Perhaps the only satisfying thing about Texas Tech eliminating Gonzaga yesterday is that said upset has provided coach Bobby Knight with more opportunities to share the love.
“I stayed at Indiana six years too long because of the administration. The administration handled a lot of things poorly,” Knight told Sporting News Radio on Saturday, after his Red Raiders upset Gonzaga to reach the Sweet 16. “I was working for an athletic director [former IU AD Clarence Doninger] that didn’t know his [expletive] from third base. I ended up staying because of the kids that I liked and the people I did like rather than focusing on the real negatives there.”
Knight, who coached at Indiana for 29 years and won three national championships, was fired in 2000 for violating a “zero tolerance” behavior policy by grabbing the arm of a student who he said greeted him by his last name. Knight sued two years later, claiming the university violated his employment contract. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
Knight also doesn’t think much of Mike Davis, his successor with the Hoosiers. Indiana missed the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year, and the Hoosiers lost in the first round of the NIT.
“They created that for themselves,” Knight said in the Sporting News Radio interview. “The guy that’s coaching there [Mike Davis] is a guy that I told Pat [Knight, his son and assistant coach] we were going to replace at the end of the season. There’s no way that I would have kept the guy any longer than that. [But] That’s their [Indiana] problem.”
Bobby Knight is an excellent coach, an all time great, but there is no reasons to take shots at Mike Davis like this. Firstly, Davis made the national final recently. Secondly, how good might Indiana have been if Josh Davis went there? And, they will be great next year, lots of excellent talent is coming in.