Those words stung Joby Wright, who was holding out hope that Knight would overlook Keith Smart’s gold chains and try to sign him. Wright had probably spent more time with Harris since October 15 than he had spent with his wife. When Knight yelled, Wright soothed, cajoled, and pleaded. Harris listened, but often, Wright was convinced, he didn’t hear. Harris, like Alford the year before, honestly believed he was working hard and trying to improve.
But he wasn’t. Instead of using his athletic ability to full advantage, Harris made silly plays. He had a terrible habit of catching the ball near the basket and instead of just jumping over people as he was capable of doing, he would spin and shoot a fallaway jump shot—one that almost inevitably missed. He was still lunging on defense—a major sin—and because he was not an instinctive defensive player he often arrived one step late to help, usually just in time to commit a foul.
What made the situation even tougher for Harris and Jadlow was that they had not yet gained complete acceptance from their teammates. Each of them was different from the others: Harris was quiet, and often came across as aloof. This had been especially true early when the players grew sick of hearing Knight tell Harris day after day what a great athlete he was.
Now, with Todd Meier, who couldn’t jump over the foul line, moved ahead of Harris in the pecking order, some of the players couldn’t help but giggle a little about how short-lived Knight’s love affair with junior college players had been. But at the same time, looking at the now forlorn Harris and Jadlow, they empathized. After all, each of them had been there, too.
The worst thing for the players about playing at 1 P.M. on Saturday was getting up at 8 A.M. to go look at spaghetti an hour later. They were sore and tired, but they were ready to play this game. Illinois had hammered Indiana three straight times, including the infamous “benching” game the previous season. Knight believed that Illinois had as much talent as anyone in the country, but he also believed the Illini could be beaten because they weren’t well coached. That was why three straight losses, each of them decisive, galled him.
The players had extra incentive for this game. The Super Bowl was the next afternoon at 5:15. Most of the players, being from the Midwest, either were or had become avid Chicago Bears fans. They wanted very much to see the game. A loss to Illinois would diminish greatly their chances of doing so.
The coaches knew this. They also wanted to see the game. “If we lose,” Felling asked during pregame, “do you think we can still watch the Super Bowl?”
“I would imagine,” Waltman answered wryly, “that one of our three practices tomorrow would be during the Super Bowl.”
Felling was still learning.
John Batts, a hunting guide from Montana who was just one of Knight’s many friends in town for the game, was keeping Knight company after his pregame steam. There were no coaches around, so Knight asked Batts his favorite question: “What do you think, John, will we ever win another game?”
“Sure you will,” Batts said. “You’re going to win today.”
“I don’t know,” Knight said. “I don’t know if we can handle the brilliance of Lou Henson.”
They handled it. The game was no different from the Ohio State or Purdue games, a brutal, every-possession-is-life-and-death affair. Illinois looked overwhelming early. Center Ken Norman was dominating the inside. Alford was having trouble getting shots against cat-quick Illinois guard Bruce Douglas. And Calloway simply couldn’t move on his knee. He was one for five at halftime and only played five minutes in the second half.
But with Illinois leading 33–22 and the afternoon beginning to look grim, Stew Robinson rode in on his white horse to save the Hoosiers. He forced Douglas into a turnover and then made two foul shots. He hit a fifteen-footer. He made another foul shot and then he stole two straight passes and scored both times. He scored nine points in four minutes and Indiana scored the last twelve points of the half to lead—amazingly—34–33 at intermission.
There was one small incident just before halftime. The final point of the half was scored by Alford on a free throw with two seconds left. He had been fouled with the score tied and went to the line to shoot two free throws. It had become a tradition at Assembly Hall during Alford’s three years to talk him through his foul shots. Alford had a ritual: He stepped to the line, wiped his hands on his socks and then his shorts, and took the ball from the referee. He dribbled three times, then shot. The crowd followed this ritual, chanting, “Socks, shorts, 1-2-3 . . . Swish.” They had done it hundreds of times and Alford almost always responded with a swish.
But this time he missed the first shot. Knight was furious. Not with Alford—with the crowd. As soon as Alford missed, Knight began gesturing across the floor and yelling at the crowd to be quiet. This was not unique. In fact, two nights earlier, Knight had ordered Crabbe to quiet the crowd when they had chanted, “Bullshit,” after a couple of calls went against Indiana. His exact words to Crabbe had been, “You tell those sonsofbitches to cut that shit out!”
After Alford made the second shot and time ran out, Knight stalked across the floor to the Indiana cheerleaders. “I better not hear any more of that goddamn crap in the second half when our players are shooting free throws,” he yelled. “I’m holding you people responsible for that. Jesus Christ, that one point can cost us a ballgame because of that bullshit!”
As Knight turned towards the locker room, he spotted two cheerleaders’ megaphones in his path. He kicked them out of the way. Naturally, the TV cameras picked all this up. Later, Knight would learn that he had clipped one of the cheerleaders on the leg with one of the megaphones. He called the girl and asked her to come to his office. He apologized for the accident. “If I had known that the megaphone had hit you, I would have stopped right then and said something,” Knight said.
Stunned by this outpouring, the girl answered, “Thank you, coach, I appreciate that.”
Knight looked at her again and said, “But do you understand why I did it?”
Sure, she understood. Alford missed a free throw, why not kick a megaphone?
As it turned out, Knight was just getting his leg warmed up. The second half was no different from the first. With twelve minutes left, an Anthony Welch jumper gave Illinois a 54–48 lead. A moment later, Harris missed a lob pass from Morgan. Knight screamed for a foul. No call. Then, Alford missed and appeared to be pushed. Knight turned and slammed his foot into his chair.
He turned around just in time to see Thomas block a Winters shot, leading to a Robinson bucket. But fifteen seconds later, Robinson was called for a touch foul near midcourt. That was more than Knight could bear. He picked up his chair—uh-oh—and slammed it down—whew. There was a TV time-out and Knight called official Randy Drury over. He pleaded his case. Illinois was getting away with murder inside. Drury nodded and walked off. On TV, CBS colorman Billy Packer was saying that Drury should have given Knight a technical. Knight sent Alford over to continue the argument. As Alford was talking, Drury looked at Knight, who demonstrated how he thought Illinois was throwing elbows inside. When Knight swung his elbow, Drury blew his whistle. Technical—Knight’s fifth of the season.
While Tony Wysinger made one of the two shots to make the score 55–50, Knight walked into the hallway, partly to talk to Floyd, telling him that he wanted to see Wortman when the game was over, and partly to calm down. Knight came back in time to see Norman called for walking—a makeup call—and Alford hit a twenty-footer to cut the margin to three.
Except for tossing a cup of water over his shoulder into the stands, Knight was relatively calm the rest of the afternoon. His team was superb. This was Daryl Thomas’s day. His ankle seemed forgotten. Time and again he established position in the low post, caught the ball, and then used his quickness to get inside for a shot. He cut the margin to 62–60 with 4:38 left with just that kind of move.
Then Harris, who had missed several shots inside, tipped in a Robinson miss—the ball hit the rim three times and then bounced through�
��to tie the game. Illinois’s Glynn Blackwell was called for steps and Thomas went inside again. He was fouled and made both shots. It was 64–62, Indiana. Douglas tied it. Alford untied it with 1:40 left. Then, a bad break. Harris made a great play, jumping out to partially block Welch’s jumper. But the loose ball went right to Norman, who was fouled as he made a layup. It was 67–66, Illinois. No problem. Alford found Thomas inside, he was fouled and coolly made both shots to make it 68–67. Welch missed, Robinson rebounded. Indiana held, Alford was fouled. Thirty-one seconds left.
The fans had a new chant for Alford’s free throws: “Shhhhhhhh.” Amazingly, Alford again made only one of two. It was 69–67 and Illinois could tie. But Douglas missed and there was Winston Morgan going over all the Illinois big men for the rebound and getting fouled with seventeen seconds to go. Henson called time to let Morgan think about the one-and-one he had to shoot.
Morgan thought about it. “I thought, this is my time,” he said later. He was right. Swish. Swish. It was over. Bad ankles, bad knees, bad thighs, kicked megaphones, and all, Indiana had won.
The joy in the locker room was unbridled. They had played about as well as they could have. Thomas had finished with thirty points, playing all forty minutes. “Do you know what you’ve done, Daryl?” Knight said gleefully. “You’ve gone from being a pussy to being a tiger. A goddamn tiger!” They cheered Thomas. They cheered Robinson, who had sparked them in the first half and finished with thirteen points, five assists, and four rebounds. They slapped one another silly. The locker room was jammed: among the visitors were Steve Green, Steve Alhfeld, Tom Abernerthy, and a slew of Knight’s cronies from back in Orrville.
Finally, when they were quiet, Knight wanted to make plans for Sunday’s meeting. “How about if we meet in here at 5:30?” There was silence. The Super Bowl started at 5:15. Would someone tell him? After all, they had won the damn game. The next voice belonged to Donald Boop, the Orrville dentist. “Super Bowl starts at 5:15,” he said softly.
Knight whirled and glared at Boop as if Boop was a Russian MiG violating the airspace in his locker room. “You running this team now, Boop?” But he couldn’t hold the glare; his face was breaking into a broad grin. “Okay, boys, since Boop wants to watch the Super Bowl, how about 4:30?”
That was just fine with everybody, and the day now had four heroes: Thomas, Robinson, Morgan, and Boop.
Celebrations don’t last long at Indiana. There isn’t time; as soon as a Purdue is beaten, Illinois is waiting. Beat Illinois, and games at Iowa and Minnesota loom. “You beat as talented a team as you can find anywhere,” Knight said after the Illinois victory. “You could play the NCAA final and not meet a better collection of players. Enjoy that. Take ten or fifteen minutes. Then start thinking about Iowa.”
That was almost exactly how much time the coaches took. The players had a little bit longer, but by the time they arrived for their Sunday afternoon meeting, the giddiness of Saturday had been forgotten. It was a grim, snowy day and the streets were devoid of traffic, everyone staying inside to watch the Super Bowl.
Knight couldn’t have cared less about the Super Bowl. He predicted that the Patriots would win—“short passes, they’ll eat them up with short passes,”—and showed up fifteen minutes late for the 4:30 meeting. This was no upset. Knight often made the players wait. What he didn’t understand was how tough that was on them. No one really wanted to start telling a joke or clowning around because no one knew when the door was going to swing open and when it did what kind of mood the coach who walked through it would be in.
Knight’s mood was far less buoyant than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. He was upset because The Indianapolis Star had run a front-page picture of him slamming the chair. John Ryan had been contacted by the Associated Press: Would there be any action taken against Knight, Ryan was asked, for his behavior on Saturday? No comment, Ryan had responded.
Knight couldn’t understand why his behavior on Saturday was newsworthy. “I haven’t seen anybody write one word or run one picture on Keady throwing his coat here the other night,” he said. “If I had done that it would have been on the front page.”
Undoubtedly. Once again, Knight had to live with being guilty until proved innocent. If Keady had ever thrown a chair, his every act during a game would be monitored by TV, by camera, and by reporters. If Keady was one of the game’s most outspoken and controversial figures, his behavior would be newsworthy at all times. Was that fair? No. Was that life? Yes.
“I can’t think of a business more dishonest in this country than newspapers,” Knight said, once again keeping matters totally in perspective.
Knight only kept the team for thirty minutes, going over Iowa’s personnel. But he told Calloway he wanted him to do some extra shooting because he had obviously been bothered by the knee brace he had worn the day before. “How come you told Tim Garl before the game that the knee didn’t bother you, and then you told Hammel after the game that it was bothering you?” Knight asked Calloway while he was shooting.
“I told them both that it was a little sore,” Calloway said. “I said the same thing to both of them.”
“Ricky,” Knight continued, “is everyone from Withrow High School just a little bit of a pussy?”
Calloway laughed. He had learned quickly to shrug off most Knight insults. Dakich, who had taken more than his fair share in four years as a player, deserved credit for that.
While Calloway shot and everyone else watched the Super Bowl (Bears 44, Patriots 10, no short passes to be found), Alford shot free throws. He had missed one against Ohio State, one against Purdue, and two against Illinois. This constituted a major slump. He shot 300 that evening, making 290.
The coaches wanted to go watch the Super Bowl, too. But the boss wanted to sit around and chat, talk about how pleased he was with the way the team was playing, and discuss the Minnesota situation. The day before, Minnesota coach Jim Dutcher had resigned in the wake of three arrests of Minnesota players in Madison that Friday. All three players had been charged with sexual assault. Minnesota had forfeited that day’s game to Northwestern and was considering canceling the rest of its schedule. Indiana was scheduled to play there the following Saturday.
“Boy, it’d be great if we could just go to Iowa, play, and come home and have a week off,” Knight said. “But it can’t happen. They have to play. You just can’t say that a school of 40,000 can’t field a basketball team because it loses three scholarship players. You have to play. We’ll play.”
Knight was correct. The next morning Minnesota announced that it would play with the five scholarship players it had left on the team and several walk-ons from the football team.
Knight was more upset that morning by something else in the paper. Having gotten a no comment from John Ryan, the AP had called Ralph Floyd for a comment on Knight’s Saturday behavior. Floyd had been asked whether the university was contemplating any action against Knight. “No,” Floyd had answered, “not at this time.”
The last four words had been like waving a red flag in the face of a bull. Knight charged to Floyd’s office demanding to know what the hell Floyd had been talking about. Nothing. Floyd had been talking in nonspeak and had nonspoken four words that meant nothing. Indiana wasn’t about to discipline Knight, but Knight was angry with Floyd for not handling the situation better.
“I really get screwed,” Knight said that day, “because I don’t kiss the press’s ass. People, even people that know me like Ralph, just can’t understand until they’ve been through it what it feels like to have gnomes like that go after you. The vast majority of people read that and think, ‘Oh, so Knight’s acting like an asshole again.’
“I know I’m not an asshole. I know how I am with people and how I treat people day to day, and then I have to hear about people coming up to my kid and saying, ‘Well, I see your dad had another tantrum.’”
Like so many public figures, Knight hurt most when his public persona invaded his private life. That, m
ore than any gnomes or anything Ralph Floyd said or didn’t say, bothered him.
For the most part, though, this was as laid-back a week as Knight had spent all season. His team had won five in a row. It was playing good, hard-nosed basketball. It was winning close games again. The crisis of the first week of Big Ten play had been weathered. Knight’s mood was so good that he began checking on reports he had been hearing about a player named Damon Bailey.
Damon Bailey was an eighth grader. He would enroll in college in the fall of 1990, the same fall that Knight would turn fifty. Knight had heard he was a gifted young guard, a player already turning heads even at the age of fourteen. With his team playing well and coaching fun again, Knight was interested in Damon Bailey. Maybe, he told Hammel, they should drive down to Shawswicke (about thirty miles south of Bloomington) and look at this kid. Maybe next week.
This week was a travel week. The toughest trip Indiana makes all winter is the one to Iowa and Minnesota. The flights are the longest, often the bumpiest, and the weather is almost always brutally cold. When Knight had considered the CBS job in 1981 he had told a friend that one reason he was thinking about it was that “I’m not sure how many more times I want to go back to Iowa City, Iowa, in January.”
The temperature had been below zero for a full week just prior to Indiana’s arriving in Iowa City, but it shot all the way up into the teens on game day. Knight had worked the team lightly all week. He had done little on Monday. “I’m exhausted,” he said. “If I feel lousy, the players must feel worse.” The workouts Tuesday and Wednesday had also been brief. Beating Iowa was simple: beat their press and you beat the Hawkeyes. Don’t beat it and they will beat you.
Knight knew this would be a wound-up crowd. On local TV, the game promo screamed, “Come see the Hawkeyes face the team that everyone loves to hate, Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers.” And the local paper had a long story on Knight’s bench behavior. It began this way: “Put away your chairs and your children, Bobby Knight is coming to town.” Lou Henson was quoted in the story as saying, “He gets away with more on the bench than anyone.” Bob Wortman was quoted as saying, “We can’t allow behavior like that to continue.”
A Season on the Brink Page 26