WACO, Texas -- Baylor coach Dave Bliss defended his program's reaction to learning of Patrick Dennehy's disappearance in an exclusive interview with ESPN's Andy Katz on Wednesday night,.

Bliss responded to allegations that the Baylor coaching staff was too slow to respond to Dennehy's disappearance. He said that he and his staff stressed that players follow the Baylor student code of conduct policy forbidding the use of firearms.

Bliss also was relieved that investigators did not indict any players as suspects in Dennehy's disappearance.

An unnamed police informant in Delaware alleged former Baylor player Carlton Dotson shot Dennehy in the head after the two argued while shooting guns on property outside Waco, court documents show. No one has been arrested and the matter is still classified as a "missing persons" case by authorities.

Dennehy was reported missing by his family June 19, about a week after he was last seen. His car was found last week in Virginia Beach, Va., where he had no apparent connections. Bliss said he talked to Dotson on June 11, which is one day before Dennehy apparently was last seen. He said Dotson was in a car accident and Bliss said he talked to him about his rehabilitation. He said Dotson was in summer school and planned on going to a non-Division I school in the area.

Dotson has been under investigation regarding Dennehy's disappearance, but he has not been charged. Dotson played for Baylor last season but his role steadily decreased by the end of the season. Bliss and Dotson agreed that Dotson should play elsewhere and his scholarship was dropped.

And the last time Bliss talked to Dennehy? Apparently it was around the same time as when he last talked to Dotson. How did he characterize Dennehy's demeanor in early June?

"Patrick's bouncing in and out all the time, and I think his demeanor was normal,'' Bliss said.

Did Dennehy ever come to the coaches and say that he was scared about something?

"He never did that, and again I've heard all the things that have been written and some of the things that have been said and very frankly they concern me because I talked to our staff,'' Bliss said.

"Even during that period we were talking to the players regularly and never once was there anything communicated about any physical threat or anything along that line whatsoever.''

But Dennehy's mother, Valerie Brabazon, told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap early Wednesday that Dennehy had gone to the coaches, at least two of them, and told them that he was afraid of something or someone. The family was also critical of the timeline of when the Baylor coaches called them.

"I felt our son came to them telling them that he was afraid or scared or something. That at least they should have jumped on it right then and did something," Valerie Brabazon told Schaap.

"I'm not aware of anything along that line and a lot of these things have caught me off guard because Patrick is 6-10, 250 pounds and you know he has never ever given us any reason to think that anything bothered him,'' Bliss told Katz.

"I think that from our standpoint on looking back as you look over the thing we again talked in terms of that but never once did we get any sense that there was something that concerned him.''

When did Bliss know that Dennehy was missing?

Bliss said the staff was worried on June 16. They weren't as concerned during the previous weekend since in the summer the players come and go without much notification, but he missed a class on that Monday. Bliss said the staff called his cell phone. They tried his friends in the state and then contacted the family as well as his teammates as well as making repeated trips to his apartment before talking to campus police.

"It was one of those things that at any moment I expected Pat to come walking in the door like he always does and then apologize for being gone and we move on,'' Bliss said.

What surprised him the most when the parents said they thought they should have been contacted earlier?

"Well again I am a parent too, and I understand and the situation doesn't surprise me at all,'' Bliss said. "All I know is that we worked as hard and as attentive as we could to every one of those issues. And I understand how they feel and I would probably feel the same way. We worked as industrious as we could.''

In the affidavit, Dotson and Dennehy are said to have had guns. Dennehy was said to have pointed the gun at Dotson before Dotson then shot Dennehy. If that were true then the players would have violated Bliss' and Baylor's student code of conduct policy forbidding the use of firearms.

Bliss said he wanted to institute a policy on firearms after he had an incident during his time at New Mexico in the early 1990s when former Lobo Vladimir McCrary tried to board a plane to Wyoming with a handgun in his bag that he at the time said he forgot had been in his luggage.

"So I got the Baylor handbook out and we copied the exact student disciplinary policy out of the book,'' Bliss said.

"Then the first day of fall, when the players come back to school we sit right here in this locker room, we have it all printed out for them and just so they understand it we go through it and we read it together. And as you know we have them read it together because we don't want there to be any surprises what so ever.''

Bliss said the first time he was made aware that Dotson and Dennehy had guns was when the police told him on either June 23 or 24.

"So given that policy I would have approached Pat and made him aware of that and taken action," Bliss said. "There is no need on Baylor's campus, and even off the campus, there is no need for a basketball player to have a gun."

But, according to Daniel Okopnyi, who called himself a longtime friend of Dennehy's, the two had guns for protection. Okopnyi told ESPN's Schaap on Wednesday that Dotson felt threatened and that Dennehy had told him that he "had Dottie's back.''

"This is again (goes) back to that area that we had intense conversations,'' Bliss said. "And all during the period where supposedly the alleged threats would have been made we nowhere heard a threat, or any sign of physical violence or anything along that line. Nothing was ever communicated.'' When Schaap asked who was threatening Dotson, Okopnyi said: "As I understand it Harvey and another player who are recruits from the East Coast (were) coming to the Baylor basketball team had, uh, initially started creating threats.

"I had heard (Dennehy) had mentioned to me that they had threatened him and Carlton Dotson. He was saying they had come over to their apartment on occasion and threatened. (Dennehy) wouldn't give me any details. I begged him for details and he said 'I will explain everything to you when I get over there. I don't want to talk over the phone.'"

Okopnyi later told Schaap: "I don't know if it was another recruit. I don't know if it was someone in relation but there was someone else involved and I really don't have any details to that. But I know Harvey was involved in threats directly." Okopnyi mentioned "Harvey," but didn't name Thomas' last name. But he's the only Harvey on the roster. Bliss said Dennehy recruited Thomas to the team and that the three of them had become good friends

"But again I've seen the same thing, it is in the affidavit (the name Harvey), but I also go back to the original statement and emphasize that during our conversations we never heard of any threat, specifically on any player," Bliss told Katz.

"And so consequently, I don't know of anything that would allege that Harvey was involved with the threat.'' Did Thomas have anger issues?

"No, Harvey is again a high-energy guy but again I never saw anything that would ever give you any reason to believe that they did not get along, other than the fact that they are competitive in everything along that line,'' Bliss said.

"But what you have is a situation where as a coach you address certain things and try to make sure there are no apparent problems.''

Baylor players, who are the 2003-04 roster, have been asked not to talk to the media about the case.

Bliss said the investigators did talk to Thomas and several other players. But he said he was relieved that the officers didn't indict any players as suspects.

But initially the Waco police released a statement saying that teammates could be suspects.

"That might be one of the lowest moments you have as a leader," Bliss said. "It's when you go through something like that, what it does it shakes your confidence, because maybe they know something I don't know.

"I am kind of a positive person and somebody that believes that all my guys are fun-loving and everything along that line. All I know is that we have a problem and now there seems to be an implication the way Officer (Steve) Anderson put out that release. And that's why we are tremendously relieved when he recanted that particular release.''

But then a few days later, Dotson's name surfaced in the affidavit.

"The whole thing is unbelievable,'' Bliss said.

"To think that situations occur, maybe they do occur but at Baylor University that is just, I mean it is unexplainable. And so I go through a situation where I am like everybody else. I read what they have there and I don't know what to believe. All I know is that I care about my team.

"I talk to them, I talk to their parents, and we try to keep them aware that we are doing everything we can do from the standpoint of assisting. We are a team and we have to stay together and we'll just get through it.''

Information from ESPN.com senior writer Andy Katz and The Associated Press was used in this report.