He may be too mean for men’s basketball at Rutgers University, but disgraced former Scarlet Knights coach Mike Rice still has a team to run — filled with preteen girls.
The hardcourt hothead was back on the sidelines yesterday, guiding his seventh-grade daughter’s Amateur Athletic Union team in a tournament in Holmdel, NJ.
Rice was fired two weeks ago after a videotape of him manhandling college players and using homophobic slurs sparked national outrage.
Despite that, the parents of the AAU kids have no problem with him coaching the girls of the New Jersey Shoreshots.
“Mike is doing this because this is what he does. This is what he loves,” said Traci Moore, a mother of one of the nine players on his team.
There was some dispute about whether Rice was continuing his bullying ways with the girls, who are 11 and 12.
A former Temple basketball player, Mike Vreeswyk, who was at the tournament, tweeted yesterday that Rice was out of control.
“He was a lunatic yesterday at Stone Bridge Middle School as well,” he wrote.
But a coach at the event disputed that.
“As far as him acting improper in any way, that’s not true,” the coach told The Post of Rice, whose team went 2-1 in the tournament and advanced to the next round.
Rice has been coaching his daughter’s teams for at least a couple of years. Moore said the NCAA scandal had no effect on his AAU coaching.
“Every kid on this team loves and adores Mike, and the parents, too,” she said.