The 1986 season did not end at Indiana until seventeen days after the stunning loss to Cleveland State. True to his word, Knight had the players back scrimmaging during the final week of NCAA tournament play. It was, to say the least, less than fun for the players.
Knight’s mood was so dark that he even barked at Dakich and Bartow for refereeing poorly. On one particularly unpleasant afternoon Uwe Blab, the leading scorer from the still-remembered 1985 disaster, came to practice. Blab, who was playing in the NBA for the Dallas Mavericks, had let his hair grow and was wearing a ponytail and an earring. Knight ignored him. When the practice was over he told the players in the locker room, “I better not ever catch any one of you coming back here looking like that.”
Fortunately for everyone—including Knight—Knight went to Dallas for the Final Four, leaving the assistant coaches in charge of the last few days of scrimmages. The Final Day finally came on March 31. While Knight was parading around Dallas wearing a Duke button on his sweater (a show of support for Mike Krzyzewski) his team scrimmaged for the last time.
The atmosphere that last day was loose. There was a sense of relief because the angry coach wasn’t there, and because the players knew they would not have to see another formal practice until October 15. But there were also questions, the unpleasant residue of the Michigan and Cleveland State debacles.
As the players dressed after the final practice, many of them were as bewildered as they had been the year before after the loss in the NIT final. They had little idea as they left Assembly Hall that evening that exactly one year later they would be rolling on top of one another in the Superdome, celebrating a national championship that even Knight had to concede was a remarkable feat.
There were changes during the off-season. Andre Harris, without basketball as a motivator, had slipped back into bad habits academically. He flunked out at the end of the semester and, as promised, Knight did not offer to help him gain readmission. Harris transferred to Austin Peay.
That certainly did not leave the junior college experiment on solid ground. Harris, with all his ability, had been a headache from the beginning. Jadlow had shown potential in flashes, but would be redshirted in ’86–’87. He needed time to mature.
The new JUCO arrivals were Dean Garrett and Keith Smart. Garrett, 6–10 and raw, had been signed early when Knight still had stars in his eyes from watching Harris run and jump during the early workouts. Smart’s signing, however, was testimony to Joby Wright’s persuasiveness. Knight’s initial reaction to Smart—“He wears gold chains”—had come at a time when Harris and Jadlow had already spent considerable time in the doghouse.
And yet, Wright had kept after Knight, convinced him to invite Smart in for a visit and to go back and see him play. Smart had been so impressive, both on and off the floor, that Knight decided to give the JUCO project one more all-out shot. It turned out to be one of the crucial decisions of his coaching career.
There were other decisions to be made during the off-season. In June, Knight filed for divorce after twenty-two years of marriage to Nancy Knight. He knew that this decision, though not surprising, would be traumatic for both his sons, especially Patrick, who would turn sixteen in September. But he honestly believed it was the best thing for everyone—including Nancy.
The decision came as a surprise to no one inside the basketball program. Everyone knew that Knight had purchased a house in Ellettville the previous summer to prepare for just such an eventuality, and the general sentiment was relief that the issue was finally going to be resolved.
There was one hitch, though. As soon as the divorce papers were filed and became a matter of public record, the Bloomington Herald-Telephone reported it. Somehow, Knight had thought he could keep the move a secret. When the story hit the paper, he was furious. Naturally, Hammel was caught in the middle of the whole debacle.
Later in the summer Hammel was talking about what had happened and Knight’s anger with the newspaper. “But doesn’t he understand that filing for divorce is public record?” Hammel was asked.
“Wait a minute,” Hammel answered, half joking. “Are you using understand and Bob Knight in the same sentence when it comes to the media?”
The summer was not without its funny moments. Knight went off to Spain for the world championships to be a TV analyst and to conduct several clinics for Adidas. One night, driving on a country road, Knight’s car broke down. He began walking, looking for help. Finally he spotted a house with lights ablaze. He knocked and asked if the people there would help him. Could they help? They could help him with just about anything he wanted.
He had stumbled into a brothel.
Remembering the wild rumors that had circulated the year before when word had leaked out about his purchase of the Ellettville house, Knight couldn’t help but laugh when he returned home and told friends the story.
Knight also spent a couple of days in the early fall visiting his old friend Bill Parcells, the New York Giants’ coach. The two had been buddies when they had coached at West Point, and they remained close. When Parcells took Knight into his locker room shortly before kickoff one Sunday, Lawrence Taylor, the Giants’ All-Pro linebacker, spotted him immediately.
“Hey,” Taylor said. “Look, everybody, it’s the chairthrower.”
Maybe Knight was in a good mood or maybe he looked at Taylor’s chiseled, 6-foot-3-inch, 245-pound body closely. Either way, he didn’t snap. There were no cracks, as one might have expected, about Taylor’s off-season drug treatment.
“You just worry,” Knight told Taylor, “about getting out there and tackling somebody.” Taylor tackled, the Giants won easily and Knight returned home full of stories about his buddy Parcells. The Giants would go on to win the Super Bowl, a victory that gave Knight almost as much pleasure as what would take place in March.
The team that gathered to begin practice on October 15 had almost as many question marks as the one that had started practice twelve months earlier. Gone, in addition to Harris, were ’86 seniors Winston Morgan, Stew Robinson and Courtney Witte. Knight was less than pleased with Robinson, who had failed to graduate.
Morgan and Robinson had, in essence, shared one starting spot the previous season, and Harris had been the power forward and the leading rebounder. Ideally, those two spots would be filled by Garrett and Smart. Both had a lot to prove, however.
There were some givens. Alford, who had played superbly as a junior, was locked in, not just as a starter but as the captain and leader Knight had spent most of the previous season convincing him he had to become. Alford was now just that. This would be his team, just as the ’76 team had been Quinn Buckner’s team, just as the ’81 team had been Isiah Thomas’s team.
Daryl Thomas would start at Harris’s forward spot—if Garrett could produce at center. He had done a good job playing center at 6-7 in ’86, had handled more abuse from Knight than anyone not named Alford and would be more comfortable playing forward as a senior. The other forward spot belonged to Rick Calloway. He was a sophomore now, established as a rising star.
The other two spots would be competitive, though, and that was healthy. The five redshirts from a year ago—Joe Hillman, Kreigh Smith, Brian Sloan, Magnus Pelkowski and Jeff Oliphant—would get a chance too. So would Todd Meier, the third senior who had played so well in spots the year before in spite of his aching knees.
And then there was Steve Eyl, or, as the players called him, SteveEyl. As good an athlete as Eyl was, basketball did not come easy to him, especially shooting a basketball. Knight had tried everything to make Eyl a better shooter, but had succeeded mostly in making Eyl tight as a drum every time he felt his coach’s watchful eye upon him.
But during the offseason pickup games, there was little doubt among the players about who the most improved player around was: SteveEyl. He was shooting better, more consistently. Feeling more confident as a shooter made him more confident as a player. By the time practice started Eyl had come a long way from the day in Wisconsin when Knight had told Eyl if one of his assistants ever recruited another player like him he would be fired.
As always, the preseason had its share of rotten evenings. That was no surprise. It was part of the routine. But three weeks into practice, the players were hit by a lightning-bolt that shook them and put the whole season in jeopardy.
They were sitting in the locker room waiting for Knight to come in and give his pre-practice talk. The next night, they were scheduled to go to Fort Wayne for the annual red-white scrimmage. Knight walked in, the assistants following, looking somber. Knight had a piece of paper in his hand. He began reading from it.
It was a letter from the academic staff. One of the players—Knight didn’t use his name while reading the letter—had been cutting class. He was in danger of failing a course. This had been going on for several weeks. When Knight finished reading, he turned to Alford.
“Steve,” he asked, “what do we usually do in situations like this?”
Almost in a whisper, Alford answered, “Well, usually the guy would be gone.”
“That’s right,” Knight said. He looked across the room at Thomas. “Daryl, you’re gone.”
It looked like Mike Giomi revisited. Thomas, a good student, was not failing by NCAA or Indiana standards. But he was cutting class, and that was below Knight’s standards. He knew the rules and he had broken them. The team made the trip to Fort Wayne without Thomas. A brief Indiana press release said Thomas had been thrown off the team for cutting class.
These were nervous days for the players. Most preseason publications were picking Indiana in the top five and, after watching Smart and Garrett practice, the players and coaches really believed this team could be very good. But not without Thomas. He was, by consensus, the second best player on the team. He was a senior, he was smart, he was experienced and he had been toughened by three years under Knight. For the Hoosiers to excel, Thomas had to play.
Knight knew all this. But he certainly was not about to compromise his academic standards. And yet, Knight is not inflexible. Recidivism in his program is inexcusable, but first offenders, especially if they have been solid citizens in the past, get a second chance.
“Only two things I will never ever excuse,” Knight had once said. “One is lying, the other is using drugs.”
On the second issue, Knight had once given a player who had been a solid person a second chance when he had tested positive for marijuana. And so, Daryl Thomas, good kid, good student, would get a second chance. Make up the missed class time and the missed work and you can come back, Thomas was told. He did just that. One week after the incident in the locker room, Thomas was returned to the team. Three nights later, he scored twenty-two points in an exhibition victory over the Russians.
The season’s first crisis had been survived.
If there was another significant event during preseason, it was the gradual change in the Knight-Alford relationship. Even as he drove him and haunted him and attacked him during the winter of ’86, Knight had been mellowing on Alford. He had started that season threatening not to start him, throwing him out of practice, questioning whether he could ever be the leader he had to be for the team to succeed.
At times, he had been brutal after Alford had not played well. More than once, he had told the coaches, “We’ll never be any good until we get rid of Alford.”
But deep down, Knight knew that wasn’t true. He knew how hard Alford had worked to please him, and how much he had improved. That didn’t mean there weren’t going to be moments during this final season when Alford got ripped. There were. But with Alford’s last days in an Indiana uniform approaching, Knight knew it was time to use the boxing gloves less and the kid gloves more. Alford had earned at least that.
And so, on the day after Thanksgiving, twenty-four hours before the season would begin with a game against Montana State, Knight called Alford into the cave. Alford had been there before but usually because he—or the team—was in some kind of trouble. Now though, Knight didn’t scream or yell. As Alford told friends later, his voice and his words were soft.
“I just wanted you to know,” Knight said, “how much I appreciate you. You stand for everything this program is about. . . I don’t think I could care about you more than I do if you were my own son.”
Alford was both stunned and touched by this gesture. He knew this side of his coach existed; he had seen it in things he had done for others over the years. But this was the first time Knight had ever really reached out to him this way.
“Coach,” Alford said at the door, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you just said.”
“Steve,” Knight answered, “I hope you know how much I appreciate you.”
Finally, Alford knew. When he told friends about the incident, none of them was amazed as he was. They had always known how Knight felt about Alford. Only Alford hadn’t known. Perhaps Knight had sensed that.
The season began with a walkover victory over Montana State. Hillman, at least for the moment, had beaten Smart out for the second starting spot at guard. Garrett, despite a shaky preseason, was the starting center.
The win was a costly one. With 17:28 left in the game and the Hoosiers leading comfortably 48-35, Calloway went down with a knee injury. Initially, it looked very serious, perhaps season-ending. He would be gone, it was thought, at least a month.
This was a potential disaster. Calloway would miss several tough December games. More importantly, he would miss time developing, getting used to the new players, improving his own game. Even after the 90-55 victory, the season had not gotten off to a good start.
Notre Dame was next. Smart started in Calloway’s place. As it turned out, this was to be a historic night. Indiana’s 67–62 victory was expected. That was no surprise. What was a surprise, even a shock, was the zone defense in which the Hoosiers opened the game.
Knight had talked about playing zone as far back as the end of the ’85 season. He had even practiced it a little that summer on tour. He had practiced it even more during this preseason. A year earlier, prior to playing Notre Dame, he had thought that a zone would be the best defense against David Rivers, Notre Dame’s penetrating guard. He had even thought about playing it for one possession at the start of the game, just to throw the Irish off.
But he had not done it that night or any night in ’86. But now, having practiced it, Indiana was ready to play it. Ironically, when Digger Phelps had read that Knight considered playing zone against his team, he had considered it a slap in the face. When Indiana arrived at Notre Dame on the morning of the game an angry Phelps was waiting for Knight. The two good friends retreated to Phelps’s office, where Knight spent close to an hour explaining to Phelps that playing zone was not a slight to Notre Dame but testimony to Rivers’s ability as a penetrator.
Phelps was mollified. Indiana played zone most of the game. It was Hammel who asked the question in the postgame press conference: “What about the zone?”
“What zone?” Knight answered with a straight face. “Did you see a zone out there?”
If the Notre Dame game did nothing else, it showed how far Knight had come in terms of flexibility. The once man-to-man, walk-it-up, don’t-recruit-outside-the-Midwest, don’t-touch-JUCOs and don’t-redshirt-players coach had in one night played zone, pushed the ball up the floor, started two Californians (Hillman and Garrett), two JUCOs (Garrett and Smart) and played three redshirts of a year before (Hillman, Smith and Pelkowski).
Living proof that you can teach an old coach new tricks.
Kentucky was next at home, and the 71–66 victory was a sweet one even though the Wildcats weren’t nearly the team they had been the previous season. This was revenge for the bitter loss in Lexington on the night that Alford had been suspended by the NCAA because of his posing for the sorority charity calendar.
Knight had talked the previous year about announcing that he was canceling the Kentucky series after beating them—he would never make such an announcement after a loss—but he had changed his mind by the time the two teams played this game.
“I think [Eddie] Sutton will run the program a hell of a lot differently than [Joe B.] Hall did,” Knight said after the game, a reference to published reports of payoffs to players during Hall’s tenure. “If he does, then this will continue to be a hell of a rivalry.”
It was a not-so-subtle message. Knight was willing to take Sutton’s word that he was going to clean the program up—for now—after a victory. Time would tell.
The Hoosiers were now 3–0. As always, the Notre Dame and Kentucky games had been draining.
Knight always worried about the game that followed Notre Dame and Kentucky, regardless of the opponent. One year earlier, the Hoosiers had come up flat at home against Kansas State and had almost lost to a team that would finish that season at the bottom of the Big Eight. Now, they had to go on the road to Vanderbilt.
The opponent itself made the game unusual. Knight does not normally like to play against friends, and C.M. Newton was a friend. He had been one of Knight’s assistant coaches with the Olympic team. But playing Indiana at home was a coup for Newton as he tried to rebuild the Vanderbilt program. Beating the Hoosiers would be a breakthrough.
For Vanderbilt, the game was a breakthrough; for Indiana, a nightmare. The Hoosiers led by nine early in the second half but couldn’t hold on. With Vandy guard Barry Goheen running wild for twenty-six points and the crowd roaring, Vandy pulled the upset, 79–75. Knight was gracious afterwards, crediting Newton and his players. “I know they’ve built toward something like this,” he said. “I hate to see it be us, but I’m happy for them. We just didn’t deserve to win the basketball game.”
That was the message Knight took back to his players: they had not deserved to win the basketball game. The next two days were a return to the bad old days. There was BK Theater, lots of screaming and yelling, and a mass kickout/harangue on Thursday. Part of this was a result of the Vanderbilt loss. Part of it was the upcoming weekend. It was Indiana Classic time again, the thirteenth annual tournament in which Indiana invites three teams to come play patsy for it.
The opening-night opponent for Indiana was North Carolina-Wilmington, not exactly a name that would get the same reaction from the players as Notre Dame or Kentucky. Knight juggled his lineup, starting Sloan, Pelkowski and freshman David Minor. Smart and Garrett were on the bench.
As always, playing a no-name team made Knight nervous. He had good reason. After playing a good first half and leading 43–29, the Hoosiers collapsed in the second half.
With center Brian Rowsom running another 35 points, 18 rebounds—UNC-W came back. And came back. It got to within 73–72 with thirty-eight seconds left, and UNC-W even had the last shot, a squared seventeen-footer by Rowsom. But the ball spun out, and one of the most embarrassing upsets in Indiana history had been averted.
Knight didn’t even stick around for the press conference. He sent Wright, who explained Knight had left to go watch Patrick play.
If there was going to be a major explosion it was likely to come after a victory like this one. A lead had been blown against a team that should have been blown out. This, three nights after a loss. But Knight didn’t go wild, didn’t rant or rave. The walk-through on Saturday morning was firm but calm. The Hoosiers—with Garrett and Smart restored to the starting lineup—came out flying against East Carolina in the final. It was 49–22 at halftime, and the final was 96–68.
What was most remarkable was what Knight said after the game. “We didn’t come back well after Vanderbilt, and that was my fault. We were too hard on them and went after it too hard.”
My fault? Went after them too hard? Was this really Bob Knight talking?
It was. This was a Knight who had started the process of trying to be more patient almost from the moment he hurled the chair. He had made some progress in ’86. Now, with a good team that he knew was playing hard even when it didn’t play well, Knight was as calm (for him) as he had ever been in his coaching career.
The rest of December went smoothly. Calloway, whose injury had not proved as serious as first feared, returned for the More-head State game, an easy 84–62 victory. Louisville was next, another revenge game. Like Kentucky, the Cardinals, defending national champions, were not nearly the same team that had beaten Indiana a year earlier.
Even so, the game wasn’t easy. Alford was 4-for-17, and Louisville led 49–42 with 9:07 to play. But Indiana strung eleven straight points together, capping the rally on a leap-and-lean three-point play by Calloway with 6:36 left. The lead was 53–49, and IU coasted from there to win, 67–58. After that came two easy victories in the Hoosier Classic. The record going into Big Ten play was 9–1.
It had been four years since Indiana had won a Big Ten title. The 1983 team, led by Ted Kitchel and Randy Wittman, had won the league the season before Alford, Thomas and Meier had arrived as freshmen. No group of Knight-coached seniors had ever left Indiana without a Big Ten championship. Knight reminded them of this fact. That would be one of his themes throughout the next eighteen games, getting a Big Ten championship for the three seniors.
The start was shaky. Playing at Ohio State should not have been that tough a task. Indiana had beaten a more talented Buckeye team twice in 1986. This team had a new coach, though, the very aggressive Gary Williams. But with Dennis Hopson, who would go on to beat Alford out for Big Ten Player of the Year honors, struggling with the flu (four points in ten minutes), it should have been easy.
It wasn’t. Indiana blew a seventeen-point lead and actually trailed 75–74 with 4:26 left. But, as would become part of their pattern, the Hoosiers righted themselves just in time and blew to an easy 92–80 victory down the stretch. It was a road win and, struggle or no struggle, a better start than last year’s 0–2 that had led to Knight’s fishing trip in Assembly Hall.
They won easily at Michigan State and then went to Michigan for a Monday night TV game. This had been the scene of the most embarrassing loss of the year before, the 80–52 debacle in the regular-season Big Ten showdown finale.
Knight does not easily forget such a loss. His memories of that afternoon and of the taunting Michigan fans were vivid. He reminded the players about the embarrassment several times prior to the rematch.
Once again, it looked simple. With Alford hot, the Hoosiers ran off a 12–2 string at the end of the first half and led 51–34. The Michigan fans, who had been all over Knight at the start of the game, were quiet. But the lead didn’t hold. Garrett was being outplayed inside by the lumbering Mark Hughes, and Michigan’s three guards kept knocking in jump shots. The lead dwindled quickly. The crowd was berserk.
It was still 80–71 with 3:50 left. But the Wolverines were on a 12–1 skein, and when Gary Grant nailed a jumper with 1:07 left, Michigan led 83–81. A fourth straight loss to Michigan? Unthinkable. And yet, as the players leaned into the huddle to hear Knight yelling to be heard over the crowd, the possibility was quite real.
With forty-five seconds left Eyl was fouled. Eyl, the nonfree throw shooter of a year ago, would have had no chance in such a situation. Now, he calmly made both shots to tie the game at 83 apiece.
But with eight seconds left, Eyl drew his fifth foul, on Grant. The first free throw was good for 84–83. The second missed. Knight called time. His message in the huddle was simple and direct. “Steve,” he said to Alford, “I want you to take the ball and score. Not shoot, score. Understand?”
Alford understood. He went the length of the floor, spun at the side of the lane and put up a twelve-footer. It rolled around the rim, hesitated and dropped in with one second left. It was 85–84. Michigan couldn’t get a shot.
It should be remembered that Knight has walked off the floor after winning national championships without so much as cracking a smile. Now, he turned to the crowd behind him, thrust his arms high and leaped into the air, shaking a fist. He was overjoyed. He ran—yes, ran—from the floor, still celebrating.
Someone asked Alford later if he had ever seen his coach that happy. “Not even close,” Alford answered.
They bombed Wisconsin and Northwestern at home. Their Big Ten record was 5–0. Iowa, at Iowa, was next. Indiana had already avenged three of the previous year’s losses—Kentucky, Louisville, Michigan. This was another chance. Iowa had bombed IU in Iowa City two years in a row. Now, under rookie coach Tom Davis, the Hawkeyes were unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the nation. Indiana was No. 3.
Iowa was ready for Indiana. The Hawkeyes led 34–22, before the Hoosiers closed to 46–44 at halftime. Indiana led briefly in the second half, but Iowa turned the jets up again, destroying IU inside. The final rebounding margin was an extraordinary 46–19. The final score was an equally amazing 101-88. It was amazing because it marked the first time in Knight’s twenty-two years as a coach that an opponent had scored 100 points on one of his teams. Even though the screwy three-point rule skewed matters, Iowa would have scored ninety-seven without the rule. That was lots of points.
A year earlier, after the loss at Iowa, Knight had raged through the trip to Minnesota, and the Hoosiers had almost lost to a crippled Minnesota team. There was no rage now, just a message: “We have to keep winning until we get to play Iowa at home.” They began with a romp, 77–53, at Minnesota.
They kept going the following week with tough but solid victories at home over Illinois and Purdue. The Purdue victory was particularly impressive because the Boilermakers had won three of four from Indiana coming in, and the only IU victory had been the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff game the year before, when Purdue had scored only one point in the last nine minutes and IU, with the whole front line out of the game, scraped to a 71–70 overtime victory.
This time, it was easy. Indiana took the lead for good on two Alford free throws with 16:17 left and led by as many as seventeen before easing to an 88–77 win. The record was now 17–2.
The Michigans came to town the following week. Naturally, the players were reminded time and again about the fact that they had lost to both these teams at home two years in a row. But this was a very different team than the ones that had lost those four games. What’s more, the Michigans had lost players like Sam Vincent and Scott Skiles (State) and Roy Tarpley and Butch Wade and Richard Rellford (Michigan).
Michigan State hung tough most of the night, cutting a fifteen-point lead to five with 3:44 left. But Alford just kept hitting shot after shot. When it was over, Indiana had an 84–80 win, and Alford had a career-high forty-two points. After the game Knight sounded as if he was talking about Buckner when Alford’s name came up.
“We won it because Steve Alford plays for us,” he said. “He’s an all-American and he played like an All-American . . . . Without Alford, Michigan State wins the ball game going away. Steve’s played that way since he was a freshman [What!?] He’s remarkable for the kind of athlete he is to be able to produce what he does.”
Reading these comments in the paper the next morning, Alford undoubtedly thought that perhaps it would be reasonable to suggest that the next time the team was drug-tested, the head coach join the line.
“I’m almost as good right now,” he joked, “as Damon.”
Damon as in Damon Bailey, the boy-wonder eighth-grader Knight had fallen in love with the previous season. Damon was now a freshman at Bedford High School, and would lead that team to the state Final Four in March. He was playing superbly, averaging twenty-three points a game. Knight had gone back to see him play, and was already setting Alford up as Bailey’s role model. Damon and his family were frequently at home games, and in the locker room afterwards. Knight even had Alford take Damon and his family to dinner one night.
Three days after Michigan State, Alford was “held” to thirty points by Michigan. This game was an old-fashioned blowout, the Hoosiers for once building a big halftime lead and then pulling away, leading by as many as twenty-four points before winning 83–67.
After the game, Knight was asked on CBS-TV if he thought this team was good enough to win the national championship. “I’ve coached teams that good,” he said. “I don’t think this one is.”
Maybe not, but the Hoosiers were doing a decent imitation. They were 19–2 heading into what should be an easy stretch: games at Northwestern and Wisconsin and a home game with Minnesota before the rematch with Iowa. The three weakest teams in the league. No problem. As it turned out, the next ten days would be the most difficult and traumatic of the season.
To think that Northwestern might be the site for an Indiana debacle was a joke. The Wildcats were starting from scratch under rookie coach Bill Foster, and were destined to finish the season 7–21. The score in Bloomington had been an embarrassing 95–43, and it could have been worse.
But from the beginning everything went wrong. The Hoosiers led the entire first half, but could never gain control. Alford was one-for-five. Jeff Grose, the 1985 Mr. Indiana who seemed to struggle against everyone but Indiana, came off the bench to score eight points. The half ended with a dunk by the Northwestern center that cut the margin to 34–32.
That was bad enough. What was worse was the Northwestern band. At Northwestern, the band sits adjacent to the visiting team’s bench. It likes to chant things at the opponents, get things riled up a little. Naturally, the band had plenty to say to Knight throughout the half. As he walked past the bleachers where the band was seated at halftime, one band member kept yelling over and over, “Knight, you suck.”
Most of the time Knight just keeps his head down and ignores such clever repartee. But with the team playing poorly, his rabbit ears were on. Suddenly, he stopped a few feet from the youngster, reached over the railing, grabbed him and tried to yank him out of the bleachers.
Dakich, trailing Knight by a couple of feet, immediately grabbed his coach and tried to pull him away. Knight, angry, is a handful. Dakich was able to keep Knight from doing any damage, but he couldn’t pull him loose. Finally, Wright, who had turned around in the hallway and found that he had lost Knight, raced back and used his 6–8 bulk to pry both Knight and Dakich loose. He pulled them into the hallway.
“Let go of me, Goddammit,” Knight screamed. “Let go!” Wright and Dakich let go. But the incident wasn’t over. Knight sought out a campus policeman. Pointing to the youngster, Knight said, “If he’s still here when we come back for the second half, there won’t be a second half.”
Then he left for the locker room. The police removed the offender. The Hoosiers played the second half—barely. They hung on to win 77–75, only because Thomas scored thirty-two points on a night when Alford was four-for-thirteen and Dean Garrett produced three points and three rebounds.
Knight was wild in the locker room afterwards. At one point, he grabbed a stat sheet and pushed it up against Garrett’s chest. “Three rebounds,” he roared. “Three!” Then, turning to Wright, he said, “You ever recruit another junior college pussy like this one and I’ll fire you!”
Knight also berated the media for doubting him when he said the team wasn’t that good. He ripped Garrett and Alford. (“We got absolutely nothing out of Alford tonight.”) It was unfortunately like old times, including the old question about Knight’s self-control.
What if Dakich, who was on the trip (graduate assistants rarely travel) only because Chicago is near his home, hadn’t been right behind Knight when he went after the band member? What if Knight had succeeded in yanking him from the bleachers? What then? Woody Hayes II? After working for two years to get away from such outbursts, Knight had almost wiped himself out in one frustrating swoop.
It didn’t get much better at Wisconsin. Alford’s first basket of the game made him the school’s all-time leading scorer, but he would finish the night four-for-nineteen. Suddenly, after being unable to miss against the Michigans, he couldn’t buy a shot. In practice, the shots were dropping as they always did. But in games, he was missing and missing badly. Usually when Alford misses, the ball rims out. Now, he was chipping paint off the rims.
Indiana should have lost to Wisconsin. The Hoosiers trailed by six with four minutes left in regulation and through much of the three overtimes. But Garrett saved the game by grabbing a Hillman air ball from the corner and banking it in with four seconds to go for an 86–85 miracle. The imprint of the stat sheet undoubtedly still on his chest, Garrett had produced twenty-one points and eleven rebounds.
Playing Minnesota at home was no easier. There were fourteen lead changes and twenty ties before Garrett played hero again, making two free throws with three seconds to go for a 72–70 victory. Alford’s slump continued. He was seven-for-twenty. That made fifteen-for-fifty-two in three games. He had not shot that poorly since about fourth grade.
Knight didn’t panic, though. Nothing was wrong with Alford mechanically. There was no sense beating him up emotionally because everyone knew Alford was doing everything he could to break the spell. The rematch with Iowa was next. The Hoosiers, in spite of their struggles, had done what Knight had asked: They had won all their games after the Iowa loss to set up the rematch. After three straight poor performances, though, the question was, Would they break loose or break down?
They broke loose. Alford’s touch returned. He was five-of-seven in the first half. Everyone sizzled. Leading 27–21 with 10:30 left, Indiana went on a rampage, outscoring Iowa 19–6 the rest of the half. Assembly Hall was rocking as it almost never rocked. Iowa made it closer during garbage time, but the final was 84–75.
Knight walked off the floor twirling Al McGuire’s red handkerchief—having stolen it from him during the postgame TV interview. He was giddy. He knew his team, faced with a big game, had responded in a big way. What’s more, the Hoosiers were in first place in the Big Ten with a 14–1 record. If they could win at Purdue, they would clinch at least a tie for the title.
But they didn’t win at Purdue. In foul trouble right from the start, they fell behind by nine at halftime and never caught up. They got to within one, but could never get even. Garrett fouled out with just two points. Thomas and Smart also fouled out.
It was an aggravating loss, because unlike the game the year before at Purdue, this one had been winnable. Still, if they won their last two league games—at Illinois, and against Ohio State at home—they would do no worse than tie for the Big Ten championship.
But Illinois produced another loss. The Illini had lost three straight close games to the Hoosiers, and the law of averages, if nothing else, was on their side. Alford had another poor shooting day (six-of-sixteen), and Illinois led almost the entire second half. The game ended with Alford’s desperation halfcourt heave being blocked at the buzzer with Illinois leading 69–67.
Now they had lost two straight. Worse, they were one game behind Purdue. If Purdue won at Michigan State and Michigan, it would win the league title, regardless of what Indiana did against Ohio State. This did not please Knight. The week following the Illinois loss was a long one, the practices tough. Knight hated having to depend on someone else—especially someone like Michigan coach Bill Frieder.
But that’s the way it turned out. Frieder’s team did to Purdue exactly what it had done to Indiana on the last day of the season in ’86. The Wolverines humiliated the Boilermakers, 104–68. When Indiana, trailing by eight midway in the second half, came back to beat Ohio State 90–81 in the home finale for Alford, Thomas and Meier, the two teams had tied for the Big Ten title with 15–3 records. It was Knight’s eighth Big Ten championship as a coach, breaking the record of seven held by Fred Taylor. Knight had played on three of those seven Taylor-coached teams at Ohio State, meaning that in nineteen Big Ten seasons as a coach and player he had been part of eleven championships.
At least as important as the title, Purdue’s loss changed the seedings for the NCAA tournament. If Purdue had beaten Michigan, it would have been the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional. Indiana would have gone back to the Eastern Regional—and back to Syracuse, site of the Cleveland State nightmare—as a No. 2 seed. But when Purdue got hammered, it dropped from a top seed to a No. 3 seed, and the Hoosiers slid right into their No. 1 spot in the Midwest.
That meant that to reach the Final Four, Indiana would only have to travel forty-five miles north to Indianapolis, and then a hundred miles east to Cincinnati. Home cooking, but more important, lots of home fans.
They proved important that first weekend. The opening game was a 92–58 breeze past Fairfield, hardly surprising since Indiana was the No. 2 seed in the sixty-four-team field, and Fairfield was No. 63. But the second-round game was against Auburn, one of those talented but inconsistent Southeast Conference teams.
The Tigers came out blazing. Within six minutes they led 24–10, and the 34,576 in the Hoosier Dome were in shock. But Thomas and Alford got hot, the officials—apparently intimidated by Knight—made some strange calls against Auburn, and the game swung completely around very quickly. IU got even at 40–40 with 5:38 left, led 53–48 at the half and blew to a 107–90 victory. That they were able to play at that quick a pace that effectively against athletes like Auburn had was very encouraging to Knight. He would admit later that after the Auburn game he began thinking his team just might be good enough to win the whole thing.
The Auburn victory set up one of those matchups Knight would just as soon never deal with. The round-of-sixteen opponent would be Duke, and that meant coaching against Krzyzewski. Of all his proteges who have gone on to become head coaches, Krzyzewski is not only the most successful, but the one closest to Knight. He had done a brilliant job getting this Duke team to the round-of-sixteen one year after it lost four starters off the team that reached the NCAA championship game.
It was an awkward week for both men. Indiana was clearly the better team, but Krzyzewski harbored the belief—quietly—that if he could get a good performance from his best shooter, guard Kevin Strickland, an upset was possible. The two coaches talked early in the week. Knight even offered to talk to any members of the North Carolina media Krzyzewski asked him to talk to. Krzyzewski was asked about the relationship so many times that he finally said one day, “You know, this game is turning into forty ways to say I love you.”
There was no sign of love once the game started. Duke was ready to play, and led 29–21 early. But, just as it had done against Auburn, Indiana got on a roll. A couple of stupid plays by Duke, some hot shooting by Smart and Calloway, and it was 49–39 at halftime. Duke hung in, though, and when Tommy Amaker buried a three-pointer with three minutes left, the lead was 78–76.
Suddenly, the Hoosiers faced a crucial possession. They had not expected this kind of comeback. Duke had confidence on offense, and the way it played defense, if it ever got a lead. . .
It never did. Alford shot-faked, drove the lane—a surprise to the Duke players—and coolly hit a reverse layup. It was 80–76. Strickland missed a jumper and Smart hit a drive of his own. That was it. Ballgame. Strickland had shot five-of-fifteen. Krzyzewski had been right. If he had played well, Duke might have pulled the upset.
But it didn’t, and the Hoosiers were in the final eight. Knight was subdued after the game. There was no real joy in beating Krzyzewski. He and the coaches went to work preparing for LSU as soon as they returned to the hotel that night.
LSU. That meant Dale Brown, one of Knight’s least favorite coaches, and Knight’s least favorite group of fans, dating back to the Tiger-bait incident in Philadelphia in 1981. What’s more, although LSU was only 24–14, it had the kind of athletes that could give Indiana trouble. Looking at the tape Saturday night, Knight commented, “How in the world did that son-of-a-bitch [Brown] ever lose fourteen games with this team?”
That seemed like a reasonable question the next day. From the start, Garrett could not handle 6–8 Nikita Wilson inside. LSU’s guards were quick and slick. Indiana was leading 18–17 with 11:39 left in the first half when Thomas was called for three seconds. Knight did not see and could not hear the call. He asked for an explanation. He got none. Angry, he walked out of the coaches’ box to find out what the call was.
As soon as he left the box, referee Tom Fraim had no choice. He nailed Knight with a technical foul. Knight went slightly crazy. He screamed. He yelled. He stormed to the scorer’s table, where Gene Corrigan, representing the NCAA Tournament Committee, was sitting. He told Corrigan just what he thought of the situation, banging his hand on the table and on the phone next to Corrigan. Amazingly, Knight was not hit with another technical. Almost as amazingly, the technical was only Knight’s second of the season, proof of his newfound self-control on the bench. Now, though, facing Dale Brown with a Final Four trip on the line, he was not so controlled.
This was also a classic case of an official being intimidated by Knight. Fraim, one of the best officials in the country, would admit later that he probably should have given Knight a second technical. Furthermore, he conceded that he had hesitated because he believed if he gave Knight another tech, Knight would get even angrier and probably earn a third technical—and ejection from the game. Not wanting to deal with that, Fraim let Knight run amok.
Interestingly, none of the three officials working the game advanced to the Final Four. The main reason, as it turned out, was their failure to deal more firmly with Knight.
The technical cost the Hoosiers only one point, and they led at halftime, 47–46. But LSU took command early in the second half, leading 63–51 after a ferocious Wilson dunk with 12:24 left. It didn’t look good for the Hoosiers. It looked worse several minutes later when Calloway went down, his knee hurt again. He limped off with Garl, his season—and his team’s—seemingly over. By the time the two of them came back to the bench, it was 75–66 LSU, and the clock was down to 4:38.
Under the stands, Calloway had told Garl he felt okay, that he could play. Garl had no choice but to take his word. He told the coaches Calloway could play.
Slowly, Indiana rallied. Hillman came off the bench to produce a vital three-point play. Brown helped by going to a spread offense. That kept the ball away from Wilson. The Hoosiers kept creeping back. Smart made it 76–75 with forty seconds left. Indiana would have to foul. It did, going after freshman point guard Fess Irvin with twenty-six seconds to go. Irvin had played superbly, with fourteen points and three assists. But the pressure got to him. His free throw was a brick.
Down came Indiana with a chance to win. Knight would never call time in this situation. He always felt his players had a better handle on what to do than the opponents. The clock ran down. The ball went inside to Thomas. He shot-faked and went up, thinking he was going to get hammered. He was off-balance when he shot from ten feet out in the lane, and the shot was woeful—short and to the right. An airball.
But there was Calloway, swooping in as if he had never had a knee injury. He grabbed the ball in the air, and in one motion banked it in. It was 77–76, Indiana. Basket by Calloway. Calloway, from Cincinnati, in Cincinnati. Calloway, who had been reminded time and again in practice that he had played for a loser in high school and would have to prove to his college coach that he was a winner. “Talent will only take you so far, Ricky. . ..”
It wasn’t talent that had put Calloway in that spot. It was grit and smarts and, above all, being a winner. In the stands, Calloway’s divorced parents each leaped straight into the air as their son’s shot fell through.
LSU still had six seconds to get off a shot. It got a good one, a turnaround jumper in the lane by Wilson. But it hit the front rim. Time ran out. Indiana was going to New Orleans. Knight couldn’t resist one final swipe at Dal Brown. Describing the last play on national TV, he made direct reference to Brown’s changing defense, the “freak defense,” as Brown called it. “On the last play,” Knight said, “we used our freak offense.”
The Final Week would be hectic. This would be an entourage week for Knight. Friends would fly into New Orleans from all over the country to hang out with Knight. Johnny Bench, the former Cincinnati Reds catcher, was there. John Havlicek, Knight’s old teammate. David Israel, the former Chicago Tribune columnist, now working in television in Los Angeles. And others. And the usual members of the entourage. The Indiana plane had to make three separate trips to New Orleans before the team left on Friday.
They arrived Friday afternoon, almost forty-eight hours after Syracuse, Providence and Nevada–Las Vegas, and late for their scheduled practice because of hundred-mile-per-hour headwinds. Knight was in a good mood, happy to be in the spotlight and in his fourth Final Four.
The semifinal opponent was Nevada-Las Vegas. The Rebels were 37–1, ranked No. 1, and the favorites to win the tournament—except among basketball people, most of whom picked Indiana. Knight was worried about Armon Gilliam, UNLV’s 6-9 All-America, a superb player. He was afraid he might dominate the game.
He wasn’t far wrong. Gilliam, despite double-and triple-teaming, scored thirty-two points. What’s more, Freddie Banks, UNLV’s mad bomber, banged in thirty-eight points, making ten three-point shots from every conceivable spot on the floor. But Gilliam and Banks didn’t get enough help. Knight had decided not to guard point Mark Wade, a great passer but a poor shooter. Wade didn’t hit a shot until the last five seconds of the game.
In the meantime, Alford was superb, hitting ten-of-nineteen from the floor and eleven-of-thirteen from the foul line. Both misses came on a two-shot foul in the second half, the first time in his college career Alford had missed twice in one sequence. He never missed again, though.
The game was Indiana’s almost throughout. Vegas made a last desperate run, cutting a 90–80 lead to 92–88 with 1:11 left. But Banks ran out of ammunition in the final minute, missing two shots from the field, and a free throw when the lead could have been cut to two. The final was 97–93. Indiana would play Syracuse for the national championship.
By now, Knight was as thrilled with this team as with any he had ever coached. This was not a dominating team like the two that had won national championships for him in the past. Those teams had run over the NCAA tournament like an eighteen-wheel truck. This team had been behind in every game it played in the tournament—except against Fairfield—and kept finding ways to win.
And then there was Alford. With the end of the Little Kid’s career now plainly in view, Knight was already becoming nostalgic. He talked about how Alford got so much out of his talent, how much he admired his toughness, how much he would be missed.
Alford was already taking his place in that great tradition of Indiana basketball under Knight. The way the inner circle told it now when the Mentor wasn’t around, Quinn Buckner was the man who invented basketball, Randy Wittman was the man who perfected basketball, Alford was the man who played basketball the way it should be played and Damon Bailey would be the man who took basketball to a new dimension.
Alford laughed at all this, remembering the many evenings when he had been the world’s worst player. At the Sunday press conference before the title game someone asked Alford to talk about his four years under Knight. With a glance at his coach, Alford said, “I’ve survived four years and I’ve only got one game left. I’m not going to blow it now.”
He didn’t say another word. The Little Kid had always been smart.
They went through all the rituals in those last twenty-four hours. There was a small glitch when they arrived at the Superdome to practice Sunday. Syracuse’s practice uniforms had been stolen and their practice had started forty-five minutes late. They were still on the floor. Knight was angry until what had happened was explained to him. “Tell them to take all the time they need,” he said.
They looked at tape in the locker room until Syracuse left. Later, Knight would tell people that practicing that day had probably been a mistake. The team was drained from the up-and-down game against Vegas. Just shooting and walking through would have been a better idea, Knight thought.
On game day, they walked through at the hotel and listened to Havlicek and Buckner, just as the ’81 team had done before playing North Carolina. Before they left the hotel, Garl made arrangements for a postgame feast. “If we lose,” he told the banquet manager, “we’ll still pay, but we won’t be here to eat.”
The game was everything a national championship game should be. It was 34–33 Indiana at halftime when Alford tossed in a three-pointer at the buzzer. Remembering that Wittman had made a jumper to put IU ahead of North Carolina 27–26 in 1981 never to trail again, Hammel saw the shot as a potential harbinger.
“Randy Wittman,” he said softly as the teams left the floor.
Not this time. Syracuse took the lead on two free throws by Seikaly fifty-two seconds into the half. Seikaly had collided in the lane with Calloway on the play. Calloway went down, a bone in his wrist broken. But he said nothing at the time and kept playing. Only after the game did he tell Garl, “I think I broke my wrist.”
Syracuse, playing in its first national championship game, was not going to go away. The Orangemen led 52–44 with 13:09 left. Indiana somehow came up with a 10–0 surge. Hillman was playing now for Calloway, who would not score in the game.
Hillman had initially come in for Smart, who had been yanked with 16:41 left because of a bad pass. But Knight wasn’t angry; he just wanted to settle him down. As Smart came out, Knight tapped him on the rear end and said, “Be ready to go right back in.” Kohn Smith grabbed Smart and reminded him that there was plenty of time left and no need to rush anything.
Smart came back for Hillman with 12:12 left. Eight seconds later, Hillman replaced Calloway for the rest of the night.
The last ten minutes of the game belong in a time capsule. Every possession was tight-throat time, a little bit tighter each time. The lead and the momentum seesawed until Syracuse’s Howard Triche hit a jumper from the lane to make it 72–70 Syracuse with fifty-seven seconds left. This was ironic. Knight had ordered his players to let Triche shoot most of the night, and the strategy had paid off. He was two-for-eight until that shot. But it dropped.
Then Smart, who had been spectacular down the stretch, missed a baby-jumper on the baseline. Triche grabbed the weakside rebound with thirty-eight seconds left, and Alford fouled him immediately.
The game was in Syracuse’s hands now. Triche made the first free throw, but missed the second. Smart grabbed the rebound, raced through the defense and hit from the lane to make it 73–72 with thirty seconds to go. Indiana called time.
If Jim Boeheim, who had coached a wonderful game all night, made a mistake, it was here. Instead of running an inbounds play to get the ball to one of his guards, Sherman Douglas or Greg Monroe, both good foul shooters, he inbounded to Seikaly, who passed to freshman Derrick Coleman. He was fouled with twenty-eight seconds to go. Knight called time again to let Coleman think.
Coleman had been remarkable all evening, with nineteen rebounds. But here, he turned freshman, missing the free throw badly. Thomas rebounded—Syracuse kept all its players back to avoid fouling—and Indiana came down with the national championship hanging in the balance.
Once again, Knight didn’t call time. Whether it was Assembly Hall in October or the Superdome in March, it was just a matter of running the offense. Alford, who had twenty-three points, was the first choice to shoot. But Syracuse was in a box-and-one defense, with the very quick Douglas dogging Alford’s every step.
Thomas, looking to screen for Alford, finally stepped into the low post. Ten seconds were left when he took the ball and turned to find Coleman in his face. Instinct took over here—four years of developed instinct. It was almost as if Thomas could hear Knight’s voice inside his head: “Shot-fake Daryl, shot-fake!” He shot-faked. Coleman didn’t budge.
Almost any player in that situation, time running out, national title at stake, would have panicked. But all those dreary nights in Assembly Hall were at work now. The voice was inside Thomas’s head: “Don’t force a bad shot. Never force a bad shot.”
Thomas looked and spotted Smart cutting from the top of the key towards the baseline. Calmly, as if it were just another Sunday scrimmage, he flipped the ball back to him. Smart took one dribble to his left, flew into the air and shot. Triche, who had seen Smart come open, flew at him, arms waving. Smart was slightly off balance as he went up from sixteen feet, but the shot was true all the way. It hit the bottom of the net as the clock rolled from five seconds to four.
The Syracuse players were stunned. For almost three seconds, no one moved to call time out. By the time they did, only one second was left. It was not enough time. Smart stole the last desperate in-bound pass and hurled the ball to the heavens.
They jumped on each other, pummeled each other and cried. Alford kept screeching “Yes, yes” to anyone who would listen. Kohn Smith, who had soothed so many tears, shed his own unabashedly. Knight just watched it all, accepting congratulations all around, knowing he had become only the third coach in history to win at least three national titles. (John Wooden had ten; Adolph Rupp, four.)
When they gave him his championship watch on the victory podium he looked up at the thousands of red-and-white-clad fans and waved, a huge grin on his face. Truly, he was overjoyed by this championship.
Finally, they went back to the locker room. When there was quiet, Knight spoke briefly. “What you did,” he told them, “was refuse to lose. You’ve been that kind of team all year. I want you to know I would have been just as proud of you if you had lost.”
Then he left them to the celebration they had worked so hard to earn. The victory meal cost $3,500. No one at Indiana would mind a bit. It had been 765 days since Knight had thrown the chair. He had come a very long way from that moment to this one.
In the aftermath of victory, there was still the future. Alford, who finished his career with 2,415 points, would move on to the NBA and huge endorsement dollars. They were banging on his door from the morning he got home from New Orleans.
Indiana, even without Alford, Thomas and Meier, would be very good again in 1988. Two freshman guards, one a shooter, one a pure point guard (something the team has not had since 1981), had been signed from Marion High School, the three-time state champion. One of Garrett’s teammates from San Francisco City would also become a Hoosier. The JUCO experiment was now a part of life at Indiana. Already a JUCO from Kansas had committed to attend in the fall of 1988.
Knight had signed a contract extension at midseason that would keep him at Indiana until 1997—at least. If he averaged twenty-seven victories a year in those ten seasons he would have (a reasonable figure to hope for) 738 career victories at age fifty-six, and would only be 137 shy of Adolph Rupp’s all-time record.
There was one final irony at the end of the two-year road that had led from the chair-throw to Smart’s jump shot. Three days after winning the championship, Indiana was honored by President Ronald Reagan at the White House. This was standard fare for championship teams, but a thrill for Knight, a staunch Republican who twice voted for Reagan.
But a few days later, Knight received a letter from another Republican president: Richard M. Nixon. The former president congratulated Knight on his team’s victory and praised him highly. Finally, Nixon wrote, “This has been a great year for you. Not only did your team win the national championship, but your autobiography is No. 1 on the national bestseller list.”
The autobiography has yet to be written. But the story that Knight, his coaches and his basketball players wrote in the last two years is truly an extraordinary one.