Mellow? Knight Says He’s Still Cranky After All These Years

Has Bob Knight mellowed after 20 years as Indiana’s basketball coach? Knight, 50, doesn’t think so, and some of his former players aren’t so sure.

“I don’t think I am any different than when I came here,” Knight told the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal. “There are some things that greatly irritate me today, just as there were some things that greatly irritated me 20 years ago. But then there are things that please me, just like then.”

Frank Wilson, a junior during Knight’s first season at Indiana, said: “He’s different in some ways. Like this year, he used a lot of different players to try to keep them all happy, which was something he didn’t used to do.

“Some people may think that’s mellowing, but if you don’t do things his way, I don’t think you’d find he’s mellowed.”

Add Knight: John Kamstra, one of Knight’s first recruits, recalled that Knight wouldn’t allow his players to take water breaks during practice. “We’d have the managers soak towels and hang them at the end of the court, and when he wasn’t looking, we’d suck water off the towels,” Kamstra said.

Knight now admits that his water policy was stupid.

Trivia time: USC is represented by only two male athletes in the NCAA Track and Field Championships at Eugene, Ore., this week. The Trojans won in 1943 with only four athletes. Can you name them?

Free advice: Kerry Eggers of the Oregonian says Pat Riley is asking for a headache if he accepts the job as the New York Knicks’ coach.

“The Knicks are a dismal collection of has-beens, never-weres and head cases,” Eggers wrote. “Does Mr. Greasy Kid Stuff (presumably Riley) want to put himself through the headaches a team like that is sure to cause just to prove he really can coach? Maybe he’s working on an endorsement with Tylenol.”

Add three more: The Adolphus brothers aren’t the only triplets to compete in the same track event in high school, according to reader Shawn Munoz.

The Weaver triplets, Troy, Floyd and Lloyd, competed in the high hurdles and sprint relay at Edgewood High in West Covina in 1982. Their older brother was more renowned in another sport: Mike Weaver, former heavyweight boxing champion.

Curious payoff: Reader John Deichmann wonders whether a racehorse could pay $106 to win and only $2.10 to place and show.

Deichmann said it would have happened in the 1950 Santa Anita Handicap if the longest shot in the field, But Why Not, had won and one of a three-horse entry finished second.

However, But Why Not finished fifth. Noor won the race, and the Calumet entry of Citation, Two Lea and Ponder ran second, third and fourth, creating huge minus place and show pools.

Is Barcelona burning?: The Barcelona Dragons of the World League of American Football have an unusual mascot. It is a mechanical marvel that breathes fire from its mouth and tail after every Barcelona score.

Members of the Orlando (Fla.) Thunder found the mascot to be distracting, to say the least, in the course of a 33-13 defeat, especially when they were showered by sparks.

Trivia answer: Cliff Bourland, Edsel Curry, Jack Trout and Doug Miller.

Quotebook: Bob Schaefer, interim manager of the Kansas City Royals, who was recently replaced by Hal McRae: “I think I had a multi-hour contract.”