Knight Has Tech Support

There were hugs and tears and sloppy kisses on the Texas Tech sideline. Bob Knight, whose more famous emotional outbursts have involved slapping players, throwing chairs and bellying up to referees, wrapped his senior point guard Ronald Ross in a full-body embrace, then sent his son, Patrick, into the stands to bring his wife, Karen, onto the floor.

Texas Tech, seeded sixth in the Albuquerque Regional, had just moved into the NCAA Sweet 16 after upsetting third-seeded Gonzaga, 71-69, Saturday at the McKale Center. For Knight, who is looking forward to his first Sweet 16 appearance since 1994, the moment was filled with joy he doesn’t often let the public see.

“Coach Knight, I think, enjoys coaching us,” said Ross, who came to Lubbock as a non-scholarship freshman and has scored 52 points in two NCAA games. “I think maybe we don’t have all the best players in the world, but we have a bunch of guys who want to be here.”

Ross made a nerveless three-pointer with 1:06 left in the game to give the Red Raiders (22-10) a 68-67 lead and cap a comeback from what had been a 42-29 second-half deficit. “I’m supposed to keep moving and get myself open,” said Ross, who scored 24 points, “then I’m supposed to make the shots the offense gets me.”

Knight, who coached his 854th win -- 25 short of Dean Smith’s NCAA Division I record 879 -- has been criticized for not taking his Indiana and Texas Tech teams past the second round. After Saturday’s win, Knight suggested that maybe he should have been congratulated some of these last 11 years for taking teams further than they deserved to go.

“Everybody talks about the fact we lost a game, lost an opening-round game,” Knight said. “I look at it a little bit differently. I think that in the years we had a difficult time getting anywhere in the NCAA maybe, just maybe, it was a real positive thing that we’d gotten that far and maybe we’d just run out of gas.”

When Gonzaga’s Erroll Knight finished off a fastbreak with a dunk to give his team a 42-29 lead with 19:13 left, it seemed another Knight team would go home before the Sweet 16. The Red Raiders were having trouble handling 6-foot-8 sophomore Adam Morrison (25 points, nine rebounds) inside.

And Gonzaga (26-5), which had a 13-game winning streak ended, did a much better job of defending Texas Tech’s motion offense than UCLA did Thursday night, when the Red Raiders shot better than 60% from the field.

But the Red Raiders methodically came back from the 13-point deficit. They scored seven straight points (including a Ross three-pointer) to make it 42-36. After being down 50-42, they went on a 13-4 run to take their first lead of the game with 9:45 left. And after Gonzaga had one last push that included eight straight points from Morrison to put the Bulldogs up, 62-57, with 5:04 left, the Red Raider guards went to work.

Ross drove for a layup that was goaltended by Ronny Turiaf; freshman Martin Zeno drove the baseline for an open jump shot and sophomore Jarrius Jackson (18 points) cut through the lane for a hanging 10-footer.

“We were just taking our time and running our plays,” Jackson said, “and we knew if it mattered Ronald would make the big shot.”

Texas Tech qualified for its only previous Sweet 16 under Coach James Dickey in the 1995-96 tournament, but when NCAA violations were discovered, that record was vacated. This is the second straight year that Gonzaga was upset early. A year ago, seeded No. 2, the Bulldogs were beaten by Nevada.

“People don’t understand how hard it is to just get into the tournament and win just one game,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said. “You can never feel bad getting this far.”