Rest In Peace, Bob Knight

Bob Knight died yesterday at the age of 83.  He was the coach of three Indiana basketball teams that won the National Championship, and he was a member of the Ohio State basketball team that won the National Championship in 1960 with a win over Cal in the final game.  Two of his teammates on that Ohio State team were Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek.

To say that Coach Knight was controversial in his demands of his players would be like saying Michaelangelo was good at painting ceilings.  He demanded effort and specific technique from his players; and when they did not deliver either, Coach Knight did not react in a warm and fuzzy manner.  Here is a quote from Coach Knight that might illustrate his thinking on player motivation:

“The greatest motivator in the world is your ass on the bench. Ass meets bench, bench retains ass, ass transmits signals to the brain, brain transmits signals to the body, body gets ass off bench and plays better. It’s a hell of a sequence.”

Knight began his coaching career at Army where one of his point guards was a kid named Mike Krzyzewski – – who went on to have a pretty good coaching career himself.  In fact, Knight was instrumental in getting Krzyzewski the job at Duke because when the job became open, the AD at Duke sought a recommendation from Knight who was at Indiana at the time and Knight suggested Krzyzewski for the job.

For all his less-than-polished edges and his famous tantrums, Bob Knight’s players generally went on in their lives as good citizens and productive members of society.  Maybe it was an admiration within the “Curmudgeon Community” that fostered it, but I was always an admirer of Robert Montgomery Knight.

Rest in peace, Coach Knight.

Since Bob Knight was a pillar in the edifice of college basketball, let me stay with that sport for a while.  There were reports late last week that the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) declared that they were going to change the way they managed and offered up “invitations” to their event.

Starting at the end of this college basketball season in March 2024, the NIT will no longer offer automatic invitations to teams that were regular-season conference champions but who did not win their conference tournament and who did not get a slot in the NCAA Tournament.  Rather, the folks who run the NIT said:

1. The NIT will guarantee two teams from each of six conferences (ACC, Big East, Big-10, Big-12, Pac-12, and SEC).
2. The top two teams in the NET rankings not qualifying for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament from each conference, regardless of win-loss record, will be selected. Additionally, the 12 teams automatically selected will be guaranteed the opportunity to host a game in the first round of the NIT.

[Aside: “NET rankings” are mathematical constructs that replaced the wildly unpopular Ratings Power Index.  Both exercises purport to be able to identify an ordinal ranking of teams even if they have never played one another or comparable stables of opponents.]

I have no problem with Item #1 above.  The NIT is in existence to generate revenue for its owner who just happens to be the NCAA.  The fact of the matter is that second tier schools from the major conferences will attract greater attention than teams from minor conferences whose champs are in the ”Big Dance” mostly as cannon fodder for the dozen or so teams who have a real shot at winning it all.  Think about it:

• If Princeton wins the Ivy League and goes to the NCAA Tournament, how much interest will be generated by inviting Brown to the NIT?
• If Texas A&M-Corpus Christi wins the Southland conference and goes to the NCAA Tournament, how much interest will be generated by inviting McNeese State?
• Ditto for the Horizon Conference and the Summit Conference etc.

At the same time, one can argue that such a move by the NIT to put 12 automatic teams from the “Big Conferences” regardless of won-lost records means that when the NCAA Tournament mavens invite 5 teams from one conference (say the ACC), that means the NIT will guarantee an invitation to -at best- the sixth and seventh best teams in the conference even with losing records for the season.  So, how appealing is that?

I have suggested this format in the past and I offer it up once again as a way to populate the NCAA Tournament and the NIT:

1. The NCAA Selection Committee should choose 96 teams and seed them as best it can from #1 to #96.  There will surely be errors and misjudgments in those seedings, but such errors can be corrected on the court.
2. The Top-32 teams would get a BYE.  Teams 64 seeded #33 through #96 would engage in a play-in tournament round.
3. The 32 winners of the play-in round would be part of the NCAA Tournament and seeded there in the order they were seeded prior to the play-in round.
4. The 32 losers of the play-in round would make up the field for the NIT.

If the Selection Committee is actually doing the job that it was constituted to do, it will be able to recognize an outstanding team from a minor conference that might be overshadowed for a 68-team tournament field and place that team in a seeding between #68 and #96.  If the Committee is not up to that task, then I submit that it is equally not up to the task of selecting and seeding the top 68 teams to make up the NCAA Tournament field.

And of course, congratulations to the Texas Rangers – – winners of the 2023 World Series in 5 games.  This is the first World Series title in franchise history for the Rangers.  Corey Seager was voted the MVP of the Series in what had to be the most obvious selection process of the year.  This marks the second time Seager has been the MVPO of a World Series; only three other players have repeated as Series MVPs:

• Bob Gibson
• Reggie Jackson
• Sandy Koufax

Not a bad list to add one’s name to …

Finally, Bob Knight was an avid fly fisherman and enjoyed fishing trips with one of his childhood heroes, Ted Williams.  So, let me close today with this view of fishing by the American humorist, Don Marquis:

“Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………