RiP Coach.

Over the years, my now-elderly parents and I have enjoyed watching on TV lots of Vanderbilt and Memphis basketball games. And at "No. 3" is probably Indiana (my brother's alma mater), for which our family has cheered since about 1987. We still enjoy watching the Hoosiers.

I'll always recall the day (at some point in the early 1990s) a co-worker from Indiana told me Knight visited her ailing father (a huge Hoosier fan) in the hospital and gave him an autographed basketball. She said it had a major impact on her father regaining his health.

Bob Knight was an elite coach who could strategize and in-game manage personnel with the all-time best. Yes, The General had his character flaws. But he also offered a very positive side, doing lots of charitable acts.

A legend has left us.

RIP, coach.

(11-01-2023 09:02 PM)DuncanMcShane Wrote:  I actually knew him pretty well. I worked for several years in the IU Athletic department in the ‘80’s. He might have been the most complicated person I have met. He was capable of great acts of generosity as well as forms of cruelty. Often, the same person was on the receiving end for both. I was fortunate in that he seemed to like me and he treated me well. If he didn’t like you….life in that athletic department was going to be rough. One of the things that I found interesting was his passion for history. He was incredibly well read. We would suggest history books for each other to read. Often, I would find out that he actually had read some of the books that I had suggested. I always felt sorry for his assistants. I think those were very tough jobs. One of them, who eventually reached a decent level of head coaching success told me once that working as an IU assistant nearly took away his love for basketball. He was a brilliant coach. I often wonder if he could have had even more success if he could have controlled the extremes. May he rest in peace. Prayers for Pat and Tim.

Great post. Thank you.

In the 80's when I was a student at Notre Dame, I got to know Knight's contemporary, friend and competitor Digger Phelps (pretty well, considering that I wasn't one of his players). A lot of the same things you said about Knight apply to Digger as well, although he clearly never had the same hold over ND's athletic department that Knight had over Indiana's. RIP to a legend.

What is the consensus of his Texas Tech run ? At the end of the day it has to be considering a disappointment. We can theorize why he didnt have the same success there that he had at Indiana. He was too old and the game passed him by. Texas Tech is a football school and his poor reputation didnt help him land great recruits. Overall his run there was a success but he was just a good coach there based on his record and not a great one.

(11-02-2023 10:22 AM)darkdragon99 Wrote:  What is the consensus of his Texas Tech run ? At the end of the day it has to be considering a disappointment. We can theorize why he didnt have the same success there that he had at Indiana. He was too old and the game passed him by. Texas Tech is a football school and his poor reputation didnt help him land great recruits. Overall his run there was a success but he was just a good coach there based on his record and not a great one.

Four NCAA Tournaments and one NIT at Texas Tech. IIRC he had no controversy there.

(11-01-2023 09:02 PM)DuncanMcShane Wrote:  I actually knew him pretty well. I worked for several years in the IU Athletic department in the ‘80’s. He might have been the most complicated person I have met. He was capable of great acts of generosity as well as forms of cruelty. Often, the same person was on the receiving end for both. I was fortunate in that he seemed to like me and he treated me well. If he didn’t like you….life in that athletic department was going to be rough. One of the things that I found interesting was his passion for history. He was incredibly well read. We would suggest history books for each other to read. Often, I would find out that he actually had read some of the books that I had suggested. I always felt sorry for his assistants. I think those were very tough jobs. One of them, who eventually reached a decent level of head coaching success told me once that working as an IU assistant nearly took away his love for basketball. He was a brilliant coach. I often wonder if he could have had even more success if he could have controlled the extremes. May he rest in peace. Prayers for Pat and Tim.

Thank you for sharing these insights.

He was so gifted. Like Ohio State's Woody Hayes hitting the Clemson football player at the bowl game, something switched during Knight's later years.

(11-02-2023 10:32 AM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  

(11-02-2023 10:22 AM)darkdragon99 Wrote:  What is the consensus of his Texas Tech run ? At the end of the day it has to be considering a disappointment. We can theorize why he didnt have the same success there that he had at Indiana. He was too old and the game passed him by. Texas Tech is a football school and his poor reputation didnt help him land great recruits. Overall his run there was a success but he was just a good coach there based on his record and not a great one.

Four NCAA Tournaments and one NIT at Texas Tech. IIRC he had no controversy there.

Right. In the 75 years prior to Knight, Tech had 6 20 win seasons, 10 NCAAs and 2 NITs. In 6 years with Bobby Knight they had 5 20 win seasons and the 4 NCAAs and 1 NIT.

IMO, Knight was probably the best coach. He won more with less IMO than anyone else.

I mean, look at the 1984 tournament win over North Carolina. He beat a loaded Dean Smith team with practically nothing. He beat Michael Jordan Sam Perkins and Kenny Smith with Steve Alford and Oo-vay Blob.

Even his 1976 undefeated team, the stars on that team - Buckner, May and Benson - turned out to be average, mediocre NBA players, I don't think any of them ever made an all-star team. They were All-Americans under Knight, but nothing after.

Whatever one thinks about his behavioral eruptions, Knight was a basketball savant.

Growing up in Indiana in the 80s, Bobby Knight was a god, I stopped rooting for the Hoosiers when they fired him.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basket...ied-age-83

Nice article from Jay Bilas.

(11-02-2023 10:22 AM)darkdragon99 Wrote:  What is the consensus of his Texas Tech run ? At the end of the day it has to be considering a disappointment. We can theorize why he didnt have the same success there that he had at Indiana. He was too old and the game passed him by. Texas Tech is a football school and his poor reputation didnt help him land great recruits. Overall his run there was a success but he was just a good coach there based on his record and not a great one.

It wasn't so much that the "game" had passed Knight by. Rather, Knight likely struggled to adjust to a society that began giving people in general (and particularly young people) more freedom with their appearances and behaviors. Knight was very "old school/military." He wanted all his players to look, act and play "as one." For example, The General did not allow his players to wear facial hair (which is absurd when you think about it). Similarly, Knight did not allow the last names of his players to be included on the backs of the Indiana jerseys (which looks nice for fashion reasons but, again, is ridiculous related to the need for "team cohesiveness").

With each passing year, and as society changed, the pool of prospective players (first at Indiana and later at Texas Tech) Knight could recruit and sign shrank and shrank. And Knight was simply too proud (some would say "too stubborn") to change his ways in order to get top-notch talent to win another national title.

On the one hand, I admired Knight for his conviction and consistency — and for seemingly never cheating. On the other, I found it baffling that a man with such early career success refused to adapt so as to continue that success. Of course, if The General were still with us, he would contend that he found success not in winning but in doing things the, in his mind, the right way.

R.I.P.

Apparently his belief in following rules didn’t apply when he punched a cop.

(11-02-2023 11:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  IMO, Knight was probably the best coach. He won more with less IMO than anyone else.

I mean, look at the 1984 tournament win over North Carolina. He beat a loaded Dean Smith team with practically nothing. He beat Michael Jordan Sam Perkins and Kenny Smith with Steve Alford and Oo-vay Blob.

Even his 1976 undefeated team, the stars on that team - Buckner, May and Benson - turned out to be average, mediocre NBA players, I don't think any of them ever made an all-star team. They were All-Americans under Knight, but nothing after.

Whatever one thinks about his behavioral eruptions, Knight was a basketball savant.

He was a great coach and had a great career. Knight played on the Ohio State 1960 national championship team with Jerry Lucas and John Havilcek. The 1976 team was a great team, with six players off that team making it to the NBA. Four of the six were first round picks. No one off that team made an NBA All-Star team, which was unusual. He definitely got the most out of the talent he had.

As far as greatest coach and basketball savant, that is such a subjective thing. There are at least a dozen coaches that could easily be put in that category (Wooden, Knight, Crum, Dean Smith, Rupp, Coach K, Jay Wright, etc.). I personally think Larry Brown is the best basketball coach I have ever seen, but he is a bit of a vagabond.