Usually, Knight Puts His Foot in His Mouth : College basketball: Indiana coach starts controversy by apparently kicking his son during game.

Indiana Coach Bob Knight, whose legendary temper tantrums have earned him as much attention as his 621 victories, is under criticism once again--this time for kicking his son, Pat, a guard on the No. 12-ranked Hoosiers.

In full view of a sold-out Assembly Hall crowd of 17,357, as well as a national cable television audience, Knight turned his sometimes considerable anger on the junior guard during Tuesday’s 101-82 rout of visiting Notre Dame.

According to several eyewitnesses, the Indiana coach became livid with his son shortly after he threw an errant pass late in the game. The overthrown pass resulted in an easy breakaway basket by the Irish, cutting the Indiana margin at the time to 26 points. And with that, came an outburst from the temperamental Indiana coach.

“There were some (Indiana) warm-ups on the edge of the scorer’s table,” said a Notre Dame official, who asked not to be identified, “and (Knight) throws those up in the air. Then he calls a timeout. The kid (Pat Knight) sits down and (Bob Knight) kicks him in the shin. It’s hard to say how hard he kicked him, but he definitely kicked him.”

Television replays of the incident also showed that the player was grabbed by the shoulders and pushed into the chair by the coach. “But from that point, I couldn’t see anything,” said Hoosier sports information director Gregg Elkin, who was seated nearby.

Shortly after, Pat Knight returned to the game and scored his only two points of the night on a jump shot. The crowd erupted in cheers for Pat, who then directed a verbal jab at his father as he ran up court, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report.

Bob Hammel, sports editor and columnist for the Bloomington Herald-Times and a longtime confidant of Knight, suggested the incident had been blown out of proportion. “Out of the ordinary?” he said. “Yeah, because it’s his son. But he’s going to yell at his son more than anyone else.”

Maybe so, but the treatment of Pat Knight by his father was not received well by Hoosier fans.

“People were yelling and booing,” the Notre Dame official said. “And these weren’t the students. These were the die-hard guys with red sweaters, the boosters. The whole thing was kind of a horror show.”

Also in attendance Tuesday night was Knight’s ex-wife, Nancy, who was visibly upset after witnessing the incident. Shortly after the game, she was seen crying on the shoulder of Notre Dame Coach John MacLeod.

As is often the custom at Indiana, Knight and his players were unavailable for comment after the late-evening game. Indiana Athletic Director Clarence Doninger was out of his office Wednesday afternoon.

Knight and his son have had problems before. In April of 1992, Knight kicked his son off the team after Pat was charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct.

This latest incident produced its share of rumors, including one out of Dallas that the Indiana coach had scheduled a Wednesday afternoon news conference and planned to announce his resignation.

“There’s no press conference,” Elkin said.

There was also some confusion concerning claims that someone in the Assembly Hall crowd had hurled a coin in or toward the Hoosier huddle during the timeout. The Indiana coach was seen arguing with fans after the huddle broke and, according to the Notre Dame official, tossed something away from the sideline moments before the game resumed.

Hammel, however, said he didn’t see anything thrown at Knight.

In a bit of a twist, Knight earlier had requested that the student section remove a sign that mocked the Irish team. The sign read, “You Guys Need Rudy,” in reference to the Notre Dame football walk-on whose life story was made into a movie.

From that point, the students were on their best behavior. The same, it appears, cannot be said of Knight.