It’s Almost a Silent Knight in Kansas

“Knight & day,” read the headline in the on-line edition of the Kansas City Star, above a thoughtful column by Joe Posnanski.

“Up Next: the Knight show,” read the headline in the on-line edition of the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, above a preview story.

Bob Knight definitely was in Kansas on Saturday, his reputation arriving just ahead of him and the Texas Tech men’s basketball team.

Trouble seems to follow Knight around like a lost puppy. Of course, much of the trouble is self-inflicted, including a recent heated exchange with Texas Tech Chancellor David R. Smith at a salad bar in a market at Lubbock, Texas.

Knight went into a rage when Smith had the gall to tell the coach he had been handling things well lately, with the word “lately” apparently driving Knight over the edge. Of course, that has always been a short drive for Knight, who has thrown chairs, throttled players and made all manner of inappropriate comments over the years.

A sellout crowd of 16,300 at Allen Fieldhouse jeered Knight, who was given a public reprimand for arguing with Smith last week. Fans waved signs that read, “Red Rager,” a play on Texas Tech’s Red Raider nickname.

But Knight did nothing further to embarrass himself or Texas Tech on Saturday, arguing several times with game officials and chewing out his reserves late in the No. 19-ranked Red Raiders’ 96-77 loss to No. 20 Kansas. He believed the substitutes simply weren’t playing hard enough in garbage time.

Tame stuff by his standards.

Knight declined to allow his players to be interviewed but praised the Jayhawks during a ho-hum session with reporters.

“Their offense was better than anything we could come up with on both sides of the ball,” he said. “You can’t just talk about one guy. You have to talk about the entire team. They looked to each other, they got the ball out to their shooters and their shooters were able to hit it. When they could get the ball inside, they made key points inside.”

Meanwhile, Back at Bloomington

Steve Alford, who helped Indiana and Knight win the 1987 national championship as a player, won for the first time in five years in his old arena.

Alford’s Iowa Hawkeyes needed double overtime to defeat Indiana, 84-82, with Jeff Horner accounting for the go-ahead basket on a spinning move toward the hoop with 1.6 seconds left. Iowa and Indiana are in a tie for fourth place in the Big Ten with Purdue at 5-4.

Indiana forced both overtime periods. Pat Ewing Jr., son of the former NBA standout, tipped in a missed free throw with 1.7 seconds left in regulation to send the game to overtime tied, 68-68. Bracey Wright then made a three-point basket with five seconds remaining to send the game to a second overtime tied, 80-80.

Before the game, there was the customary speculation about Alford’s coming back to coach the Hoosiers, leading a return to greatness. Alford’s name was mentioned frequently after Knight was fired from Indiana in September 2000.

Mike Davis, an assistant to Knight, was hired to replace him and Alford stayed at Iowa, where he has had modest success.

“Steve still would be the first name on the lips of most people in terms of early speculation if Mike Davis would find a better job and move on,” Bob Zaltsberg, editor of a Bloomington newspaper, told the Des Moines Register last week.

Atlantic 10 Showdown

Finally, it gets serious for third-ranked and undefeated Saint Joseph’s.

When the Hawks returned to their locker room after thumping Philadelphia rival La Salle, 89-63, the scores of their two losses to Dayton last season were written on a chalkboard.

Dayton, the only other Atlantic 10 team without a conference loss, and Saint Joseph’s play Wednesday in Philadelphia.

“We know Dayton’s a good team and we’ll start thinking about them tomorrow,” said Saint Joseph’s guard Jameer Nelson, who had 20 points against La Salle. “Nobody in here is getting ahead of themselves. That’s how we keep winning, by only focusing on the next game.”

Saint Joseph’s previous games were against Philadelphia schools Temple and Villanova with the Hawks winning by 12 and seven points respectively.

La Salle stayed close for a while, with the score tied at 19-19 after the first 13 minutes. But Nelson and Delonte West, who had 22 points, proved to be too difficult to handle for the Explorers, and the now familiar chant of “Un-de-feated-ed!” was started by the St. Joseph’s student section after a 23-7 Hawk run to open the second half.

West, for one, is cautious about all of this undefeated talk.

“I keep hearing we’ll finish the regular season undefeated,” West said. “We’ve still got Temple again, we’ve got Dayton. None of these guys are going to say Saint Joe’s is coming, so we might as well write that one down as a loss.”

Beware the Wolfpack

If rallying from a 16-point deficit to upset No. 16 Wake Forest and easily handling lowly Virginia aren’t enough to get North Carolina State into the national rankings, then something is seriously wrong in college basketball.

A 79-63 victory over the Cavaliers at Charlottesville, Va., firmly entrenched the Wolfpack in second place in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings at 7-2, 1 1/2 games behind top-ranked Duke and 2 1/2 ahead of third-place Georgia Tech and Florida State.

Julius Hodge had 16 of his 26 points in the first half, when North Carolina State built a 34-23 lead. When Virginia’s deficit reached 19 with five minutes remaining, Cavalier fans streamed out of University Hall, where the Wolfpack had lost 14 of its previous 15 games.

The victory was the second in succession on the road by double digits for North Carolina State, which last accomplished the feat in its national championship season of 1982-83.

Why the Sneakers?

Arizona’s Lute Olson and Stanford’s Mike Montgomery were among the coaches who wore sneakers to bring attention to National Coaches vs. Cancer Awareness Day.

Since its inception in 1993, the Coaches vs. Cancer program has raised more than $22 million to benefit the American Cancer Society

-- Compiled by Elliott Teaford