Knight to Show What He’s All a Tout

Former Indiana coach Bob Knight, never shy about offering his opinions, has been hired by an Internet company to post his NCAA basketball tournament picks online.

A Reston, Va.-based Internet company, https://Sandbox.com, will pay Knight about $50,000 to pick the winners of the 64-team field.

The company, which runs a variety of fantasy sports leagues, also has a contest in which anyone who picks all 63 NCAA tournament game winners gets $10 million.

In a prepared statement, Knight said, “I look forward to matching wits against millions of college hoops fans.”

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Nevada Las Vegas president Carol Harter plans to meet today with Rick Pitino to try to convince him to take over the university’s basketball program. Harter said no offer is likely to be made at the meeting. . . . Junior guard Clarence Gilbert, Missouri’s top scorer at 17 points a game with Kareem Rush sidelined for the season, was suspended for at least one game for “undisclosed internal disciplinary reasons,” according to the school. Gilbert will not make the trip for Sunday’s game at No. 12 Iowa State in which Missouri (15-7 overall, 6-3 in the Big 12) will have eight scholarship players and two walk-ons available. Rush was averaging a Big 12-leading 21.9 points a game before tearing ligaments in his left thumb Monday in a 69-66 loss at Oklahoma State.

Junior forward Rodney Smith, Purdue’s leading scorer (10.9 points) and second-leading rebounder (5.1), is expected to be sidelined for the season because of a broken right foot suffered in Wednesday’s 73-54 loss at Wisconsin. On Monday it was learned that Purdue (13-8, 5-5 in the Big 10) probably lost junior center John Allison, the team’s third-leading scorer (10.9 points) and top rebounder (5.6), for the season because of a broken right foot suffered in practice. . . . Freshman guard Robert Todd will not play in the remainder of Air Force’s games because of a violation of academy rules. Todd is the second-leading scorer (10.7 points a game) for Air Force (6-15, 1-6 in the Mountain West) and is second in the conference in three-point shooting accuracy (45.7%).