|
|
 |
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Q&A: Bob Knight to Texas Tech With low expectations, Raiders 'no-lose' for Knight
Updated: Friday March 23, 2001 11:09 PM
With Texas Tech officially announcing Bob Knight as its new coach on Friday, CNNSI.com spoke with Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Grant Wahl. CNNSI.com: What were your impressions of Friday's "press conference?" Grant Wahl: The unintentional comedy of the whole thing was bizarre. I thought it was a really unprofessional way to treat working journalists by subjecting them to the boos and cheers of several thousand fans. It was all completely in Knight's court. If that's the direction things are headed in Lubbock, that's just a really bad way to do it. And Knight doesn't seem to have changed at all. CNNSI.com: Now that he's got the job, what's the first thing Knight needs to do? Wahl: The biggest challenge now for Bob Knight is that he has to become a real salesman. And salesman is not a term that immediately comes to mind with him. Recruiting will be difficult -- unlike at Indiana, where kids across the state grow up wanting to play for the Hoosiers, kids in West Texas don't necessarily dream of becoming a Red Raider. He has to actually sell his program. That's why picking his assistants will be so important. By the time Knight left Indiana, Mike Davis was doing all the important recruiting. It was Davis who had to convince Jared Jeffries to come to Indiana in spite of Bob Knight. All I've heard so far is that Pat Knight is going to be on his staff, and I don't know that Pat has distinguished himself as a recruiter. But Knight should be able to attract some good assistants. Remember, the main goal of all assistants is to become a head coach. They want to get exposure, want to do something to separate themselves from the crowd. So in that regard, Knight is not a bad person to go be an assistant for. You're going to get a lot of media exposure, and, because he doesn't put the effort into recruiting he once did, if you're like Mike Davis, you get the reputation for being a really good recruiter, because it's all on you. Last summer, Mike Davis was one of the final candidates for the Delaware job, largely because he was pretty well known as a hot young coach. CNNSI.com: Can we assume he will jump head first into recruiting?Wahl: The best thing for Knight to do recruiting-wise is take advantage of that buzz he's generating right now and get right out there. Someone like a Billy Donovan will get in touch with a recruit right after a big win or when they play in the national championship. Now's the perfect time for Knight. CNNSI.com: Are we talking about recruiting high-school kids, or maybe jucos or transfers? Wahl: He's always been more into four-year guys, but the richest talent in that area is probably at junior colleges. Other Big 12 schools like Oklahoma and Texas make good use of jucos. And remember, Dean Garrett and Keith Smart were both jucos -- and they won Knight a national championship. There's a lot of good talent out there, and for the first year or two that might be the way to go. He's not going to be letting in just any juco star of course, there are a lot of questionable characters that would never jive with Knight, but I think that he could be pretty smart about it. CNNSI.com: Is it possible that Knight will be more like the "face" of the program while the assistants do most of the actual coaching?Wahl: No, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Bob Knight is still a very good teacher of basketball, and a lot of times that gets underestimated. Over the last few years he has taken some teams that didn't have a whole heck of a lot of talent and did pretty well with them. I do think what caused his teams' trouble at Indiana was he never let up on the gas all season, so his teams were mentally and physically exhausted by the time the season started. So he'll have to watch out for that. CNNSI.com: One thing that's hard to imagine is Knight, with that infamous temper, will handle the possibility of losing a lot of games his first season.Wahl: I would've thought that too, but if you saw him on that Bob Costas interview, he seemed to be very sedate. During that entire interview, he appeared to be pretty much in control of his emotions. If you know a lot about Knight, you know that all he wants are guys to play as well as they can. He'll get frustrated if they lose, sure, but it could be a situation similar to Rick Pitino's first team at Kentucky. They got blown out a lot, and yet Pitino loved that team, loved what they brought to the court. You could see Knight very enthused with that team by end of season, no matter what happens. CNNSI.com: Realistically, what can we expect Knight to accomplish at Texas Tech?Wahl: At Texas Tech, I don't think anyone expects Knight to make the NCAA tournament for at least a couple years. He's got to have time to bring in his own guys. And actually, I think it's less important for him as a new coach to get his new guys in than some others, because he's good at getting guys to do things his own way. A really good experiment will be to see how the holdovers at Texas Tech -- which was a horrible team this year -- respond next season. It's kind of a no-lose situation for him. If they're horrible, they were horrible before he got there. But if they improve -- not even make the NIT, just win 14 games -- it's all Bob Knight. If they do make the NIT, everyone will be pretty excited. And if they were to make the NCAA tournament -- suffice to say, people will go nuts.
| ||||||||||||||||
