Knight Has Another Bad Day

The kids executed the offense beautifully, played stifling defense, outhustled their opponent and did the little things their demanding coach demanded.

And you know what?

There wasn’t a thing Bob Knight could do about it.

Crowning a monumental day in Chicago for the Missouri Valley Conference, No. 11 Southern Illinois sent No. 6 Texas Tech packing Friday with a 76-68 victory at the United Center in a first-round East Regional game.

Southern Illinois (27-7) will play Georgia on Sunday.

“I thought Southern Illinois played both smarter and harder than we did,” said Knight, Texas Tech’s coach.

Knight’s team, which finishes 23-9 one year after going 9-19, bowed out of the NCAA tournament with hardly a whimper. Since his last Sweet 16 appearance with Indiana in 1994, Knight is 2-7 in seven NCAA tournament appearances.

Southern Illinois took it to Texas Tech at both ends of the court, on offense and defense. The Salukis’ smothering defense and intensity held Texas Tech to 38.8% shooting.

The game started with the focus on the controversial Knight, entering the tournament on a wave of publicity after his successful first season in Lubbock. Knight, though, was somewhat subdued on the bench and the focus quickly turned to the better team.

Fourth-year Southern Illinois Coach Bruce Weber saw plenty of the opposing coach when Knight was at Indiana and Weber was a longtime assistant at Purdue under Gene Keady.

In fact, Weber said Keady offered some words of encouragement in preparation for his game against Knight.

“He said, ‘Don’t let that S.O.B. beat you,’” Weber said Keady.

In the end, Southern Illinois played tougher than Texas Tech and wore the Red Raiders down.

“They wanted a chess match but we had to out-tough them,” Weber said.

Knight has the reputation as the staunch disciplinarian, but it was Weber who made the hard decision to bench two stars, Rolan Roberts and Jermaine Dearman, for the start of Friday’s game because they showed up late to a practice this week.

“I didn’t sleep that night over the decision,” Weber said. “But it’s over and done with. I hope they learned a hard lesson. We survived it.”

More than survive, Dearman and Roberts responded with big games. Dearman finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds; Roberts had 12 points and four rebounds.

Dearman and Roberts dominated inside and allowed teammates to shut down Andre Emmett, one of three Texas Tech scoring cogs who average a combined 50.5 points. Emmett finished with nine points and made only four of 17 shots. Center Andy Ellis and forward Kasib Powell each finished with 19 points.

“I looked up somewhere in the second half and Emmett didn’t have double figures,” Roberts said. “I think we did a good job on their big three.”

Southern Illinois led by only three points at the half but opened the second half with a 9-0 run and controlled the game’s flow. The Salukis’ lead swelled to 16 points with six minutes to play on Dearman’s follow shot.

Knight’s Red Raiders cut the lead to six points two times in the final 1:05 but the outcome was never in serious doubt.

The victory capped a great day for the Missouri Valley Conference, which scored two wins in Chicago. Earlier, No. 5 Creighton upset No. 12 Florida in a double-overtime thriller in a first-round Midwest regional game.

Creighton only got into the NCAA tournament by defeating Southern Illinois in the conference tournament title game, leaving the Salukis to sweat out Selection Sunday before gaining an at-large berth.

“You think about Creighton beating Florida, and I think Southern Illinois is a better team than Creighton,” Knight said.

In fact, Southern Illinois won both regular-season meetings before losing in the conference title game.

“Our goal was to get to the Sweet 16, if you can believe that,” Weber said. “People thought I was nuts.”

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Unhappy Endings

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