PUNCHING BACK: Expelled Yale basketball captain’s former high school coach defends him.

Jack Montague, the former Yale basketball captain who was expelled for sexual misconduct, has a staunch defender in his former high school coach, Dennis King.

In a letter to the editor in his local news outlet, King defended his former star from accusations that he is a rapist. King begins by comparing the “witch-hunt” against Montague to that of Giles Corey, the only man executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.

King contends that Montague, too, has been the victim of a “witch-hunt,” having his future and dreams destroyed “with the same cowardly irrational piety shown by those Puritan zealots of an earlier New England.”

On the one hand, athletes are more likely to be targeted in this sort of thing. On the other, they tend to get more support when they do. Pity the poor computer science major who finds himself in the same situation.