They Can Put This Baby to Bed

Now that Bob Knight has thrown out his ceremonial first-round defeat, can we finally get this NCAA tournament started?

For 40 days and 40 Knights, the sport of college basketBob has been held hostage by a glower and a sweater. Every time you tuned into ESPN, you were pummeled with shameless wall-to-wall huckstering for a very bad movie about Bob Knight. (“Brian Dennehy is Bobby Knight!” It was a laugh riot.) With your season on the brink of madness, you switched over to CBS, which couldn’t stop plugging a new show featuring a star who startles grown-ups with his infantile behavior and the unbelievable words that come out of his mouth--yet one more Bob Knight vehicle, evidently.

“Baby Bob,” CBS is calling it.

Friday night, the cross-promotion got a little out of hand.

First you had No. 6 Texas Tech against No. 11 Southern Illinois in the East Regional. Bob Knight favored in a first-round game. Amazing.

Then CBS interrupted it, frequently, with promos for “Baby Bob.” A television program about a baby boy who talks like an adult. Amazing.

But not quite as amazing as CBS play-by-play broadcaster Tim Brando telling viewers waiting for the second half of Texas Tech-Southern Illinois, “When Baby Bob opens his mouth, you won’t believe your ears. Here, we have Big Bob.”

Big Bob getting another Big L in the opening round of the Big Dance. After losing four first-rounders in his last six NCAA appearances with Indiana, Knight opened his Texas Tech tenure with a 76-68 defeat to the mighty Salukis, champions of the Missouri Valley Conference, pride of Carbondale.

Big Bob was headed for summer hiatus, but CBS couldn’t stop plugging.

With Tech down by nine points midway through the second half, Brando began musing about the Red Raiders’ most recent game, a 40-point loss to Kansas in the Big 12 conference tournament. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t qualify as a positive for a team heading into the NCAAs. Unless, according to Brando, that team is lucky enough to have its bench graced by the Wizard of Lubbock.

“There are many coaches out there who would love to have the knowledge to prepare a team after that kind of loss,” Brando rhapsodized. “You want it to end and end quickly and move on to the next game. The accomplishment of this team, [going] from nine wins to 23, is pretty incredible.”

Yeah, but what about those first-round losses? Brando couldn’t ignore them, not when a graphic listing them all was soon staring him in the face.

He could, however, try to alibi them away.

“But those years were in Indiana,” Brando said. “[This is] a refreshing breath of new Texas air for Bob Knight.”

And: “You know, I’ve always felt this way about those types of stats--you have to get there a lot to create those types of numbers. And he’s been there many, many times.”

Knight was about to lose for the seventh time in nine NCAA games. This time, he would lose to Southern Illinois Coach Bruce Weber, a longtime Purdue assistant. Brando attributed Weber’s success Friday night to “all those years coaching against Knight.” Well, of course.

Finally, as the last seconds ticked down on the Red Raiders’ season, Brando christened it “a remarkable year for Bob Knight.... You talk about the perfect fit. I think that new sweater does fit well in Lubbock.”

Right about then, Steve Lavin was in Pittsburgh, giving his UCLA players final instructions before their NCAA opener against Mississippi--and probably wondering what he has to do to get Brando as his play-by-play man.

Instead, he had Verne Lundquist, who described Lavin as “the much-criticized UCLA coach ... the topic of incessant conversation on radio talk shows in Southern California.”

Lundquist and his partner, Bill Raftery, had done their homework. They were also in the process of watching the Bruins slice Mississippi’s defense to shreds. That type of talent, coupled with a 19-11 regular-season record, does tend to get UCLA observers conversing incessantly.

“He does take some heat, doesn’t he?” Raftery said of Lavin.

“He enjoys what he’s doing, he enjoys his team and they seem to enjoy him. Everybody expects so much; we all know what John Wooden accomplished. I think it’s the toughest job in the country. Nobody has forgotten the past.”

Lavin won this one, 80-58. Nobody still has forgotten the past. Or the temperature on the thermostat. All this victory did for Lavin was buy him some time, until Sunday’s better-win-it-or-else matchup against the West Region’s No.1-seeded team, Cincinnati.

The final buzzer was still ringing in his ears when Lavin shook hands with Mississippi’s 36-year-old coach, Rod Barnes. Sizing up the scene, Lundquist described them as “two young men in a profession that will make you age in a hurry.”

One of them does have a knack for winning first-round NCAA games. Maybe that doesn’t count for much in Westwood. But it does one-up a certain legend in Lubbock now getting ready for fishing season.