A Season on the Brink

by John Feinstein

  Knight wanted Hayes to talk to the team. Hayes told them that even though he had been pulling for Ohio State, he was proud of the way Indiana had played. “If you boys listen to what your coaches tell you, you’ll do just fine,” he said. “Always remember to listen. It’s not as easy to do as it sounds.”

  One by one the players came by to shake his hand while Knight stood by the wheelchair with his arm around Hayes. “Bobby, this is so nice of you,” he said.

  “Nice of me?” Knight roared. “Are you kidding? This is as big a thrill as these kids will ever have, getting to meet you, coach. This is a really big thing for them. They all know who you are and what you accomplished.”

  If truth be told, the players would have preferred to have stayed in the showers. But Knight’s words left Hayes aglow. He beckoned Knight toward him. Very softly he said, “They’re good boys, you know, Bobby. You never really understand how much you love them until you aren’t around them anymore. Remember that, Bobby. Enjoy them now.”

  Knight nodded. “I will, coach. I promise.”

  Ohio State had been conquered. The present looked bright on Sunday. But on Monday it was time to go glimpse the future. Knight had talked about Damon Bailey so much since he and Hammel had gone to see him play that it had become a running joke among the players and coaches. Whenever someone made an extraordinary play, the oft-made comment was, “That’s good. Almost as good as Damon.” Larry Bird was a great player. How great? “Almost as great as Damon.”

  The night before the Ohio State game, Knight had told Fred Taylor all about Damon Bailey. Taylor was skeptical. He began listing other phenoms that Knight had been head over heels in love with. No, Knight insisted, this was different.

  It was time to see this paragon. Monday was the night. An expedition was arranged. Knight would play chauffeur for three of his professor friends. A second car would carry Felling and Waltman. Knight led the way, speeding down the back roads of southern Indiana towards Shawswicke. When a third car suddenly appeared, cutting between Knight and his followers, Waltman drew back in mock terror. “Oh my God,” he cried. “It must be the Purdue staff. They’re trying to beat us to Damon.”

  In the back seat, Felling was having a great time. “Yeah, I can see it now,” he said. “Tomorrow’s paper will have a headline: ‘Bailey Signs With Indiana; Will Choose High School Later.’”

  It was that way all the way to Shawswicke. When Knight started turning down tiny back roads, Felling began going on in lyrical tones: “This is what basketball is all about. A boy, a dream, a hoop. The back roads of southern Indiana on a cold winter’s night. Coaches flocking from all over to see this young wonder. The gym appears in the gloaming. Hearts skip a beat. Could it be, yes it is. The Home of Damon.”

  The Home of Damon was a rickety, steamy old gym that was packed full with about 1,500 people. “Welcome to the home of the Farmers,” said the sign. The Farmers had not lost in two years and were pounding their opponent, Oolitic, 16–0 after the first quarter. Bailey was about six inches taller (at 6-1) than anyone Oolitic had. He dominated. He made swooping moves to the basket. He went the length of the court. He put the ball behind his back. He also missed several jump shots and looked almost human at times. He was very, very good. A potential star. But still just a fourteen-year-old kid. The coaches and the professors sat high in the bleachers watching. Knight stood by the door. At halftime, he was like royalty at a party. Everyone lined up to shake his hand, say hello, and take his picture. They all knew why the legend was here. He was here to see Damon.

  In the stands, Waltman turned to Felling. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Felling answered, “that the mentor has slipped a cog.”

  Bailey was very mature. And a very nice kid. But there was no way he could even think of competing with any of Indiana’s guards. No eighth grader could. Did he have great potential? Certainly. But to put any label on him at fourteen was premature at best, ludicrous at worst. Felling went so far as to say he had seen better eighth graders. “Maybe he’ll be the greatest player ever,” Felling said. “But who can tell now?”

  They left before the game was over—Shawswicke was leading by forty and Damon had been taken out with thirty-four points—and headed for the cars. “What did you think?” Knight asked.

  Waltman, ever the diplomat, shook his head and said, “He’s pretty good. Very good.”

  “What about you, Felling?”

  “Well, coach, he’s good. But I thought Jay Shidler was better in eighth grade to tell you the truth and . . .”

  Knight waved Felling off and got into his car. It took forty minutes to get back to Bloomington. As Knight got out of the car, he looked at Felling and said, “You know, Felling, I just knew, I knew you’d come up with an eighth grader who was better.”

  Felling was a brave man. “You know, Marty Simmons was pretty good in eighth grade too.”

  Knight was losing a fight with his mouth, which was curling into a grin. He had trouble staying angry with Felling. His mood was too good to be ruined anyway. Only four more seasons and then Damon could play for Indiana. And, in fact, the coaches were delighted to see Knight this eager and interested in the future.

  It is a crisp October day in 1990. Damon Bailey, Indiana freshman, fails to help on defense. Knight stops practice. “You know, Bailey, when we had Alford here he was so much tougher than you it wasn’t even funny. Why, I never had to talk to him about playing defense even once in four years!”

  That was a ways off. For now, Damon Bailey’s spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame was secure.

  Even if Indiana had had Damon Bailey in uniform, this would have been the toughest week of the season. Playing at Illinois and Purdue was never easy, and playing both three weeks after stealing games from them in the final minutes in Bloomington would make the task even more arduous.

  But this was exactly the kind of week Knight cherished. His team was already overachieving, with a 9–3 Big Ten record. It had won the games it was supposed to win and a couple it probably wasn’t supposed to win. Now, facing games as an underdog, Knight was right where he wanted to be. A victory in either game this week would be cause for celebration. Even two losses, while disappointing, would not be devastating. Knight was in a kidding, give-everyone-a-hard-time mood all week.

  On Tuesday, when he walked into the locker room before practice, Felling was already there, clowning with some of the players. “You got ’em ready for Illinois, Felling?” Knight asked.

  “I thought I’d leave that to the main man,” Felling answered.

  “Yeah, well Garl [standing nearby] thinks you’re chickenshit for not doing it yourself.”

  “I’ll deal with Garl later.”

  By now the players were making ooh sounds as if they expected to see Felling and Garl rolling on the carpet at any second. It was easily the loosest the locker room had been all season.

  Harris, finally able to peek outside the doghouse after playing well Sunday, was taking a beating because of his Grace Jones haircut. Alford was getting it because he had been quoted in a Columbus paper as saying he wanted someday to have a perfect shooting game. The white kids were on the black kids for spending so much time in the shower every day. The black kids were questioning the bathing habits of the white kids.

  Even mistakes in practice, while cause for concern, didn’t bring about histrionics. When Kreigh Smith, who had only been back practicing briefly following his knee surgery, got two straight baskets, Knight asked, “Is Kreigh Smith paying you guys?” When Calloway missed an open man, instead of yelling, Knight asked him what he had done wrong. Calloway told him. “See, Ricky, in November you wouldn’t have known what you did wrong. Now you do. That’s progress.”

  Knight was also getting a good deal done off the court. With coaching vacancies opening around the country, he was into his annual game of musical coaches. Often, coaches call him asking for help in getting a job because they know that to many athletic directors Knight’s word is go
lden. Sometimes, Knight makes recommendations without being asked.

  Paul Giel, the athletic director at Minnesota, called that week to ask about Bob Donewald, the Illinois State coach. Donewald, a former Knight assistant, was happy at Illinois State, and Knight didn’t think he would take the job. But, he told Giel, Tom Miller, the Cornell coach, would be interested and a good coach. Miller, another former Knight player and assistant coach, had been at Cornell five years. Knight thought it was time for him to move up the ladder. He likened Miller’s situation to the one Mike Krzyzewski had been in when he went from Army to Duke.

  “He’s not that well known, Paul, but he’s ready. He’s a very smart young coach who will be everything you want on and off the floor.” Invoking Krzyzewski’s name was good strategy, since Duke was about to be ranked first in the country. Giel was intrigued and asked Knight if he would make a preliminary call to Miller. Knight was delighted.

  Knight was extremely proud of his coaching protégés. He followed their fortunes closely and often called after big wins or big losses. Usually, after a big win, he would begin the conversation by saying something unpleasant. When Tennessee upset Illinois early in the season, Knight had called Don DeVoe, one of his early Army assistants, and demanded to know, “Why the hell did you shake hands with that sonofabitch Lou Henson?”

  The Knight “family”—his former assistants and his coaching mentors like Newell, Taylor, and Iba—were renowned throughout the college basketball world. When SMU coach Dave Bliss was under NCAA investigation for alleged recruiting violations, someone asked Mike Krzyzewski if Bliss was still in the family. “He’s living in the suburbs,” Krzyzewski answered. Knight would never turn on a family member publicly, but he did get angry sometimes. When Donewald had interviewed for the Purdue job several years earlier and neglected to tell Knight about the interview, Knight had been upset, and hurt. To him, Donewald’s not calling him was an act of disloyalty. That was the last thing you wanted to be considered as a member of the Knight family: disloyal.

  The weather in Champaign when the team arrived on Wednesday was even worse than it had been in Bloomington. A dense blanket of fog hung over the town, so thick that the tops of buildings were invisible in a city where most buildings are only a couple of stories high.

  Knight’s theme for this game was simple: first ten minutes. “They’ll come out all wound up and excited and the crowd will be into it, really fired up,” he told the players. “We just need to get through those first ten minutes, get things settled down, and then go about winning the ballgame. We do that, we’ll have a real chance. At Iowa, we let it get away the first five minutes. We can’t do that here and win.”

  Knight repeated that speech on Thursday morning after they were through shooting in Illinois’s Assembly Hall. Knight had two projects that morning: The first was to get Sam Carmichael, Knight’s golf pro, to work with Steve Eyl on his shooting. Eyl was easily the poorest shooter on the team. He had been an outstanding option quarterback in high school and was an excellent natural athlete, a rare white player who could run and jump, but he had absolutely no confidence in his shot.

  Carmichael had played on the pro golf tour for a while before buying the Martinsville Country Club, which was about twenty miles north of Bloomington. He and Knight played often during the summer, and Carmichael coached the Indiana women’s golf team. Knight wanted him to talk to Eyl about the importance of swinging the same way every time in golf and liken it to shooting a basketball.

  Almost every time Knight watched Eyl in shooting drills, he got upset. Eyl almost never shot the ball the same way twice. He jumped wrong or held the ball wrong. Knight would run over to work with Eyl, and Eyl would almost immediately tighten up. Shots that had been rolling off the rim began clanging off the front rim. Air balls began flying. Knight would get upset, and Eyl would shoot even worse. It was almost a ritual. Knight would walk away muttering that Eyl was the worst shooter he had ever seen, and Eyl would go back more confused and upset than he had been before.

  “Steve Eyl,” Kohn Smith said one day after one such session, “will be the death of us.”

  Smith wasn’t down on Eyl. He understood the frustration of the player and the coach. Eyl worked as hard as anybody. When he came into games, he rebounded and played good defense. He was a good kid, a good student. But he was never going to be a good shooter.

  Eyl was willing to try anything. He listened as Carmichael talked and demonstrated, swinging an imaginary golf club in the empty gym. When it was over, Eyl wasn’t sure if he had learned anything. “I feel pretty good about my golf swing,” he said, smiling. “But I’m not so sure about my shot.”

  While Carmichael and Eyl were talking, Knight was completing his second mission of the morning. The other guest on this trip was Steve Downing, who had been the starting center on Knight’s first Final Four team in 1973. Downing was a huge, witty man who was an assistant athletic director at Indiana. He was one of those rare people who could get into a battle of wits with Knight and hold his own. Knight loved him.

  Of course, Knight acted like he couldn’t stand Downing most of the time. Downing received constant abuse and insults from Knight. When he and Hammel walked on the floor that morning to renew a long-simmering free-throw-shooting rivalry, Knight was watching. Downing made eight of ten. Hammel was not equal to that task.

  “Give me the ball, Downing,” Knight said, walking onto the floor. “I can whip you.” Knight promptly made ten straight, much to the amazement of Downing, Hammel, and, most probably, Knight. “There’s never been a day when I couldn’t beat you, Downing,” Knight said, reveling in his victory. “Hell, I remember when you made four in a row against Kansas in the last minute. It was one of the greatest f—— miracles of all time.”

  Downing was doubled over with laughter. He remembered, too.

  Knight’s looseness was never more apparent than at the team meeting that afternoon. When he asked Felling if everyone had arrived, Felling said that Witte was missing. Witte was sitting right there.

  “Whopper,” Knight said, “Felling was about to get you in trouble. What do you think about that?”

  “Goddamn, Felling!” Witte answered, showing absolutely no respect for one of his supposedly respected coaches. The whole room broke up.

  The laughter stopped quickly that night. Illinois, fired up just as Knight had predicted, broke to an 8–0 lead in the first three minutes. Alford finally broke the skein with a jumper four minutes into the game. One might have expected Knight to explode at the first TV time-out. He had emphasized the first ten minutes and they had come out and fallen behind immediately. Iowa all over again?

  Knight didn’t see it that way. “Boys, we’re just fine,” he said. “We’re doing what we want to do, the shots just haven’t dropped yet. We aren’t a step behind like we were at Iowa. Just keep playing and we’ll be right back in it.”

  Knight was right. From 8–0 down, the Hoosiers ran eleven straight points to lead 11–8. As it turned out, they never trailed in the game again. Alford was doing the work on offense and Harris was again excellent on the boards. But above all, Indiana was playing defense. Every possession was work for Illinois. There were no easy baskets to get the crowd going. Indiana, for the second game in a row, was playing textbook road basketball.

  After ten minutes, it was 15–15. “Right where we want to be,” Meier told Witte on the bench. Exactly. Indiana promptly scored the next seven points to lead 22–15. The only problem—again—was foul trouble. Daryl Thomas got his third with 7:33 left, and once again Todd Meier was thrown into the breach.

  Illinois, with center Ken Norman almost unstoppable inside, closed the gap to 28–26, but Alford calmly knocked in three straight bombs, the last with one second left—a running, turnaround job—to make it 34–28 at the half.

  The excitement in the locker room was palpable. Indiana had been blown out in this building two years in a row, but there would be no blowout this night. And there was a golden chance for
a memorable upset.

  The big question among the coaches was whether to start Thomas or Meier in the second half. Meier had played well and they had the lead. If they started Meier, they might be able to save Thomas and his three fouls for five minutes or so. But they could also get blitzed quickly and let Illinois back in the game. Felling and Waltman wanted to start Meier. Knight finally agreed.

  It was the right move. Meier hung in, and when Thomas came back the score was 43–36 with 14:51 left. But two minutes later, Thomas reached over Illinois forward Efrem Winters’s back and picked up his fourth foul. Knight called time to settle everyone down. But things were getting tense. Harris threw an air ball. Dr. Rink was worried about Harris’s stamina and thought he needed a rest. But with Thomas in foul trouble, Harris couldn’t come out.

  Right after Harris missed, Tony Wysinger hit for Illinois to close the margin to 45–44. More than eleven minutes were left. Indiana could unravel. But Alford wasn’t going to let that happen. He promptly stuck a baseline jumper. Then Robinson, who had not played well since the last Illinois game, made another one, and it was 49–44.

  Strangely, Henson was playing a zone. His team was bigger and quicker and playing at home. There was every reason to force the game’s tempo, but Henson chose not to. Knight was off the bench after another Robinson jumper made it 51–44, sensing a chance to take control. “Defensive possession,” he screamed. “Now, right now. Bear down.”

  They did just that. Harris, tired or not, deflected a Winters shot. Robinson grabbed the ball. Indiana set up. Harris drove and spotted Thomas open. He got him the ball. Layup. It was 53–44 with 8:56 to go. The crowd was silent. Henson called time.