Knight Up to New Tricks After Win

Indiana Coach Bob Knight, who blew up at reporters after a game last week, started Tuesday night’s postgame news conference with a sarcastic walk through the Assembly Hall media room, making small talk as he shook everyone’s hand.

After the No. 14 Hoosiers’ 85-50 victory over Michigan at Bloomington, Ind., instead of going to the podium at the front of the media room as usual, Knight began walking through the rows of writers and photographers, shaking hands with each one, offering such pleasantries as “How are you?” “Nice to see you.” “You doing all right?” “How are you doing?”

Then he walked to the microphone and asked the 60-some people in the room, “Did I miss anybody?

“Does anybody want to hold a press conference on handshakes or anything now?”

A week earlier, Knight lashed out at the media for repeated questions about his first game against Iowa Coach Steve Alford, who played for Knight and led the Hoosiers to the 1987 NCAA championship.

Alford, in earlier interviews, had said Knight hadn’t spoken to him since he was hired as coach at Iowa last spring.

Kirk Haston had 19 points and 11 rebounds and scored eight points during a 25-2 first-half run that carried the Hoosiers, 15-3 overall and 5-2 in the Big Ten, over the Wolverines (12-5, 3-3).

“We’ve played on occasion as well as we played and then haven’t been able to maintain the advantage that we created,” Knight said. “Tonight we did, and were able to do it the entire ball game,”

Knight yanked most of his starters midway through the second half, and Indiana took its biggest lead at 76-38 on a three-point basket by Luke Jimenez with 5:45 to play.

No. 11 Tennessee 105, No. 7 Auburn 76--Vincent Yarbrough scored 24 points to lead the Volunteers (17-2, 5-1) over the Tigers (16-3, 4-2) in an Southeastern Conference game at Knoxville, Tenn.

Auburn, which lost in overtime to Mississippi on Saturday, lost consecutive games for the first time since 1997-98.

A crowd of 19,405 chanted “Overrated, overrated” as the Volunteers pulled away in the second half to avenge a 28-point defeat at Auburn last year.

“I thought we came out ready to play,” Tennessee Coach Jerry Green said.

The Tigers, playing their fourth game in nine days, suffered their worst loss in four years.

“Our legs were gone,” Coach Cliff Ellis said.

The Volunteers used a pair of 9-0 runs in the first half to take a 49-32 halftime lead.

No. 17 Texas 82, Nebraska 55--The Longhorns (13-5, 5-1) held the Cornhuskers (9-10, 2-4) to five points in the final 11 minutes of the first half to win a Big 12 Conference game at Austin, Texas.

No. 24 Temple 59, Xavier 40--Mark Karcher scored 19 points as the Owls (13-4, 6-1) beat the Musketeers (11-7, 2-4) in an Atlantic 10 game at Philadelphia.

Xavier was two for 15 with nine turnovers in the first 8 1/2 minutes and yet only trailed 6-4.

No. 25 St. John’s 61, Rutgers 57--Erick Barkley scored 18 points, including the final five of the game for the Red Storm (13-4, 5-1) in a poorly played Big East game at New York.

Dahntay Jones led Rutgers (11-7, 3-3) with 18 points and 10 rebounds.

WOMEN

No. 6 Iowa State 64, Kansas State 61--Desiree Francis scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the Cyclones (15-2, 6-0) survived their worst shooting of the season to beat the Wildcats (9-11, 2-5) in a Big 12 game at Ames, Iowa.

A three-point shot by Kansas State’s Angie Finkes bounced off the rim at the buzzer.

It was the last of five consecutive misses by the Wildcats in the final minute.

No. 12 Louisiana State 87, New Orleans 54--April Brown scored 16 points as the Lady Tigers (15-3) beat the Lady Privateers (7-8) at Baton Rouge, La.

No. 15 UC Santa Barbara 61, Vanderbilt 48--Erin Buescher scored 21 points and grabbed 13 rebounds as the Lady Gauchos (15-3) pulled away in the second half. Vanderbilt led, 27-26, at halftime.