NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Midwest Regional : Spotlight Is on the Coaches on Eve of Indiana-LSU Showdown

The question that has been posed to Louisiana State Coach Dale Brown is whether his team has reached today’s NCAA Midwest championship game by doing the Freak, or by doing a bump and grind that would be better suited for a wrestling ring than a basketball court.

Will the underdog Tigers (they may adopt underdog as part of their nickname) unleash their Freak Defense, whatever that is, on Bob Knight and his Indiana Hoosiers, or will they try to push and shove their way to New Orleans and a spot in the NCAA Final Four?

DePaul Coach Joey Meyer stopped slightly short of saying his inside players were mugged in front of more than 16,000 witnesses after LSU sent the Blue Demons packing with a 63-58 win in Friday night’s semifinals. The Tigers were soooooo physical, he said.

Brown’s reaction: “I’ve been in this business for 30 years, and I’ve never told anybody to step on a guy’s toes, pull his trunks, tip his elbow or poke him in the stomach. If you say gutty and aggressive, yes. But I don’t think we’re a physical team.

“I even see officials bump into each other once in a while. I guess that means they’re getting more physical, too.”

Brown’s gift of gab and Knight’s mere presence are part of what makes this such an intriguing game. It’s top-seeded Indiana (27-4) against 10th-seeded LSU (24-14), but there’s more to it than that. It’s a meeting of two of college basketball’s most notable personalities. It’s a showcase for a few players who might have never imagined getting so intimate with the Big Time.

It will say “basketball coach” on the occupation line of Brown’s income tax return, but that’s an oversimplification. He’s actually part basketball coach, part evangelist, part social commentator, and part used-car salesman.

In a Saturday press conference, Brown was reluctant to talk about the razor-sharp contrasts between he and his counterpart. Brown said he simply didn’t want to start a war of words before today’s game.

“Every other day, I get diarrhea of the mouth,” Brown explained. “But I’m trying to stay away from that.”

Knight was more willing.

“(Brown) and I don’t necessarily go about things the same way, but what he has done has worked for him and has been very successful,” he said. “Maybe somebody else does it the way he does and can’t bring it off because they don’t have the personality to bring it off. Just as the way I coach isn’t suited for everybody’s personality.”

Said LSU guard Anthony Wilson, when asked for an outsider’s opinion: “(Brown) is more or less a motivator. So is Coach Knight, but I think he stresses the X’s and O’s of the game a little more, whereas (Brown) stresses heart and being together and love and teamwork.”

True. It’s a little difficult to imagine Knight calling a timeout, gathering his players around him and saying: “It’s all right, guys. Love will keep us together.”

Knight’s style lends itself more to point-blank instructions and blunt actions than pep talks and preaching. Case in point: The late surge of Hooiser forward Rick Calloway, who had a season-high 21 points in Indiana’s 88-82 semifinal victory over Duke Friday night.

“I think Calloway’s improvement had a lot to do with his being benched when we played Ohio State,” Knight said. “You can talk about all the greatest motivational speeches and devices in the world, but I think the greatest motivator of all is ‘Your butt on the bench.’

“Butt meets bench. Bench retains butt. Butt transmits signal to brain. Brain transmits signal to body. Body gets butt off the bench and plays good. I think it’s a helluva sequence.”

Enough, for now, of the differences between Knight and Dale. A look at some of the players who, for a variety of reasons, are elated to be here:

--Indiana guard Keith Smart, who is averaging 15 points per game in this tournament. Smart went to McKinley High School in Baton Rouge, La., just a few blocks from the LSU campus. But he stood only 5 feet 7 inches as a senior, and played in only three varsity games that year because of a broken arm. He wasn’t exactly besieged with offers of college scholarships. He went to Garden City Junior College, averaged 21.9 points and 8 rebounds as a sophomore and, at 6 foot 1, landed a spot at Indiana. Now, he’s one game away from returning home for some big fun on the Bayou.

Said Brown: “His story I really like . . . a guy who came from nowhere to the top. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, not having the credentials. He could have ended up standing on a street corner in Baton Rouge sniffing glue right now. He’s not, and I applaud him for that.”

--LSU guard Darryl Joe, who was held scoreless against DePaul, but had 47 points in the Tigers’ tournament wins over Georgia Tech and Temple. As a prep, Joe was an unknown guard from Dallas who ended up at Panola Junior College. From there, he called an LSU assistant coach and asked him to come watch him play in a JC All-Star game. That coach gave him a scholarship. “He kind of recruited us,” Brown said.

--LSU center Nikita Wilson, who has scored 58 points and is shooting 60.4% from the field in the tournament. Wilson was academically ineligible last season and had to miss the Tigers’ last 20 games, including their stunning surge to the Final Four. Today, he gets another chance.

Midwest Notes

These teams last met in the 1981 NCAA semifinals in Philadelphia. Indiana came away with a 67-49 win, then went on to beat North Carolina, 63-50, in the championship game. . . . Indiana forward Daryl Thomas, on whether he is concerned about trying to figure out LSU’s Freak Defense: “It’s not really up to us to figure out. That’s Coach (Knight’s) job.” . . . Bob Knight has joined forces with the enemy. Knight is writing a series of six syndicated columns during the NCAA tournament. Said the author: “I’ve always said anybody can write. I mean, I proved that. It’s been good. I don’t have 17,000 people telling me how to write.” LSU Coach Dale Brown is writing columns for a New Orleans newspaper during the tournament, prompting one reporter to ask Knight if having two part-time sportswriters in the Midwest championship game has lowered the standard of coaching. “I think it’s probably raised the standard of sportswriting,” Knight said.