A Season on the Brink

by John Feinstein

  Intellectually, Knight knows he is a good coach and that one loss, or even one losing season, won’t change that. And he knows that people will not stop respecting his coaching ability. But emotionally, he seems to believe that everyone else will see the score with Indiana on the short end and laugh and point and think, “Bob Knight failed.” In truth, few people give any basketball game or any basketball coach even that much thought. But Knight doesn’t see that. Defeat somehow takes a giant chip out of his self-esteem. It makes him miserable, and in turn all those around him miserable.

  The players were in at 11 A.M. to look at the Michigan tape. That lasted about thirty minutes. Everyone was guilty. Harris was more guilty. Alford was most guilty of all. Knight finally stalked out of the room after asking Alford, “Will you ever, just once, take a charge?” He was back ten seconds later. “You guys sit here for a while and if you still want to have a team, then you come and tell us.”

  These were the days the players hated most. These were the times that had caused earlier generations to refer to Assembly Hall as “Monroe County Jail.” That was what it felt like. The locker room was a cell and the building was a prison. There was no escape. They sat looking at each other. What was there to say? It had all been said. But they had to play the coach’s game. So Alford, Morgan, and Robinson walked to the coaches’ locker room to tell Knight that, yes, they still wanted to have a team. One wonders what would happen someday if the captains walked in and told Knight, “You’re right, coach, it’s hopeless, let’s cancel the season.”

  Knight looked at the three players. It was Alford he was most angry with. He had harped on the fist-shaking and had decided after watching the tape that Alford wasn’t guarding anybody again. So when the players reported that they wanted to play, Knight said simply, “Yeah, but Steve doesn’t guard anybody.”

  Robinson came to the rescue. “That may be so, Coach,” he said. “But the rest of us didn’t do much guarding, either.” That saved Alford—at least for the moment. Knight decided he would grant the request to continue the season.

  In fact, Indiana had not played a bad game. It had shot 66 percent, including a remarkable nineteen of twenty-five in the second half. Michigan had just been a little bit better. Knight knew this, and to some extent was already blaming the officials for the loss. But he couldn’t let it go. Every mistake seemed to dance in his mind’s eye. Officials or no officials, good shooting or no good shooting, they had lost. At home. To a coach he didn’t like.

  Practice that evening was the longest of the season—two and one-half hours. Michigan State would be in Sunday. There could be no question about winning that game. Before the players even went on the floor, Knight had written on the board, “99–12; 3–7.” The first number was Indiana’s record at home from 1971 to 1984 in Big Ten play. The second was the last two seasons, the Michigan game tacked on. “Doesn’t that make you people feel sick?” he said.

  After they worked, Waltman went through the Michigan State personnel. All the assistant coaches knew the players were tired and discouraged, because they were tired and discouraged. Waltman is ordinarily the most low-key member of the coaching staff. He is quiet most of the time, but a man blessed with a keen wit and an intensity that he usually keeps inside. Normally, his scouting reports are straightforward, to the point. But he wanted the players to be ready Sunday. And the key to beating Michigan State was stopping Scott Skiles.

  Skiles was the classic dead-end kid, a stocky little guard, described by his coach Jud Heathcote as “a fat little white kid.” Three times in little more than a year he had been arrested: once for cocaine possession, twice for driving under the influence. Knight, who was friendly with Heathcote, was shocked that Heathcote let him remain on the team. Because Skiles had a reputation for getting into trouble in high school, Knight hadn’t recruited him even though he was from Indiana. Skiles had responded by helping Michigan State beat Indiana four times in six tries, including two of three at Indiana. Waltman wanted to be sure that amidst all the putdowns of Skiles the players remembered how good a player he was.

  “We’ve made a big thing here the last few years about what an asshole he is,” Waltman said. “He probably is, but if you don’t respect him as a person, you better respect him as a player. Don’t just write him off as that jerk from Plymouth because he’s come in here a couple times and stuck it up our ass. The way to get him is to respect him as a player first and then stick it up his ass.”

  They went out for a walk-through after that. Everyone was dragging by the time they left the floor at eight o’clock. “Back at eleven,” Knight told them.

  They were back at eleven in the morning, on the floor at 11:05, and back in the locker room at 11:13. It took Knight that long to blow up at Harris for going after a rebound with one hand. “Coach,” Harris said, “I couldn’t get it with two hands, all I could do was tip it.”

  “Oh really, Andre,” Knight answered. “Well, that’s all I want to see of that crap this morning.” Into the locker room they went. The assistants stayed on the floor, under orders, while Knight went inside. Five minutes later, everyone was back again.

  Knight cooled off after that. He went back to teaching and encouraging. He seemed to have caught himself, at least for a moment, just when things seemed about to spin out of control. It didn’t last. Alford was caught standing on defense. “Put on a white shirt, Steve, you be Skiles. Maybe you can help us that way.” That started the Steve Alford show again. It was still going on when Calloway came down hard on his left ankle and didn’t get up. Garl helped him off. It was a sprain. Shortly before one, Knight sent them home. “Be back here at five, taped and ready to go,” he said. Then he went hunting.

  A second practice the day before a game, especially an afternoon game, was almost unheard of. The players had practiced twice Monday, twice Tuesday, and once Wednesday; they had played Michigan on Thursday, looked at tape for two hours and practiced and walked through for almost three on Friday, and practiced for almost two on Saturday.

  It was probably too much. The best thing would have been a brief walk-through in the evening and a good night’s sleep, but Knight was still hurting because of the Michigan loss. The coaches knew this, but knew it was futile to try to change his thinking. “He just can’t let go, can he?” Felling said to the others.

  The hunting seemed to help Knight’s mood. “We aren’t going to practice that long,” he told the players, as if to tell them things were about to get better. “Ricky, how’s your ankle? Better? Good. If you weren’t so damn clumsy you wouldn’t get hurt.”

  Garl had already told him that Calloway shouldn’t practice that night, but could play in the game. Knight was relieved.

  The practice was clumsy. Pelkowski went down early, holding his ankle. Two sprains in one day. Thomas caught an elbow in the jaw and came out briefly. They had been going at it for about forty minutes when Knight walked over to Kohn Smith. “Think we’ve done enough?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” said Smith, wanting to get everyone home as soon as possible.

  “Couple more plays,” said Knight.

  Two plays later, Thomas went up for a rebound. No one touched him, but the minute he hit the ground he let out a shriek of pain. Somehow, his foot had twisted under him as he landed. He was in agony, howling in pain as he writhed on the floor. Knight stood rooted to the spot where he stood, his face pale. He turned his back for a moment as if he thought when he turned back he would see Thomas standing again. He didn’t. “Go to the other end,” he told the other players who stood staring at Thomas. “Shoot some free throws.”

  Thomas was still rolling on the floor, screaming, “Oh no, oh no.” He was convinced he had broken his ankle. When Garl tried to take his sneaker off, Thomas panicked, cried, “No, no, don’t take it off.” Knight walked over to Thomas and put his hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Daryl,” he said and stood there until Garl called for Wright and Smith to help Thomas into the training room.

  “Let�
�s go inside,” he said to the others.

  The mood was now funereal. The anger had gone out of Knight. Already, he was mentally kicking himself for the second practice, for staying on the floor too long. “Okay,” he said calmly, “we don’t know if Daryl can play or not. But you really practiced well tonight.”

  Thomas was going to the hospital for X-rays. Clearly, he would not play the next day. “I’ll bet it’s broken,” said Joe Hillman, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

  Knight had committed to flying to Muncie that night to see a high school game. He told the assistants to wait until Thomas came back from the hospital. “Make sure he’s okay,” Knight said, knowing Thomas would be in a cast of some kind and scared. He went into the snowy night looking about 100 years old.

  The ankle was badly sprained. Prognosis: ten days to two weeks, minimum. That meant Thomas would miss at least three games: Michigan State, Northwestern, and Wisconsin. The goal, immediately, was to get him back playing in eleven days against Ohio State.

  Jadlow would start in his place at center. Suddenly, a game that had looked tough but eminently winnable had become a struggle. All of this wounded Knight. He knew, deep down, that he had made a mistake by refusing to let go of the Michigan loss. Injuries are freaks, nothing more, but the more time you practice, the more chance there is for those freaks to occur. That Thomas’s injury was the third sprained ankle of the day was testimony to how flukish such things are. But that it happened at a moment when the players should either have been listening to Knight talk or eating dinner was something Knight had to deal with.

  Worst of all, the way the injury happened reminded everyone of last year. Team loses, coach overreacts, team goes further downhill. Knight seemed to be fighting a psychological war with himself: one part of his brain was telling him to take it easy, to be patient, to understand that the players were giving him everything they had. The other part was running amok, screaming at the indignity of defeat, pointing out every error on the tape and saying, “Everyone around me is failing but I’m not.” One minute Knight was saying the team had played horribly against Michigan, the next he was saying the officials had stolen the game. One minute he was saying Michigan was as good as any team in the country, the next he was saying they weren’t a very good team at all.

  Knight was still dueling with himself Sunday morning when the players came in for walk-through. He began softly. “We have to play without Daryl today, boys, and that’s not going to be easy because Daryl has really worked hard to make himself a much better player this year. But you other guys: Jadlow, Todd Meier, Whopper [Courtney Witte’s nickname among the players was Whopper, and Knight had picked it up and started using it] are perfectly capable of stepping in and doing what Daryl has been doing.

  “As a basketball team, we face different challenges. Thursday, our challenge was to beat a talented team and we failed. We’re 0–1 with challenges this year.” He hardened for a moment. “In fact, it’s been so goddamn long since we met a challenge I can’t remember the last one.”

  Soft again: “During the American Revolution Thomas Payne once said, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’ Well, maybe. Maybe today we’re going to be tried—challenged—twice. First, there is the challenge of bouncing back from a poor performance. We haven’t met that challenge around here in a long time.

  “Then there is the challenge of playing without Daryl in a game we simply have to have. I can’t tell you how much we need to win this game. We need to respond to that challenge. Now, we can do that, go out and play like hell, or we can just use it as another excuse and go out and get our ass beat again.”

  He hardened again. “Challenges, boys. We have been absolutely destroyed by every challenge, every obstacle we’ve faced in the last two years. You have an excuse to lose today. If that’s what you want, you have an excuse.”

  It was not so much an excuse as a fact: Indiana was not the same without Thomas. Without Thomas, Michigan State’s too-small center, 6-6 Carlton Valentine, was suddenly an effective player. None of Thomas’s subs had his quickness, and that was what Valentine had: quickness. All day long, he would get angles inside on Jadlow, Meier, and Eyl. For one day, he was an All-American, scoring twenty-one points—eighteen above his average. It never could have happened with Thomas playing.

  The sight of Thomas on crutches seemed to send the Indiana crowd—which was 2,000 shy of a sellout after Thursday’s disappointment—into a state of depression. In the locker room, before Knight came in for his final talk, Stew Robinson shook his head and muttered, “This whole place is like a morgue.”

  It only got worse. The first half was tight, Morgan doing a good job on Skiles by denying him the basketball, but Valentine and Larry Polec were hurting Indiana inside. Harris was struggling and Jadlow just wasn’t quick enough to compete with the Spartans on the inside. A couple of silly plays near the end of the half and Michigan State led at intermission, 39–37.

  The angry side of Knight was in control at halftime. Morgan, Calloway, and Alford had each made a foolish play that stuck in his mind. Morgan had hustled after a loose ball and thrown it back inbounds blind to a waiting Polec for an easy layup. “A goddamn sixth grader would know better than to make that play,” Knight told Morgan. “Right off the top of my head, I can think of those three plays that cost us six points. It’s like starting the game behind 6–0.

  “When are you people going to start giving the effort necessary against these Big Ten teams? When? How long does this go on?”

  He stalked into the hall, his shoulders sagging to his knees. “I can’t take this anymore,” he told the assistants. “I just can’t take it. It makes me sick. You guys think of something.”

  It took Knight about three minutes to gather himself. They would change the lineup, play Eyl for Harris. Should they try Jadlow again? Yes, Knight said, because he had the best chance to score. “Boys,” Knight told the players before they went back out, “now we’re going to find out what kind of a team we’ve got here.”

  Those words seemed to hang in the air during the first five minutes of the second half. It was sheer disaster. Jadlow threw a stupid pass on the first possession and got yanked. Morgan threw a bad pass and Knight called time, yanked him, and slammed his clipboard in disgust. Calloway missed a short jumper. Skiles rebounded and went the length of the floor to make it 48–39. Eyl lost a rebound and he was pulled for Harris. Eight seconds later, Harris lost his man inside, fouled him, and found himself right back on the bench as Witte went in for him. It was standing room only in the doghouse, the crowd was booing, and Michigan State led 57–42.

  Delray Brooks, who had not played one minute against Michigan, got a chance. He got screened for a Skiles bucket. Knight’s voice could be heard all over Assembly Hall: “Delray, you have absolutely no idea what is going on out there.”

  It looked as if no one had any idea what was going on. But Indiana didn’t quit. Alford made a steal and fed Robinson for a basket. He hit a jumper and then Calloway hit one. The lead was down to nine. The crowd came back into the game. Michigan State was a little rattled. Morgan stole the ball from Skiles. Valentine missed a layup. Alford hit two foul shots to make it 61–54.

  They kept chipping away. A Robinson layup made it 66–64 with 4:32 left. Indiana had outscored Michigan State 20–7. The game turned. But Skiles stuck his nose back in, hit a tough baseline jumper, and Valentine rebounded a Polec miss. It was 70–65. Alford bombed to cut it to three. Valentine walked. Alford faked a jump shot, spun into the lane, and hit a soft bank shot from ten feet as he was being fouled. The free throw tied the game at seventy. There was 1:42 left. Indiana had come all the way back. Challenges. Obstacles. Times that try men’s souls. They were right there.

  Polec tried a jump shot. It was no good. Valentine and Calloway went up for the rebound. Eric Harmon, one of the few Big Ten officials Knight truly liked, blew his whistle. Foul, Calloway. The contact had been minimal, but it had looked like Calloway had committed the foul.
Once again, the tape would convince the coaches they had been jobbed. But at that moment everyone in the building, including Knight, thought Calloway had fouled.

  Valentine calmly made both free throws with 1:10 left. This time, Alford couldn’t get open. Robinson shot with the forty-five-second clock running out. Short. Valentine rebounded and fed Polec. He was fouled and made both shots. 74–70. Alford had one last jumper left to make it 74–72. They immediately fouled Darryl Johnson, who had played horribly (one of eight). Johnson made the first to get the lead to three. That was enough. Alford missed, Polec rebounded, and it was over, 77–74, Michigan State.

  Déjà vu. They were reliving the nightmare. They were 0–2 in the Big Ten, both losses at home. “Don’t even hang your heads,” Knight said angrily. “Don’t bother, because you don’t care. Don’t even try to tell me you care. Every time you make a mistake you just nod your head. I told you at the half about those six points that we gave them. Ricky, you foul on the rebound with the score tied. Jesus. Harris and Jadlow, I’ve never had more disappointing people here in my life. You two haven’t contributed two ounces to what we’re trying to do. You don’t improve or change from one day to the next.

  “Boys, I want to tell you how long a season you’re in for if you don’t compete any harder than that.” He paused. His voice was almost choked now. “I never thought I would see the day when Indiana basketball was in the state it’s in right now.”