Knight Goes Back to Starters, but Loses

Indiana’s Uwe Blab spent half the game on the bench Thursday night, but it wasn’t in Coach Bob Knight’s plan.

It was, however, in Iowa Coach George Raveling’s strategy as the Hawkeyes routed the Hoosiers, 72-59, sending Indiana to its fourth straight Big Ten loss.

Not since 1972 had the Hoosiers lost four straight in the conference, and this time it came under a cloud of controversy. In last Sunday’s loss at Illinois, Knight benched his veteran players, with the exception of the 7-foot-2 Blab, and went with his freshmen.

Thursday night, Knight went back to the upperclassmen, and the Assembly Hall crowd of 17,035 gave a rousing ovation when the veteran starting lineup of Todd Meier, Winston Morgan, Steve Alford, Stew Robinson and Blab was announced before the game.

Alford, a home-state hero, received the largest ovation. Knight was introduced along with Raveling, who assisted him during the Olympics, and the crowd greeted both coaches with cheers.

The cheers subsided once the game was underway and Blab ran into foul trouble. The senior center sat out almost 14 minutes of the first half with three personals and fouled out with 6:11 to play.

“We wanted to pound the ball into Blab to try to get him into foul trouble, because we feel that they are a weaker team on the boards without him,” said Raveling, whose team improved its record to 17-4 overall and 6-2 in the Big Ten.

With Blab out of action, Indiana, which fell to 11-7 and 3-5, couldn’t handle Iowa’s big front line of 6-foot-10 Greg Stokes, 6-11 Michael Payne and 6-8 Gerry Wright.

“If we’re trying to get our inside game going, we’re going to have trouble when Blab gets in foul trouble,” Knight said. “Blab continued to play well tonight. He’s played well ever since Christmas. We didn’t give Blab a lot of help.”

Despite the foul trouble, Blab paced the Hoosiers in scoring with 17 points. Stokes led all scorers with 21 points and also had 10 rebounds as Iowa outrebounded Indiana, 39-22.

Alford, a sophomore, hit five straight outside jumpers in the first half but didn’t connect in the second half until there was 2:19 left in the game. He finished with 12 points.

After the game, Knight made no reference to the turmoil caused by benching his veterans. And Raveling said: “I have enough problems coaching Iowa without worrying about what other coaches are doing in the Big Ten.”

Knight did say: “In the first 10 minutes of the second half, when we were playing well offensively, they made the plays they had to. That’s all there is to it.”