Knight Still Has His Hang-Ups With Media

Throughout the college basketball season, Big 12 Conference coaches had weekly conference calls with the media.

No surprise that Texas Tech Coach Bob Knight’s segments were usually the shortest.

His answer this week to a question about the Red Raiders’ turnover problems:

“We’d like to eliminate them. If I had some cure-all for it, it would not have happened in the first place.”

Knight on Texas Tech’s short rest between the Big 12 tournament championship game and Thursday’s NCAA first-round game against UCLA:

“You can create advantages or disadvantages out of anything you want to.”

Such insight!

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More Knight: The Texas Tech coach also typically ended his news conference segments a little differently than his counterparts.

While coaches such as Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson and Kansas’ Bill Self ended their interviews by thanking the moderator, Knight usually hung up without saying a word.

Must have been in a hurry to create advantages or disadvantages out of anything he wanted to.

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Trivia time: Name the leading scorer of the last Laker team not to qualify for the playoffs.

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Applause, applause: After Utah quarterback Alex Smith finished his campus NFL workout Wednesday, pro personnel in attendance clapped as if they were fans.

Among those impressed were representatives of the San Francisco 49ers, who have the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft.

“He did a lot of things he didn’t do as a college player, and he did them well,” 49er Coach Mike Nolan said of Smith, 20, who finished his economics degree with a 3.74 grade-point average in two years.

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Lavin return? After firing basketball coach Steve Lappas, University of Massachusetts Athletic Director John McCutcheon said poor fan support was a factor.

“The disconnect with our fan base over the last four years was very real,” he said.

According to the Boston Globe, former UCLA coach Steve Lavin is on the list of candidates to replace Lappas. McCutcheon said he’s looking for “somebody who can energize our fan base.”

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Money talk: Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, in ESPN the Magazine, about the NBA’s connection with the hip-hop culture: “If classical music were hot with 12- to 24-year-olds, you’d be asking why the NBA is tied to Brahms.”

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Trivia answer: Vlade Divac, who averaged 14.2 points on the 1993-94 Lakers, who finished 33-49 under coaches Randy Pfund, Bill Bertka and Magic Johnson.

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And finally: According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mike Ruell of Harrisburg, Pa., attended a recent 76er game against the Lakers dressed in jailhouse pinstripes along with chains and handcuffs to mock Kobe Bryant.

But after standing and chanting “Kobe! Kobe!” during the game, Ruell was told by a Wachovia Center security guard: “You want to dress like that, it’s your prerogative, but if you say ‘Kobe’ one more time, you’ll be thrown out.”