McGUIRE ON KNIGHT: : ‘Doesn’t Know How to Accept Mediocrity . . . Looks for Perfection . . . On Emotional Roller Coaster’

Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight appears to be on an emotional roller coaster, Al McGuire said Tuesday.

“Other coaches are happy when they win. But Coach Knight seems only content when it’s done right,” McGuire said in a telephone interview from Washington.

“You’ll see certain games, they’ll be 20 up and he’s going on like a Neanderthal man,” McGuire said. “He’s coaching against the game. He doesn’t know how to accept mediocrity.”

Knight, who coached the U.S. gold-medal winning team in the Los Angeles Olympics last summer, faces a possible reprimand from the Big Ten in the wake of his ejection from a game against Purdue last Saturday. He was charged with three technical fouls and angrily threw a chair across the court.

Earlier this season, among other things, he benched his star, Steve Alford, and three more of his starters, replacing them in a game against Illinois with freshman players. He also would not let players Mike Giomi and Winston Morgan ride back to Bloomington on the team plane after a game at Ohio State, making them ride instead with the cheerleaders and administrators.

Before the season began, Knight was reprimanded by the Big Ten for missing the annual coaches’ meeting.

McGuire, former Marquette coach and now a basketball television analyst, said: “I personally think he’s been on an emotional roller coaster, and I think the two-year run into the Olympics has to be a strain.

“I know that in coaching--even when I was coaching, and I was one of the relaxed ones, your neck’s popped out and there’s a tenseness in your shoulders. I can just imagine (the strain on Knight). He’s really put three seasons back to back without a bustout, without getting away from it. I think that might be a major contributing factor.”

Knight apologized for the incident Sunday in a formal statement released through the university’s sports information office. Athletic Director Ralph Floyd is preparing a report to the Big Ten, which will decide if any action should be taken, Commissioner Wayne Duke said.

McGuire said that Knight’s indication that the incident stemmed from his frustration with Big Ten officiating is plausible.

“Bob looks for perfection,” McGuire said. “I don’t think it’s possible for refs to hit the limits Bob expects--expects for himself and his team.

“Another thing I think is creating a strain on Coach Knight is he’s been involved in saying certain teams in the Big Ten are cheating,” said McGuire, referring to the reason Knight was believed to have boycotted the conference preseason meeting.

“Where he started wearing a white hat in this, it seems to be affecting him more than the other coaches he says are cheating.”

Knight has never publicly made specific charges against other coaches.

Regarding Saturday’s incident, which stemmed from Knight’s protest of a foul called on one of his players, McGuire said: “I just hope the (Indiana) administration and Duke and the Big Ten understand that Coach Knight made a tremendous sacrifice in coaching the Olympics in L.A. It wouldn’t have been that much of a thing coaching them in Tokyo or London or Munich or Mexico City. But this was in your own backyard (with the Olympic trials in Bloomington), and it was a long, tedious run (for Knight).

McGuire described an interview he had with Knight for NBC in Montana a week after the Olympics.

“Bobby seems to like me. . . . I talked about being Alexander the Great. He started to cry. Here’s a man who has done everything. There aren’t any other mountains to climb, battles to fight.

“He said something that’s really an insight into Coach Knight--’It’s the game. I compete against the game.’ He’s perfected his coaching style to such a degree, it might eventually become an albatross, (because) I don’t think the game can be that perfected,” McGuire said.

“You can’t get to that level. You’re dealing with kids, you’re dealing with intangibles, with referees. There are so many things, you cannot govern them all. I think that may be one of the problems.

“It’s been what he’s done at West Point and Indiana that got him there. Maybe it’s time to readjust a couple degrees,” McGuire said. “All I know is I don’t care if you like or dislike Bobby Knight, there’s no way you can knock his coaching. You can knock the French pastry around it, the salty language and everything else, but you can’t knock his coaching.”