A Season on the Brink

by John Feinstein

  Naturally, the start could not have been much worse. Morgan took the first shot and nailed it for a 2–0 lead. It was to be the only shot he took all day. Clinton Ransey, who would prove unstoppable on this day, promptly answered to make it 2–2.

  Cleveland State set up its press. All week long, Indiana had worked with Morgan taking the ball out of bounds to get the offense started. The first three times he touched the ball, Morgan could not get the ball inbounds. By the time the sequence was over, Ransey had four more points, the score was 6–2 Cleveland State, Knight had yanked Morgan in favor of Robinson, and any hope for a quick start was long gone.

  It would be a struggle, just as Knight had feared.

  Indiana got its bearings after the shaky beginning and the two teams seesawed for ten minutes. A Daryl Thomas layin made it 26–25, Indiana. But then the press offense turned shaky again and Cleveland State ripped off six straight points, just as it had done at the start. Punching the ball inside—Indiana’s defensive shell was showing cracks all over—the Vikings built the lead to 37–28 with 6:30 left.

  But Alford revved up and brought the Hoosiers back. They got to within 43–41 before a follow shot by Clinton Smith, on a play where he went around Todd Meier, made it 45–41 at the half.

  Still, there was no need to panic. They had survived the bad start and come back from a nine-point deficit. Nothing had really changed. If they handled the press, they would win the game. Knight was clinical with the players as he went through their mistakes. Only when he and the coaches retreated to the bathroom to talk did he get angry.

  “I ought to fire all of us for setting up that way against the goddamn press,” he said angrily, kicking a nearby stall in frustration. “All we have to do is get it in before they set up and we’re alright. Morgan is just so slow. We have to go with Robinson in the second half, we have no choice. Jesus, I didn’t want to be behind in this game.”

  The only change they made was on the inbounds pass. In order to keep the press from setting up, Knight wanted the person nearest the ball to grab it right away and throw it in. “We’re all right, boys,” he told them. “We told you this was going to be a tough game so this is no surprise. They are going to come out and go right at us in this second half and that’s just fine.

  “Be patient, look for openings. Let’s get started right this time and play like hell the first five minutes. It’s just like the score is 4–0 and we’ve still got twenty minutes to play. Plenty of time. Let’s go.”

  They did play like hell the first five minutes. Hell as in bad. Daryl Thomas picked up his third foul right away—on an offensive foul—and Cleveland State scored the first six points. Knight had to call time. Now it was 10–0 and there was less than eighteen minutes to play. Morgan was given a brief reprieve, going in for Calloway, who had just committed another turnover.

  Knight tried to repeat Minnesota. There, he had talked them back into the game after a horrendous second-half start. He screamed at Thomas, he told them they were backing down. They listened. They went back and began playing even as Knight continued to rail at Thomas on the bench. Robinson broke the Cleveland State spell with a jumper to make it 51–43.

  But Cleveland State was firmly convinced that it was going to win. Each time Indiana crept closer, someone, usually Ransey, would get a bucket. The Hoosiers got to within striking range once. An Alford drive cut the lead to 66–61 with 8:55 left. Ransey then made one of two foul shots to make it 67–61. Alford drove baseline again, was fouled and made both shots. It was 67–63. Back to 4–0 and still more than eight minutes left.

  But after Eric Mudd, CSU’s center, got inside (again the shell cracked) to make it 69–63, Robinson missed the front end of a one-and-one that could have cut the margin back to four. Time was now slipping away. The lead seesawed between six and eight. Harris cut it to six, but Ransey answered with six minutes left. Harris missed and Smith rebounded. Cleveland State called time. Mackey wanted to spread out and kill some time. Knight glanced at the clock. Five minutes. And it was 8–0.

  A moment later it was 10–0. Ransey again. He would score twenty-seven points before it was over, three more than Alford. With CSU spread out, Indiana was in desperate trouble. The last thing it wanted against a quicker team was to have to chase. Now, it had to chase.

  This was not Indiana basketball. The Vikings were killing time and holding the lead. It was still 81–73 when Harris followed a Calloway miss with sixty-seven seconds left. Ransey, to prove he was human, threw the ball away, and Eyl, not worrying about missing at this stage, drove for a layup to make it 81–75 with forty-three seconds left. They fouled Mudd on the inbounds. He missed and Alford hit a drive with thirty seconds to go.

  It was back to 4–0. But now almost all of that twenty minutes was gone. They had to steal the inbounds pass. There were no time-outs left. Cleveland State threw a long inbounds pass. Smith caught it and went right to the basket. Eyl went right up with him. He blocked the shot. The whistle blew. The block looked clean. Would it be a jump ball? No. Referee Tom Fraim said Eyl had fouled Smith with his body going up. If the call had gone the other way, Indiana might have had a chance for a miracle. But it would have taken that. There were only twenty-one seconds and no time-outs left.

  But there would have been hope. Now, there was none. Smith made both foul shots to make it 83–77. Alford made the last basket of the season. The clock ran to zero. It was 83–79. Still 4–0. But now time had run out.

  There were no tears in the Indiana locker room. People don’t cry when they are in shock. Knight didn’t rant. It would take a while for his anger to escalate, although it surely would. He told them he was disappointed, that they had backed down—again. No screams. But it would get worse.

  Knight’s only outburst was brief. It came when he turned and saw Dakich, who was trying very hard—like everyone else—to be invisible. “Jesus,” Knight said angrily, “I have to watch this f—— team play like it did last year and then I turn around and the first person I see is goddamn Dakich.”

  There was not much to say. The press had killed them. They had needed to be tough inside and they had been hammered inside. Thomas, who finished with eleven points, had scored nine of them in the first half. Three of his four rebounds had come in the first half. Harris had played well with sixteen points and ten rebounds. Alford had been Alford. Calloway had been respectable with ten points, seven rebounds, and just two turnovers.

  But it had not been enough. They had needed something extra and no one had found it. For Morgan and Robinson, it was a bitter end after all the ups-and-downs. Robinson had shot just three of nine from the field and had missed a crucial free throw when the deficit had only been six; Morgan had turned the ball over five times. Even more important, his first two turnovers had come in those nightmarish early minutes, helping Cleveland State establish confidence at a time when a quick Indiana start might have rattled a team playing in postseason for the first time. As always, they had given everything they had. Sadly, as had often been the case in the eyes of their coach, that had not been enough.

  In truth, pointing fingers at individuals was foolish. Cleveland State had played well, Indiana had not. In his postgame press conference, that is exactly what Knight said. He was calm, collected, and gracious. The ifs and buts and the self-questioning would come later.

  The players dressed in record time. Thirty minutes after their season had ended, they were on a bus heading for the airport. The media never got a chance to ask them what had gone wrong. It was just as well. None of them had any answers.

  The flight home could have been worse. Knight slept for a while, told Hammel he didn’t know if he could take this any more, and then got up to tell the players how disappointed he was. They should have been tougher, smarter. They should have handled the press better.

  The campus was empty when the bus pulled up to Assembly Hall. Friday had been the last day of class before spring break, and almost everyone had taken off for Florida or home. Once again, the
players found themselves on a deserted campus under the most depressing of circumstances. This time, though, they would escape—eventually.

  The rituals had to be finished first. They met for the last time as a group in their regular meeting room. One year ago, Knight had dismissed his most disappointing team ever from this room. This team had given him many happy moments. But all that was forgotten now. First, the three seniors had to be excused. “Stew, Winston, you can go,” Knight said, forgetting Courtney Witte. Witte paused a moment, unsure what to do, then got up and followed Robinson and Morgan to the door. Knight asked Morgan to wait outside for him for a moment.

  Then he turned to the twelve players who would return. The redshirts, who had made the trip, were in the room, too. Knight had talked earlier in the week to the coaches about the possibility of practicing after the final game, assuming the team did not reach the Final Four. NCAA rules stipulate that a team may practice until the day of the national championship game.

  When Knight first brought up the idea, he was thinking about getting some extra work for the redshirts and of getting some practice work on tape. Now, as he stood in front of his remaining players, those rational thoughts were far from his mind.

  “You people have a lot of work to do if you want to be any good next year,” he said. “A lot of work. The way you played these last two games won’t beat anyone. Not anyone. We’ll see you here a week from Sunday at four o’clock.”

  That was it. The season was over, but the suffering was not. The good times had ceased to exist. Notre Dame, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan State, Iowa—all forgotten. All Knight could see in his mind’s eye at that moment was Michigan and Cleveland State. Humiliation. Defeat. All the questions and self-doubts came racing back to him.

  But the year had not been a lost cause. As the others left, Knight called the waiting Morgan back into the room. On this same spot, Knight had told Morgan he didn’t want him back for his last year, that he was finished playing basketball at Indiana. Now, Morgan was finished after five long years.

  “Winston,” Knight said softly, “I just want you to know that I know you gave us everything you had this season and I appreciate it.”

  Ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago, Knight would probably have been unable to reach out to one of his players this way after such a crushing loss. It was a final first in a season of firsts. Morgan looked at his former coach. Five springs earlier, Knight had given him a dollar and told him he would never give him anything else for free. Knight had been telling the truth. Because Morgan had truly earned these last words.

  As the others left, they knew what awaited them the following Sunday: an angry coach. The tape would have been looked at and looked at, the mistakes dissected. Every one of them would be found at fault at some point in some way. It would be a long day and a longer week. They would once again have an angry, frustrated coach, one trying to deal with a defeat he was incapable of dealing with.

  They would be in jeopardy once again. They had achieved and achieved for five months but all that had been virtually wiped out in a week. They were back in trouble again.

  They were back to the brink.

  Epilogue

  In the days following the end of the season, Knight was haunted by the way it had ended. Again and again he replayed the last two games in his mind. He questioned himself, his coaches, his players. He was angry, not at anyone specifically—with the possible exception of Daryl Thomas, whose manhood was once again in constant question—but with the world.

  Indiana had been upset in a year of upsets in NCAA play. On the same day that Cleveland State beat Indiana, Notre Dame was stunned by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, another team that was making its NCAA tournament debut. Two days later, Syracuse, playing on its home floor, lost to Navy by twenty points, an embarrassment well beyond what had happened to Indiana. Michigan, which had beaten Indiana by twenty-eight points eight days earlier, lost to Iowa State—the same Iowa State Indiana had beaten by twenty-one points in December.

  But Knight saw none of this. All he could see was his loss and his humiliation. Once again, Knight somehow saw himself diminished by defeat. Knight had never before lost a first-round NCAA tournament game. It tore him up.

  Which was a shame. Because overall, 1985-86 was a season Knight should be able to smile about. He and his team achieved or surpassed every preseason goal he set. He had hoped for nineteen victories; he got twenty-one. He had hoped for twelve Big Ten victories; he got thirteen. He wanted to get back into the NCAA tournament; he did. He wanted people to respect Indiana again; they did. The fact that the NCAA Tournament Committee, with all its computer printouts and scouting reports, rated Indiana among the top twelve teams in the country was proof of that.

  Individually, Knight wanted Steve Alford to play up to the potential he had flashed as a freshman. Alford did just that. He was consistent, he was tough, and he improved the nonshooting aspects of his game. He was an All-American, so much so that when someone criticized Alford’s selection as an All-American one night at dinner, Knight said, “How could you not vote for Steve?” Alford would have enjoyed hearing those words.

  Daryl Thomas, asked to play center at 6-7, averaged 14.5 points a game and was brilliant at times. He did not have a good finish and was not the same player he had been in the last twelve games of the season, but the potential he showed was encouraging.

  Andre Harris, after going through a preseason in which he could do no wrong and an early season in which he could do no right, justified Joby Wright’s faith in him during the season’s last eight games. Ironically, he almost reversed roles with Thomas. Harris emerged as the team’s best rebounder (he finished with a 5.6 average, high on the team) and began to take better shots and make smarter passes.

  Rick Calloway had about as good a freshman season as anyone could possibly have hoped for. He averaged 13.9 points and 4.9 rebounds and finished the season as a player with a limitless future.

  Right there was a solid four-man nucleus—if Harris overcame his academic problems to stay eligible. Todd Meier and Steve Eyl would also be back to supply depth, and the five redshirts—Kreigh Smith, Magnus Pelkowski, Joe Hillman, Brian Sloan, and Jeff Oliphant—all showed potential. Sloan in particular showed remarkable improvement.

  The three recruited players all had to be considered question marks until they proved themselves. But at 6-11 and 230 pounds, Dean Garrett would at the very least give Indiana someone big and strong in the middle. Keith Smart was an excellent athlete, the kind of player whose quickness would be valuable against a press like Cleveland State’s. And David Minor, the only high school recruit, was reportedly a lot like Calloway but a better shooter. If he turned out anything at all like Calloway, Indiana would have a terrific player.

  In short, all the elements were in place for Indiana once again. There was experience, players who had proven themselves capable of competing with almost anyone in the country. With the advent of a three-point shot from the ridiculous range of 19 feet, 9 inches, Alford would be easily capable of averaging thirty points a game—if necessary.

  There was also the semiexperience of the redshirts, players who understood the program and now had to put that knowledge to use. And there was the raw potential of the recruits. Indiana would begin 1986-87 ranked at least in the top ten, perhaps in the top five.

  And then there was the coach. If 1985-86 proved anything it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bob Knight remains as good a coach as there is, perhaps the best. For twenty-seven games he got as much from his basketball team as any coach in the country, maybe more. That the last two games were a disaster does not diminish that fact.

  Knight seemed to have learned from the debacle of 1985. He was more patient than he had ever been, more understanding, more restrained. All of these are relative terms. There were still moments when he went out of control and days when he played silly mind games with everyone. But more than anything, Knight taught, coached, and pushed his team, and made
it about as good as it could possibly be.

  The question then is this: Can he do it again? Knight began this past season uncertain about his team. He wondered whether a team with a 6-7 center that depended on a 6-1 guard to do most of its scoring could beat anybody. The answer was yes. Now he will begin the season with a team picked to do great things again. Knight will expect great things, too. He will expect Garrett, Smart, and Minor to be better than Witte, Morgan, and Robinson. He will expect the redshirts to play a lot and play well. He will expect more than twenty-one victories, more than thirteen Big Ten victories, and much more than the first round of the NCAA tournament.

  With those expectations will come potential pitfalls. What will happen after the first loss? A loss at home in the Big Ten? Will Knight once again be patient? Will he go fishing or will he go head-hunting? As bright as Knight is, as brilliant a coach as he is, the answers to these questions should be simple, but nothing about Bob Knight is simple and few things in his life are easy. He couldn’t stand the comfort.

  Two weeks after the Cleveland State loss, Knight has not stopped brooding. He had made life miserable for the players during the first two days of their postseason practices, sitting in the stands while they scrimmaged. He even yelled at Bartow and Dakich for doing a poor job of refereeing on that first Sunday. When he left for Dallas on Thursday to go to the Final Four, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The assistants ran scrimmages until the following Monday—the last day allowable under NCAA rules.

  In Dallas, Knight was reunited with his coaching family. This is an annual affair, because the Final Four is also the site of the National Association of Basketball Coaches convention. Knight rooms each year with Pete Newell, and he spent the weekend with people like Fred Taylor, Henry Iba, Bob Murray, and all his former assistants. On Friday night, the annual family dinner was held at a local Italian restaurant.