The Edge of Knight

The church doors opened Sunday morning, and there among the dark suits were splashes of red--children in Indiana sweatshirts, women in red coats, men in IU jackets.

“It’s been 10 years since we were in the Final Four, 15 since we’ve had a national championship,” parishioner Ed Dolan said as the congregation spilled out of St. Charles Church. “Everybody’s real excited.”

There is joy in Bloomington, but don’t believe it if anyone tries to tell you Bob Knight’s ghost has been exorcised just because Mike Davis has the Hoosiers in the Final Four.

“The first part of the year, I was sitting on the sidelines yelling, ‘Get a new coach!’” admitted Dolan, who arrived in Bloomington as a student 32 years ago and never left.

“Bob Knight is a great coach, and he left under real bad circumstances. Myself, I hated to see him go. We’re used to the motion offense. Davis runs a lot of pre-set plays. At first it was like they’d go to an ‘X’ on the floor. But as the season went on, they got better.”

Over at the Southern Uniform Shop at College Mall, the brand new “I Like Mike” T-shirts are selling briskly.

A large section of Texas Tech merchandise suddenly goes untouched, stacked below a red shirt that says “It’s a Knight Thing,” and on the back, “You Wouldn’t Understand.”

“Usually I sell a couple hundred Texas Tech items a week, but it’s dead,” owner Carol Brinegar said as she surveyed a display that included Texas Tech coffee cups, Texas Tech license plate frames, Texas Tech key chains and Texas Tech ball caps in three colors.

“People keep saying, ‘Put it half-price,’” Brinegar said. “They’re fickle.

“Everybody asks me, ‘How can you sell both?’ I’m a fan of Knight and a fan of Indiana. I don’t have to make a political statement. I’m here to make money.”

Amid the delirium after Saturday night’s victory over Kent State in the NCAA South Regional final--and there was delirium on Bloomington’s Kirkwood Avenue, where thousands crowded into the street and a few climbed light poles--it has been suggested that Knight’s shadow has been eclipsed.

“It’ll never happen. Not in Indiana,” said Rose Bastin, owner of Rosie’s Diner in Hendricksville, a restaurant Knight used to visit every week during the season for some of Rose’s home-style cooking, usually chili or pies.

“Knight was our hero,” said Bastin, who proudly displays the Texas Tech pennant Knight sent her after becoming the Red Raider coach last year. “He still is, to a great extent. The way he was fired was so dishonest, almost like a scheme invented in elementary school, not by a university administration.

“It was obvious to anyone, they just wanted him out of there.”

That doesn’t mean Bastin isn’t rooting for the Hoosiers.

“I always knew this team would do well,” she said. “It was clear from the time they started as freshmen. I think everything’s going OK.... But some people believe we’re not really seeing Davis’ team yet. After all, Knight did bring in these players.

“I think everybody’s still going to wait and see.”

Everybody will be seeing a lot of Knight in coming weeks.

By coincidence, Indiana has reached the Final Four for the first time since 1992 just as Knight--fired in September 2000 for what university President Myles Brand called a “persistent and troubling pattern of behavior”--releases his memoirs.

“KNIGHT: My Story,” written with Bob Hammel, appears in stores today, a little more than two weeks after the heavily promoted ESPN movie “A Season on the Brink,” was followed by Texas Tech’s first-round NCAA tournament loss.

Knight’s promotional tour will include a previously scheduled book-signing in Bloomington after the Final Four, as well as a scheduled appearance Thursday on Bob Costas’ HBO show “On the Record” and an upcoming guest spot on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

The book is heavy on accounts of Knight’s friendships with men he admires and such outings as a fishing expedition to Russia with Ted Williams and a hunting trip to Spain with former President George Bush, but also offers his version of every major controversy of his career.

From the 1984 chair toss to the videotape that allegedly shows Knight with his hand on the neck of former player Neil Reed to the final straw--an encounter with a student Knight decided needed an etiquette lesson for referring to him only by his last name--Knight gives his side. It is sometimes revealing, rarely conclusive.

As is often the case with such books, the fun is in the index.

Williams, the baseball Hall of Famer, is mentioned on 18 pages. Even Chip Hilton, the fictional character created by Hall of Fame basketball coach Clair Bee in a series of books Knight admired as a youngster, is cited on three pages.

Davis, Mike is in the index only once, a reference to Davis witnessing Knight’s encounter with a student who said “Hey, Knight,” to the coach.

As for Davis, the relationship between Knight and his former assistant dissolved when Davis took the interim job after Knight’s firing.

Davis is now relishing his sudden popularity, telling how Jesse Jackson called after Indiana’s victory, and describing his full answering machine at home.

“It took my wife and I an hour to check our messages,” he said.

Did Coach Knight call?

A smirk played across Davis’ face.

“Uh, it may still be on my voice mail.”

At the moment, analyzing Knight vs. Davis has become a more popular pastime than breaking down Indiana’s match-ups against Oklahoma, the Hoosiers’ semifinal opponent.

“Honestly, I think Coach Knight was nicer than Coach Davis in practice,” said Dane Fife, the hotheaded but humorous senior guard. “Coach Knight only asked me to go to the locker room once, and Coach Davis told me to hit the showers several times. He’s thrown me out of practice more than Coach Knight.”

Fife is a key figure in Indiana’s resurgence, partly because he is the player most loyal to Knight. After the firing, Fife angrily said he’d transfer.

After meeting with Davis and considering Indiana’s prospects of doing something special some day, he changed his mind.

“I said, ‘I may look like an idiot, but I’m going to come back,’” Fife said.

Jared Jeffries stayed too. The sophomore center from Bloomington North High was preparing for his freshman season when he found out he’d never play for Knight.

Now he admires Davis for his work ethic, and like Fife, acknowledges that Davis’ inside-outside offense might work better for this particular group of Hoosiers than Knight’s classic motion offense.

As a native son of Bloomington, however, Jeffries knows this week’s love-fest could be short-lived.

“I’ve said this all long,” Jeffries said. “The people who liked Coach Davis before are going to like him a little bit more. Those who hated him are still going to hate him.”

Knight’s legend will never die in Indiana.

It might not even fade much.

On the walls of Nick’s English Hut, a traditional watering hole for more than 70 years, a rare photograph of Knight throwing the famous chair still adorns the walls.

“Bobby Knight Offering a Little Old Lady His Chair,” the caption reads.

At Walter’s barber shop at College Mall, a signed photo of Davis sits on a shelf, separated from Knight’s photo by one of fired football coach Cam Cameron.

At least Davis is beginning to be treated like someone special.

“Last night I took my family out to eat.... as we walked out, the whole place cheered for us,” he said. How long will the cheering last?

Already, the whispering is that these are still Knight’s players.

Davis is quick to give credit to Knight, but adds one small retort.

“No one was saying that when we were losing.”