Kevin Coble claimed ultimatums by embattled Wildcats coach Bill Carmody led to his quitting the team. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Very often, college basketball players and coaches don’t get along. We just seldom here about it, even after transfers take place. Well, Kevin Coble decided to not keep it a secret any longer: He wasn’t going to be bullied by Northwestern coach Bill Carmody. That’s why Coble’s no longer a part of the team.

Once the coaching scandals and the cheating and the arrests in general really picked up over the summer, Northwestern confusingly losing its best player seemed to fade into the background pretty quickly.

Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn got the scoop via e-mail from Coble last week. (Winn is a graduate of Northwestern.)

Winn didn’t get to track down Carmody after these e-mails were exchanged, but in his story he does paint the Northwestern coach in a shrug-your-shoulders light, as Winn asked him in October about why Coble left.

This post by Teddy Greenstein attempts to poke some holes in Coble’s story.

Here’s what I said (from the link above) immediately after this happened:

Something about all this doesn’t sit right. Why wait until now? Did Coble recently receive some news from his doctor(s) that he’s not sharing, or is playing in Europe something he’s debating? It’s also entirely possible his passion for basketball isn’t what so many want it to be, and if the foot is still nagging, waiting until a month or two into the season isn’t something he wants to do.

So I was right, yet so wrong. Truthfully, I wondered about the relationship with Carmody, but that means jack at this point. And I didn’t have the wherewithal and/or guts to mention that in my Dagger post.

No word from Carmody, and I’d really like to hear from him, despite Coble no longer being on the team. What must be awkward: Coble’s finishing classes at NU right now. Let’s say he and Carmody spot each other from across the quad. Is it a gotta-change-your-walking-route situation? We’ve all been there. When it’s an attractive member of the opposite sex, the reverse tactic is employed, naturally.