thought our shoot-around was good. I thought the guys pulled themselves together and said, ‘let’s really focus in here.’

“So I’m hoping they’re able to focus, concentrate. It’s obviously been a little bit of a distraction. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t. There’s gonna be plenty of distractions in life. This is a big one. But you’ve got to be able to regroup, gather yourself together and still go to work.

“You and me have been through some things. Obviously this is a little different, maybe. You know how real life works. You’ve got to be able to compartmentalize a little bit, focus on what you can, so now tonight, I’m just hoping they can really focus in on what we have to do tonight, because we’ve been playing some good basketball up to this point.”

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.