Shining Knight
Hundreds of Jayhawk students rattled the pages of the University Daily Kansan in the stands Saturday.
“What’s Up, Knight,” the oversized headline in the student paper blared. “Welcome to Our Conference.”
Welcome, indeed.
Welcome to the rigors of the road in the Big 12.
No. 2 Kansas, playing near the top of its game, smoked No. 24 Texas Tech, 108-81, in rowdy old Allen Fieldhouse--scoring the second-most points against a team coached by Bob Knight. Michigan beat Indiana, 112-64, in 1998.
Kansas Coach Roy Williams dulled the pregame boos for Knight by his support for the coach he considers one of the greatest--a coach for whom Williams’ wife, Wanda, regularly bakes brownies when Knight brings a team to town.
The fans were less hospitable.
“Bobby Knight’s Rage Gauge,” read one sign, with a mug of Knight ready to slide up and down the scale.
“Support Your Local Elderly Secretaries,” another said.
“Grouse,” a sign read, with a picture of a grouse. “Not a Grouse,” another sign said, a reference to the 1999 hunting accident.
“Bobby, Don’t Shoot,” said the next.
What people might find difficult to believe after seeing the Kansas-Texas Tech margin--especially if they saw Kansas lose to UCLA--is that Knight’s team is quite good.
Kansas (21-2, 10-0), with its devastating transition game, is on a seven-game roll--scoring 100 points in three of its last four games, and 98 in the other.
But Texas Tech--even after losing three of its last four--looks not only like an NCAA tournament team but one that could win a first-round game, something so many of Knight’s later Indiana teams failed to do.
The Red Raiders (16-6, 5-5) have beaten Oklahoma and Oklahoma State at home, but are finding the Big 12 outposts rough, going 1-4--including a stumble at Nebraska.
Three nights before the Kansas game, it was No. 14 Oklahoma State that beat Texas Tech--on a tip-in with seconds left. A deafening, orange-clad Cowboy crowd seemingly willed its team to victory as Oklahoma State rallied from 15 points down despite an injury to their best player, Maurice Baker.
“They’re good, I’ll tell you what,” said Oklahoma State Coach Eddie Sutton, whose team lost by 24 at Texas Tech and was lucky to win at home.
Oklahoma Coach Kelvin Sampson’s fourth-ranked Sooners beat Texas Tech by 26 at home, then lost by 13 at Lubbock.
“Coach Knight has done an unbelievable job with that team. He really has,” Sampson said.
“He’s not only coach of the year in this league, I think he’s coach of the year in the country.”
Texas Tech was 9-19 last season before Knight arrived, and only 3-13 in the Big 12.
The Red Raiders--picked to finish 10th in the league by coaches--have turned it around with Knight’s trademark discipline, defense and motion offense.
But don’t be mistaken, he has some players.
There is Andy Ellis, a finesse senior center who shoots the three-pointer and isn’t afraid to bang down low. There’s Andre Emmett, a muscular 6-foot-5 guard with tremendous offensive skills whose game has grown by leaps and bounds in his sophomore season. And there’s Kasib Powell, a sinewy, athletic forward recruited by Knight from a junior college.
“That triangle could play anywhere in the league, outside of maybe Kansas,” Sampson said.
Texas Tech lost to Kansas by such a large margin partly because none of those players logged 30 minutes. Powell suffered an ankle injury and Emmett was hurt by foul trouble and a subpar shooting night. (He made only six of 17 and finished with 15 points.) The Red Raiders also left a sometime starter, guard Nick Valdez, at home with an ankle injury, but walk-on freshman Nathan Doudney was excellent as his replacement.
Knight’s team took a seven-point lead in the first 12 minutes, but Kansas surged ahead on a 13-0 blitz that was the doing of guard Kirk Hinrich--turning in his latest marvelous game with 28 points and three assists--and Drew Gooden, who had 21 points and 10 rebounds.
“What they have, their most important ingredient, is just relentlessness,” Knight said. “We just got beat by a better team.
“They just keep going full-tilt. It’s really fun to watch. They come at you full throttle. If you make a bucket, they’re right back at you. If they throw the ball away, they’re right back at you. There’s a relentlessness to the way they play that’s found very rarely.”
Kansas’ running game was fueled by a 47-36 rebounding edge and Texas Tech’s poor shooting--only 36.7%, allowing the Jayhawks to take the ball off the boards and go.
If Kansas has a vulnerability, it is the size of its three guards--none of them as tall as 6-4--who struggled to shoot over UCLA’s taller perimeter players in their loss at Pauley Pavilion.
Texas Tech took advantage of some of those mismatches early, but the injury to 6-7 Powell and Emmett’s foul trouble spoiled that.
Texas Tech’s flaw is uncertainty at point guard and a certain inability to hold big leads, with the Red Raiders sometimes crumbling in the crunch.
“We’ve had a problem all year long in several different games where we’ve gotten a lead and then it’s like, ‘Well, this game’s over,’” Knight said a few days earlier after late turnovers and failure to block out doomed the Red Raiders against Oklahoma State.
“It’s like we think we’re bringing Randy Johnson in to pitch for the last three outs, and that just doesn’t happen.”
Still, the Kansas players see how much Texas Tech’s team has changed.
“They’re much more disciplined,” Hinrich said. “And they set screens left and right, all kinds of screens, lateral and back. It gets annoying. You have to stay with it.”
Forward Nick Collison agreed.
“I didn’t really notice Coach Knight on the sidelines, but you could tell from the way they played it was his team.”
The Jayhawks understood they were only part of the show Saturday
“It was just weird, all those cameras: He came in, and they all rushed over and we couldn’t even do our layups,” said Hinrich--the sort of player Knight can appreciate, a coach’s kid who does all the right things.
“He tapped me on the rear,” Hinrich said with a faint smile. “I was kind of surprised.”
The fans wanted what one sign called a Texas Technical--but Knight has yet to receive one this season.
He came closest in a meltdown at Oklahoma State, pursuing official Kerry Sitton for not heeding his call for a timeout, but his son Pat Knight, an assistant, helped urge Knight back to the bench.
Against Kansas, he held a grudge for an offensive interference call and also threw a towel. But never mind, so did Williams.
Knight is cognizant of the scrutiny. On good behavior, some say.
A reporter, seemingly trying to bait him, twice asked Knight to step outside into a larger area for the crush of reporters.
The second time, Knight was ready with a retort.
“If I’d have said, ‘Can we step outside,’ you guys would have a headline,” Knight said.