A Season on the Brink

by John Feinstein

  Ledford had known Knight for years, had even done some postseason games with him on radio. Ledford always interviews the opposing coach for the pregame show. Knight knew Ledford would be waiting, and he sat down with him to tape the pregame interview.

  Halfway through the interview Ledford asked Knight about the Kentucky-Indiana rivalry. “These games are special, aren’t they?” Ledford asked innocently.

  Knight couldn’t resist. “You know, Cawood, with all the crap that has gone on down here over the years with recruiting and all, these games are not nearly as special to me as you might think.”

  Zap. Take that, Kentucky.

  Driving back to the hotel after practice, Knight was thinking aloud. “It’s just not right for Steve not to play in this game,” he said. “I’ve got a mind to have him fly down here and play him. There’s no way the NCAA will suspend him for more than one game. Public opinion would bury them if they did.”

  Hammel said nothing. Back in the hotel, Knight called Pete Newell. Knight listens to Newell more than to anyone else in the world. Their relationship is coach-protégé, father-son, big brother—little brother. Knight believes that no coach did more to change basketball than Newell did during his years at the University of California at Berkeley. He respects him totally. After most games, Knight will call Newell, who lives in San Francisco, to brief him on the game and ask him what he thinks should be worked on. Now, he wanted to know if Alford should play.

  “I might just say screw the NCAA,” he told Newell. “How can Steve not play and Walker can play? That just isn’t right and you know it.”

  Newell knew it, but he counseled Knight not to change his mind, reminding Knight of the reasons he had decided to go this way in the first place: getting the incident over with, and not gambling on the Michigan game. The NCAA could not be counted on to react logically. Don’t take the chance. Don’t do anything because you are angry.

  Knight also called Alford’s parents. They had been bombarded by phone calls from the media, and Knight wanted to cheer them up. “Steve made a mistake. But it doesn’t make him a bad kid.”

  Knight knew that Newell was right about not playing Alford. But it still pained him to take the floor that night without him. He had Buckner talk to the team before the game. “It doesn’t matter who plays,” Buckner said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s me or Steve Alford or you. The system works. The rules work. Play that way and you win the game.”

  The Kentucky fans were lying in wait. Many of them had listened to Knight’s comments on the pregame show, and that, added to their general dislike for someone who had beaten them often over the years, brought out the worst in them. There were the usual obscenities and catcalls about the false rumors that had been spread since Nancy Knight had been away at Duke. The crowd was, in a word, ugly.

  The game was not. Indiana played its guts out. Calloway, playing his first college road game, was brilliant. The Hoosiers did the two things Knight had said they had to do to stay in the game: handle the Kentucky press and rebound. It is easy to say, but Indiana almost certainly would have won the game if Alford had played. The one thing the team lacked on this night was someone to shoot the ball over the Kentucky zone with consistency.

  It was 32-32 at halftime. The screaming crowd seemed not to bother the Hoosiers. If they could handle the forty-eight practices from October 15 to November 30, they could certainly handle 24,000 fans. There were mistakes. But Kentucky couldn’t hold a seven-point lead, and it was even at intermission.

  “You have now made this a twenty-minute basketball game,” Knight told them at halftime. “But you have to play smarter to win the game. We are still making mistakes on defense. Play hard and smart. You tell me now that we aren’t capable of playing with anybody. Don’t mope, don’t feel sorry, don’t feel hurt. Feel like, ‘Goddammit, we’re gonna win a basketball game.’

  “The easy twenty minutes is over. This is the hard twenty minutes. Don’t let the effort you’ve made go down the drain with sloppy effort early. Let’s be smart and get it down to the last three minutes where we can win the game with our guts and our hearts. Don’t go out there now thinking you’re ready to play. Go out there knowing you’re ready.”

  They were ready. Each time Kentucky took a lead, Indiana answered. Thomas and Jadlow were doing a good job on Walker inside. Walker and Kentucky coach Eddie Sutton were crying to the officials for help, but weren’t getting it. Later, Sutton would accuse Indiana of “thuggery in the pivot,” a comment that would infuriate Knight.

  A Calloway layup off a pretty pass from Robinson tied the game for the tenth time at 42-42. Sutton called time. “Twelve minutes,” Knight said in the huddle over the din. “You’ve taken it from a forty-minute game to a twelve-minute game. Hang with it now, don’t make mistakes, and we’ll be fine.”

  But they were getting tired. Without Alford, there were no easy baskets. Every possession was work. Kentucky reeled off nine straight points to lead 51-42. The crowd was berserk. Knight called time. His voice in the huddle was almost matter-of-fact. “Just be patient,” he said. “There’s lots of time. Don’t get rattled. There is nothing to be rattled about.”

  They listened. They came back. Robinson hit from outside. Thomas hit two free throws. Smith came off the bench to hit a bomb. It was 57-54, Kentucky, with 2:20 to go. The crowd was nervous. This couldn’t happen. Indiana couldn’t win at Rupp Arena without Alford. The teams exchanged baskets. It was 59-56. Ninety seconds to go.

  Kentucky wanted to go inside to Walker. Guard Ed Davender penetrated and looked for Walker. Harris poked the ball loose. Robinson came out of the scramble with it. He and Harris burst downcourt with only Kentucky guard Roger Harden back. Robinson, on the left side, glanced at Harris, a step behind him. If he passed, Harris might dunk. He also might lose the ball or charge into Harden. Better, thought Robinson, to go straight to the hoop. He did. Harden had only one play: turn, plant his feet, and try to take the charge.

  Robinson soared. He and Harden collided and went down together in a heap. The ball went in the basket, and 24,000 pairs of eyes were on referee Tom Rucker, who had blown his whistle as soon as the two players made contact. Rucker is a Big Ten official. He was working the game with two officials from the Southeastern Conference—Kentucky’s conference. Like most coaches, Knight hates “split crews.” He had asked Sutton the previous spring to get neutral officials for the game. Sutton said after the game that he had forgotten. That was why Rucker was there. Rucker was one of Knight’s least favorite Big Ten officials, which is saying quite a bit, given Knight’s general feeling about Big Ten officials.

  Now, as Robinson and Harden untangled, as both benches stood, Rucker came out from under the basket, his hand behind his head, giving the call for charging. Not only had he called the foul on Robinson, he had ruled that the contact had come before the shot, meaning the basket didn’t count. If Rucker had called Harden for a blocking foul, the score would have been 59-58 and Robinson would have gone to the foul line with a chance to tie the game. It could have been a tie game with one minute left and all the pressure on the home team. It would have been exactly the situation Knight had wanted before the game began.

  But Rucker wasn’t going to give it to him. Once, twice for good measure, he pointed towards Kentucky’s basket to indicate it was Kentucky’s ball. The crowd screamed. Knight, hands on hips, just stared at Rucker. When you spend a career getting on officials, there are going to be moments when one of them turns on you and says, in effect, “Take that.” This was Tom Rucker’s moment.

  Much later that night, the game tape would show that Harden had still been moving when the contact was made. Rucker had missed the call. But he hadn’t had the benefit of the tape. He had a split second to make the call. He could side with one man he didn’t particularly like or he could side with 24,000 fans. Did he consciously think of any of that? Almost certainly not. But the tape showed his call was wrong.

  That call was the ballgame. Kentucky ran the clock
down to thirty seconds before Harden drove the baseline for a layup. Harden was a mouthy kid from Indiana who had earlier in the week “guaranteed” that Kentucky would beat Indiana. Having him score the basket that nailed the game for Kentucky was like being spit on when you’ve already been flattened.

  It ended 63-58. Knight shook hands briefly with Sutton and sprinted for the locker room. He was inconsolable. His team had given him everything he could have asked of it—except a victory. But that was the only thing he had come for. He had almost no voice left as he went through their mistakes in the locker room.

  “The problem is you aren’t hurt enough,” he said. “You’re sitting here satisfied because you played a good game. All I want to do is go into a room somewhere and cry. I could just cry. Boys, there’s no such thing as a moral victory. The game was there to win and we lost. If you just followed the rules, we would have won. Instead, those cheating sonsofbitches won.”

  He was standing in front of the blackboard where earlier he had written the lineups. He looked at his players. They looked at him. Knight turned his head back to the board and, not so lightly, hit his head against the board. “All I want to do is go somewhere and cry.” He was close to tears.

  Ten minutes later, Knight walked into the hallway, calm and clear-eyed, to go to the interview room. Sutton, having just finished there, was walking past. Earlier in the week, Sutton had been quoted as saying that Knight had advised him not to take the Arkansas job in the mid-1970s. Knight remembered telling Sutton that he thought Arkansas was a terrific job. Knight was annoyed that Sutton, in his view, had twisted the story.

  Sutton saw Knight, and came over to offer a final word of consolation after a taut ballgame. Knight cut him off. “Eddie, didn’t I ask you to get neutral officials when we talked last spring?”

  “I don’t really remember, Bobby, I suppose you might have. I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing.”

  “Well I do. And I wanted neutral officials.” Knight was walking away now.

  Sutton dropped the charm school routine. “If you wanted neutral officials, Bob, why didn’t you get ’em yourself?”

  Knight stopped short. The hallway was empty because the media was waiting inside the interview room. He and Sutton were about fifteen feet apart. Knight turned and glared at Sutton. “You were the home team, Eddie. That means you get the officials. And when I ask you to get neutral officials and you agree, I think I have every right to think I’ll get neutral officials.”

  Knight didn’t wait for Sutton to respond to this comment. He turned and walked into the interview room. Sutton waved his hand in the air as if to say, “The hell with you.” Fortunately, Knight didn’t see the gesture.

  The interview was brief. Knight had told the players that if they were asked about Alford’s absence, they should answer simply, “I have no interest in talking about Alford.” Knight was almost as succinct: “I would like to think that the NCAA would have given some consideration to our past record. A rule was broken. They have to live with what they did. But I accept responsibility. We didn’t have a good enough checking system.”

  That was it. Knight could not have been more diplomatic if he had been briefed by Henry Kissinger.

  The plane trip was predictable. Brooks and Smith were out of the doghouse; Morgan and Robinson were in. So was Eyl, who had made a crucial defensive mistake, and Harris, who had once again gotten into foul trouble. Maybe Kreigh Smith should start. Maybe Brooks should start. The last statement brought Kohn Smith out of his doze.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said.

  It was after midnight when the bus pulled up to Assembly Hall. “It bothers me,” Knight said, “that Alford’s not here to see his teammates. That disappoints me.”

  He reviewed the game for the players. They had done some good things, but not enough. “Kentucky will win twenty-five games this year and they were laying right there for you to beat tonight. I’m proud of you for going down there and believing you could win the game. But you have to understand why you came up short tonight. Alford had not one goddamn thing to do with our losing that game. Right here in this room we’ve got all the talent I need to win. We didn’t need Alford to win tonight. Don’t feel sorry, don’t feel down. We just kicked a golden opportunity away tonight.

  “We’ll be in here at eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  The players went home. The coaches went to the cave. It was after 4 A.M. when they finally went home. The record was 2-1. It had already been a long season.

  9.

  No Reason to Lose to Anyone

  Kansas State was next. This was a game that truly scared Knight. His team had played two emotionally draining games and now faced an opponent that everyone—including the players—would expect to beat without much trouble. Kansas State had talent. Not great talent, but good talent, certainly good enough to beat Indiana if the Hoosiers were flat. And there was good reason to believe they would be flat.

  Knight began hammering on this theme Sunday morning. “This team will be better than Kentucky,” he said. “I mean that. They are good athletes and they aren’t spoiled assholes like Kentucky. To them, this will be a monumentally big game. You’re going to spend the next two days getting patted on the ass, being told how well you played at Kentucky, all that crap.

  “Let me tell you something, boys. If you expect to be any kind of basketball team this year, you have to win this game. This game is the most important one we’ll play this month. I know you’ll be up to play Notre Dame and Kentucky and Louisville. But you have to get up to play these people, too. If you don’t, I guarantee you’ll get knocked right on your ass.”

  Knight wasn’t exaggerating. The problem was that the players, the experienced ones anyway, had heard this speech before. For a coach, deciding what to tell your players about an opponent is never easy. If you play Kent State and say, “Hey, we should beat these guys easily,” then you take a chance on overconfidence. But if time and again you tell your team that the Kent States of the world are great teams, then when you tell your team that Kansas State is good—and it is good—you run the risk that the players will nod and think, “Yeah sure, Coach, they’re better than Kentucky. Right.”

  Kansas State was not better than Kentucky. But in basketball, timing always plays a role in the outcome of a game. To Kansas State, this game was as emotional as Notre Dame and Kentucky had been to Indiana. Knight understood that. He worked the players twice on Sunday, emphasizing fundamentals.

  “We gave away twenty points last night because we didn’t help on defense,” he said repeatedly. “Twenty points. If we follow the rules, we’re ahead 65-52 with five minutes left and we win easily. Boys, no one plays this game well. If you follow our rules, we’re going to beat all these teams. You people just don’t understand that you have to sweat blood out here to play. We haven’t had anyone here since Wittman, Kitchel, and those kids played who was willing to do that.”

  Knight and his rules. One former player once said whimsically of Knight, “He’s not a man, he’s a set of rules.”

  Written on a blackboard, the rules for playing basketball Knight-style are easy. Executing them is not. “Help-side defense” is a perfect example of this. The rule is simple: If you see an opponent on the other side of the court beat his man going to the basket, you must leave your man and help. The “help side” is the side opposite where the ball is, because that’s where one can get to the basket in time to help if someone is beaten.

  To play good help-side defense, the move must become instinctive. A player can’t see a teammate lose his man and think, “Should I help?” He must react automatically, or he will be too late. Some players have this instinct, some acquire it from hours and hours of practice, but others never acquire it. Harris was having particular trouble with this because he was still thinking rather than reacting. By the time he was through thinking, he would arrive just in time to commit a foul. Eyl had done the same thing against Kentucky. This kind of mistake dr
ove Knight insane, especially when he saw it on tape. To him, it was as fundamental as boxing out on a rebound. But players are taught to box out from the very first day they play basketball. Unless they play in a Knight-type system, they aren’t taught about help-side defense.

  For a smart player, Knight’s system isn’t difficult to learn. But it requires thinking, and it requires reacting differently on almost every possession at both ends of the floor. On offense, all five players have to read the defense, not just the point guard. If one player makes the wrong cut, or sets the wrong screen, or fails to screen, the whole play breaks down. The same is true on defense: if one player fails to help, or fails to make a switch, or fails to get in a passing lane, the whole defense collapses.

  Knight now found himself coaching a team that was very willing, but often not able, to execute what he wanted. If he had never coached a team that was willing and able, this might not have bothered him so much. But he had been spoiled. He kept thinking back to the mid-1970s. But this was the mid ’80s. Quinn Buckner and Scott May were nowhere in sight, and Kansas State would be a very tough game.

  What was most surprising about the two days following the Kentucky game—other than the fact that the sun came out on Monday—was that Knight never once berated Alford. Knight not carrying a grudge is a little bit like George Burns not carrying a cigar. It is inevitable, just as inevitable, as Knight might put it, “as the sun coming up in the east.”

  In fact, even though Knight repeatedly told the players on Sunday and Monday how tough this game would be, he was almost loose—by his standards. As the team walked to the field house on Monday night for its final walk-through—Kansas State was using Assembly Hall—Knight noticed Calloway and Felling walking together.

  “Hey, Ricky,” Knight shouted, “you ever see a white guy with an Afro before?”