Holy Family basketball coach resigns, won't be charged

Five days after video circulated showing he had shoved a player and hours after a national television appearance in which his apology was not accepted, John O'Connor resigned Thursday as Holy Family University basketball coach.

The incident pushed Holy Family into the national spotlight, never more so than Thursday morning, when O'Connor and Matt Kravchuk appeared on ABC's Good Morning America. Prompted by host George Stephanopoulos, O'Connor apologized, and Kravchuk rebuffed him.

"To be honest, it's kind of hard to accept your apology," Kravchuk said. "I can't play for you anymore."

Later, O'Connor met with the team and informed the players that he had resigned.

"I think they thought, with the charges being dropped, they were going to get me back," O'Connor told the Philadelphia Daily News of the meeting. When he told them he was resigning, "they were really down. It was probably the toughest moment of my life so far."

After the TV appearance, O'Connor learned that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office had decided not to prosecute him after Kravchuk filed a criminal complaint over the Jan. 25 incident.

"This event does not constitute a prosecutable criminal offense," the statement concluded.

Kravchuk could not be reached for comment Thursday night.

"It's a conclusion, and it's a sad conclusion for everybody," said his attorney, Jack Cohen. "We have finality now."

A Holy Family representative declined to comment.

[Editor's note: Friday morning, the school issued a brief statement that the coach "tendered his resignation" because he believes that "his continuing as the coach ... is not in his or the University's best interests."]

Prosecutors studied a video of the incident and reviewed the statement that Kravchuk, 19, made Feb. 11 when he and Cohen filed the private criminal complaint, said Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for District Attorney Seth Williams.

"When it comes to filing a charge of simple assault, or in any case, you have to prove [criminal] intent," Jamerson said. "There was not enough in this case."

The announcement came several hours after Kravchuk and O'Connor appeared face to face - with their attorneys - in a failed attempt at reconciliation on Good Morning America.

O'Connor, at the urging of Stephanopoulos, looked directly at the student and said: "Matt, this was an accident. I was just trying to make us a better team and make us more competitive. . . . I'm really sorry that it happened. If I could take it back, I would."

After saying he could not accept the apology, Kravchuk added, "As your player I'm supposed to respect you, and I can't do that anymore."

Kravchuk has alleged that O'Connor grabbed him and elbowed him in the face, causing a bloody nose and bruises, and that he hurt a wrist when he fell.

Cohen said he would not pursue the criminal complaint through an appeal to Municipal Court, and reiterated that he had "no intention of filing any civil lawsuit."

Despite Cohen's comments, O'Connor's attorney John Gallagher said he and O'Connor remained uneasy about the potential for civil litigation.

"We had some hope of reconciliation," Gallagher said, referring to the television appearance. "It didn't work out."

This was O'Connor's first year as Holy Family's coach. On Good Morning America, he said he had been proud of Kravchuk's progress as a player: "Matt worked extremely hard. . . . I just feel it's unfortunate that I'll never get the chance to coach him again."

After the incident, O'Connor apologized to Kravchuk in his office and later to the team. O'Connor denied, however, that he had acted out of anger or intended to injure Kravchuk.

He said he had been conducting a "combat rebounding drill" to help the players learn to be tougher. Before the incident, the video of the practice - a routine taping leaked to Fox29 on Saturday - shows Kravchuk and another player repeatedly banging into each other as the coach bounces balls off the rim.

A ball falls between Kravchuk and O'Connor, and the coach moves in, lifting an arm, grabbing the ball, and bumping the player to the ground. To some, the contact looks like an intentional shoving, with the kicking motion seeming to reinforce the appearance of anger.

"I just nudged him with my foot to kind of get him to keep moving in his drill," O'Connor said on Good Morning America.

He disputed Kravchuk's impression that his complaint to athletic director Sandra Michael had been ignored. Michael called the coach into her office, O'Connor said, and they reviewed the tape, discussing how to better handle that and future coaching sessions.