- New Year's Day seemed an appropriate time to tune in The Bob Knight Show for the first time this season. It opened with Coach in a half-slouch and Chuck The Babbler fawning nearby. Nothing had changed; I felt good immediately. Chuck said he thought attendance was great at the just-completed Cupcake Classic II at Market Square Arena. Coach pointed out that IU "has always had great attendance" at Market Square. Chuck said he thought that IU really missed several chances to "put Eastern Kentucky away." Coach disagreed and said he didn't see many ways IU could have done more to put 'em away. Chuck said that Eastern Kentucky was a very fine squad. Coach disagreed and said "they're not a very good team right now." Or was that IU he was talking about? My notes are covered with drool and peanut brittle crumbs; sometimes it's hard to tell what I wrote. I do know that Coach's left eyebrow needs extensive work (it resembles the late actor Robert Morley's), and that Coach's unsubtle, domineering humiliation of the obsequious Chuck The Babbler continues unabated. (January 2, 1995)
- I've obtained a copy
of a letter dated December, 1994, to Inside Indiana from
a deeply dyspeptic subscriber who shares a rather different view
of Pat Knight with II editor Rick Notter. It follows:
Dear Rick:
In your December 10 (1994) column you spoke out against fan booing heard during the IU-Evansville game when Pat Knight came onto the floor. I suspect you know exactly why this occurs but aren't inclined to want to say it publicly. I'll take the heat and say it for you.
The fans boo because Patrick Knight is the most gigantic, howling fraud to wear an IU uniform in living memory. Patrick Knight should never have been offered an IU basketball scholarship, and all but the mentally retarded know the only reason he ever received one is because he is the Coach's son. I find it incomprehensible that any major college basketball program ever seriously recruited Pat Knight. Had it not been for his father's indulgence, Patrick would have been playing ball at some place like Hanover or Grace College.
Pat Knight is fundamentally awful in nearly every phase (shooting, rebounding, defense, ball-handling, and passing--even granting the occasional great pass) of the game. Yet Coach and his acolytes keep chanting the mantra that "Patrick is a great passer." Faint and pathetic praise, I submit.
Playing Division I college basketball at what is supposed to be one of the country's elite programs requires far more skills than Patrick Knight possesses or ever will. Patrick Knight is a running sore that never goes away, and every moment he spends in an IU uniform is a shrieking hypocrisy. Nobody associated with the program --and precious few journalists covering it--dares ever utter the ugly truth, but here you have it. As long as Patrick Knight occupies a roster spot, the IU basketball program is not 100 percent serious about "being all it can be."
Having said all that, does it mean Patrick Knight is a bad person? No (although there's anecdotal evidence he's a chip off The Old Flamer Himself--but that's another story). I feel sorry for Patrick. For he didn't have the insight to realize what a fraud he was participating in by accepting an IU scholarship, nor the fundamental danger for any young person being coached by a parent, let alone in a program with the high-wire visibility of IU's. Thus Patrick embraced the ghastly self-delusion that he actually belongs at this level. The reality is that he's the lead role in a uniquely grotesque Nineties affirmative action stunt orchestrated by his own father.
I could accept this situation more graciously if Coach would be honest about it and admit what it is (a charity case) instead of trying to pass off his son as a player who deserves to wear an IU uniform on the basis of talent.
IU has enough trouble as it is recruiting top-flight talent. Anyone who watches Patrick Knight flop around pathetically on the court like a thalidomide baby knows that this is a scholarship that's been wasted. A good many IU fans will be staying near the vomitorium until he graduates.
All the best,
The Hard Cheese Slasher
- Perhaps it is only coincidence, but Inside Indiana appears to have entirely dropped its "Letters to the Editor" feature. In any event, none have been published in the three or four issues since early December when Notter's remarks appeared.
- The IU-Illinois game, like some others before it this season, was a real forehead-slapper for fans. Our boys managed 25-30 minutes of fairly decent basketball and were hanging tough on the road in the second half. Then, as assistant coach Norm (Covenant House) Ellenberger likes to say, "the wheels fell off" and we limped home a 78-67 loser. There was one classic "IU moment," though we usually see such pratfalls in football, when IU guard Steve Hart's shoe "blew out" in the first half. Steve was dribbling one moment and flat on his face on the floor the next, while a surprised Illinois defender picked up the now loose basketball and darted down for an easy dunk. Hart's shoe actually fell apart when he cut suddenly. A piece of it could be seen on the floor. Hart had to come out of the game to be re-shod. I've never heard of such a thing--an exploding shoe--but if it had to happen, it had to happen to an IU player. In the second half, as the game slipped away from our boys, broadcasters Laz and Kitch noted that Illinois was ignoring IU's Pat Knight, (who logged big minutes (18) and played more than three of Indiana's five starters and is a "good shooter" despite a .370 career field goal percentage) and using its five defenders to guard IU's other four players. "He's got to take advantage of that and put up some shots," Kitch said, several times. The bottom line in this game was guard play (non-play in IU's case, as Illinois guards outscored Indiana's, 38-7) and the ongoing horror, for Indiana, of atrocious outside shooting. Illinois bombed us with 11 of 21 three-point shots (our boys hit 2 of 5) for a 33-6 scoring margin on three-pointers. Again Illinois, with a smaller team, outrebounded our boys decisively (37-27). This is not a very good Illinois team, either. Ellenberger added a final note of unreality on the post-game radio show when he told Max and Don that "there's nothing wrong with our guards." (January 14, 1995)
- Let the record show that when Iowa's stellar Jess Settles had to sit out a game with back trouble, it was the Purdue game, and the Boilers, with some pluck and two or three weird officiating calls at game's end, sneaked out of Iowa City with an 84-83 squeaker. Settles will heal in time for the next Indiana game. They always do.
- We might as well brace ourselves for another typical Purdue team and season, too. . .a galumphing, black-sneakered band of cretins and missing-limbed stouthearts who'll overachieve by tons, far exceed pundits' expectations, beat IU at least once, maybe twice, finish high in the Big Ten race, and emerge as another tribute to Coach Gene Keady's remarkable coaching ability. Their gritty, determined effort at Iowa was in stark contrast to Indiana's swan dive there, and, mark it down, we'll see many more like it from Purdue.
- Everybody turns up on a police blotter sooner or later, don't you think? The name of Ernie Thompson (AT's brother), who spent a couple of unremarkable seasons on IU's football team in the late 1980's before leaving school to turn pro (and never amount to diddly there), floated back to the surface in the January 14 Indianapolis Star in a brief two-paragraph story noting that Ernie has admitted beating his girlfriend with his fists and a belt, and entered a guilty plea to misdemeanor battery back in his hometown of Terre Haute. The agreement with prosecutors allows Thompson to pay $192 to his girlfriend and attend some counseling in exchange for having the charge dismissed in 12 months if he complies. "The couple has reconciled," the story concluded. ET really learned a lesson from this, I'll bet.
- IU basketball fans who got pumped up when it was announced that a 6-9 Yugoslavian power forward named Haris Mujezinovic had accepted a scholarship and would be in Bloomington next fall with two years of eligibility (he's in junior college now) remaining may start the painful decompression process immediately. For tucked away in the very last paragraph of associate editor Alan McDonald's "recruiting" column in the January 21 issue of Inside Indiana are these words, each hitting like a bag of cement: "Those who have seen him play say with some work Mujezinovic could be comparable to Todd Lindeman." Yes, dear God, ANOTHER one! (January 17, 1995)
- I've commented before on the curious tendency IU's opponents seem to have of going to Patrick Knight's man as soon as Pat enters the fray for IU. Last night's Penn State game offered another instance of this. In the second half, at about the 10-minute mark, Penn State's three-point specialist, Pete Lysicki, bombed in a wide-open trey and WTTV's Ted Kitchel--bless him, for IU's radio and TV broadcast crew have traditionally been world-class sycophants who wouldn't have mentioned it--quickly noted that Lysicki was Pat Knight's defensive assignment and Pat was nowhere near on that play. The game outcome, though, was encouraging, as IU, unlike numerous previous games this season, hung tough in the late going and came from behind to win, and on the road to boot (71-69). . .for most of the game IU's inside defense was awful. . .Penn State's massive (6-10, 270 pounds) John Amechi scored at will until our last-man-on-the-bench, 6-10 Robbie Eggers, came in and neutralized him over the last 6-8 minutes when the issue was being decided. Tito Lindeman, our 7-0 center, was an utter disaster with no points, no rebounds and five fouls in five minutes played. Guard Neil Reed's shooting seems seriously impacted by the shoulder brace he's wearing. . .an interesting insight was offered by Kitchel when IU began to play poorly in the second half and Penn State took a lead. Kitchel noted that IU's offense, which was spread out and well-spaced earlier in the game, was falling back closer to the basket, packing itself "down in the paint" as its play deteriorated. And sure enough, time after time during that stretch of shaky play, that's what was happening, and a viewer could see IU's players limiting their own ability to move once they got the ball. I'll say it again: if I were coaching this team I'd give Eggers major playing time up front in place of Lindeman, to see what he's capable of. He couldn't play worse than Lindeman. This team still seems to have about half a dozen instances each game of brainlock, where the lights seem to go out and the players do inexplicably dumb things--Reed's senseless touch-foul of Penn State's Dan Earl in three-point land as time was running out, as well as a couple of fall-asleeps on Penn State inbounds plays that allowed unchallenged lay-ins. Getting some significant scoring from our guards helped immensely. (January 18, 1995)
- Coach must be going crazy trying to get this team to play consistently. Last night's home-court humiliation by Michigan yanked us back into the septic tank. For the first time in what seems ages, Michigan arrived minus the Fab Five, but it was quickly apparent they still have plenty of athletes, just less publicity. It looked to this viewer like Michigan's defenders just strangled our only two offensive threats, Brian Evans and Alan Henderson, who combined for nine baskets in 29 shots (31%). Major questions remain about IU: (1) Lindeman continues to perform pathetically--why does he still get playing time? (2) Knight makes such a big to-do about rewarding effort and rewards Robbie Eggers for his sterling work in the Penn State game with one minute of playing time against Michigan while his son, Pat Knight, played 15 minutes; (3) this team looks disorganized, incompetent, inept--how did we ever get to such a mess? (4) Michigan destroyed us on the boards(44-27), despite IU's having a height advantage, and Michigan was the team that played patiently, intelligently, and with poise--even without the Fab Five. I'd trade our roster for Michigan's in a minute.
- Alan McDonald, associate editor of Inside Indiana, has confirmed by telephone that his assessment of new IU recruit Haris Mujezinovic as a player who, with some improvement, might compare to Jambalaya Lindeman, was not a joke as some readers had suspected. He's a "practice player at best" is how McDonald describes him. Even the most hardened IU cynic will find this tough to believe or bear, if it's true.
- The press noted that Michigan had only two days to prepare for Indiana, as though that was a negative factor. Not at all. Nobody ever needs to prepare for Indiana, for Indiana never does anything new. If you prepared for Indiana in 1975, you're prepared in 1995.
- Recent issues of Inside Indiana have grown ever more bizarre. Editor Rick Notter included a brief blurb in the January 29 issue about numerous phone calls he'd received inquiring about the disappearance of "Mail Call," the letters-to-the-editor section. Notter said he hadn't received many letters recently, and those that had arrived were either "personal attacks on players" (code for: Pat Knight) or anonymously submitted. We won't print either kind, Notter emphasized. He said "Mail Call" was alive and well and would be pleased to print letters if we'd only send them. . .then in the Feb. 4 edition, Notter devoted most of his column to attacking fans who boo Pat Knight (though he won't print their letters). The booing, he publicly conceded, now occurs in Assembly Hall on a "regular basis." He then launched a defense of both Coach and his son, reasoning as follows: 1) Pat Knight is a "genuinely nice person" and it "is difficult for anyone who knows Pat Knight not to like him."; 2) Pat has endured five years of daily practices and been yelled at more by his father than any child in the history of the world. The famous Shin-Kicking Unpleasantness of 1994, in which Coach kicked his son during a courtside tirade "by itself should have gained (Pat) a lifetime of respect from every Indiana fan," according to Notter; 3) Pat's done a terrific job serving as a buffer between his father and the other players when the latter get in Coach's doghouse; 4) Finally, Pat Knight "is the son of the most beloved Coach in the history of Indiana basketball. For more than 20 years fans have trusted Coach Knight to make the decisions. . . why are they suddenly questioning his judgment now?"
- Notter noted that Pat Knight believes he is the first player in IU history to be booed by the home crowd. If so, it is no accident he's been chosen.
- None of Notter's column addresses the issue: the critics' claim that Pat Knight is not qualified by talent to hold a spot on the roster of a major college basketball program; that his is a wasted scholarship; that his presence on the team is an act of dishonesty by a coach who has screamed arrogantly all his life about honesty and high principles and whose own horrifically twisted personal psychological baggage steeply increases the difficulty IU has in recruiting talented athletes in the first place.
- Notter's strident defense of Pat Knight and his "trust Coach" mentality are an embarrassment and silly to boot. He's in a state of denial as deep as Slick Willie's. (January 31, 1995)
- Inside Indiana's associate editor, Alan McDonald, wrote an odd piece February 4, too. He noted that Indiana "was simply overwhelmed by (Michigan's talented) athletes when the two teams met January 24 and conceded what is a bitter truth to Indiana fans: that "the fact is the teams with the most McDonald's All-Americans are dominating college basketball in the 1990s." McDonald mentioned a few of those elite programs and IU was not among them. Then, in an utterly inexplicable brake-jamming reversal, McDonald said, "If you think I am about to badmouth Indiana's recruiting, you are wrong. With the exception of a solid post player, IU has recruited as well as any program in the nation during this decade." McDonald then cleverly linked IU's as-good-as-anybody-in-the-nation-recruiting to the Pat Knight Unpleasantness, claiming that "if there happens to be a blue-chip recruit in the (Assembly Hall) stands and he hears a player getting booed at home--you can kiss that prospective recruit goodbye." I don't believe either statement is true; the one about IU's recruiting competitiveness is utterly preposterous. (February 4, 1995)
- Inside Indiana smells suspiciously like a publication that's been completely co-opted by Coach Knight. Its columnists and editors fawn obsequiously at Coach's feet, assiduously parrot the party line, and cut off debate and discussion when any topic gets too threatening. There can't be another college sports publication in the country, can there, that prints verbatim transcripts of a coach's press conference comments?
- If Robbie Eggers has any integrity he'll quit the team and transfer to another school. Pat Knight has almost four times the playing minutes Eggers has, and that should be a clear message to Eggers. He's not even being given a chance to prove he can't cut it. When Pat Knight plays ahead of you, it's over.
- A career first for me on the night of January 31. . .I attended my first game in Purdue's Mackey Arena, the IU-Purdue contest. Emerged in good shape. IU is a b-a-a-a-a-d team. I can't see it getting significantly better this year, either. What's wrong simply can't be fixed without more and different players. Purdue's freshman center, Brad Miller (not recruited by IU, I'd guess) outplayed both IU centers (Patterson and Lindeman). Purdue has its typical roster of leadfoots, amputees, and castoffs. They outplayed, outscrapped, outsmarted IU. I still believe Purdue's Gene Keady is the best coach in Indiana, for consistently getting more out of less. (February 1, 1995)
- IU's Andrae Patterson is a real puzzle. He came in rated one of the top five high school players in the country. Two-thirds of the way through his freshman year he looks like a mistake. I know, I know: IU's system is so incredibly complicated, so difficult to learn. Yet we do see freshmen make major contributions at other schools.
- Right now I'd say IU will be as bad or worse next year in basketball. We lose Henderson. We get an incoming recruit, Haris Mujezinovic, who, with luck, could compare to Todd Lindeman. Mandeville and Wilkerson return from redshirting. Our existing players will be a year older. Does that sound like a better team than this year's? Not to me.
- IU has recruited a footballer for the fall of 1995 whose name catapults him directly into, say, the top 10 entries on my All Time Great Names in IU Athletics rankings. . .Geronimo Ciriaco, a defensive lineman from White Plains, New York. I've also seen it spelled Yeronimo several times. I trust eventually it will be straightened out. Either spelling counts, anyway. He joins trackman Sunder Nix in the top echelon. Other nominations will be accepted. (February 4, 1995)
- IU sports fans were buzzing following remarks by Coach Bob Knight following the Indiana-Northwestern game Saturday (Feb. 5). First let's grant that with Coach you can never quite be sure of the meaning of his words, and maybe he was just playing games with the ink-stained wretches in the Evanston press room. Coach admitted "real" frustration with the game as it's played today, particularly with the shot clock and the three-point shot. "I think the (bleep) game has passed me by. . .I hate the clock and the three-point shot. . .I wish I had retired seven years ago and I wouldn't have to put up with this (bleep) today. . .I just don't like the game today. . .basketball is a crappy game today. . .I'll probably stay around to see if I can figure out a way to beat it." Optimistic critics will find here what they've hoped for many years, an admission and acknowledgement from Coach that the game indeed has passed him by. Their hearts will leap in the fond hope that this will prompt Coach to make changes, to go forth with fresh resolve to fix the problems by recruiting better talent (which, Coach seemed to imply, tends to win games these days). Others will be cheered by the hope that Coach may resign and take his talents and baggage elsewhere to torment others. I think Coach will do nothing except the same things he's always done, and he will do them over and over and over again, until we all are dead. (February 7, 1995)
- And what are those things? Here's an example, from near the end of the post-game press conference: Reporter: "When they (Northwestern) made the run at you, did you think about the one loss you've had here?" Knight: "Get your hand away from your mouth." (The reporter then was obliged to ask the same question again, and Knight gave a sarcastic answer.)
- The Indianapolis Star's Bill Benner used Coach's comments as a springboard for a Sunday column speculating on who might replace Coach at IU some day. Benner's choices and odds: Jim Crews (2-1), Dan Dakich (3-1), Steve Alford (5-1), Joby Wright (15-1), Ron Felling (30-1), Norm (Covenant House) Ellenberger (40-1), Bob Donewald (50-1), Mike Krzyzewski (100-1), John Laskowski and Ted Kitchel (500-1), and the rest were intended as comedy relief (Dale Brown, Coach's wife, Karen, Gene Keady, and a sportswriter). I'd prefer, when the day comes, to completely sever the Knight era by not hiring any of his assistants or former players, unless Quinn Buckner would take the job. Otherwise, I'd vote for hiring someone completely outside the program and starting over. Benner noted, correctly, in my view, that IU would be a step down for Krzyzewski, now at Duke. I was startled by Benner's Jimmy The Greek look-alike conclusion that although Wright has many of the "right" credentials, he somehow doesn't have the "necessities" (code for: he is black). . ."let's be honest," wrote Benner, "while naming a black would be a bold move, it might not be a popular one among some members of IU's fan base." If Benner is right, it's a disappointment. We should be beyond that by now. Whoever it is, my fondest wish is that it be a normal human being for a change. (February 8, 1995)
- Inside Indiana courageously resurrected its Mail Call section in its February 11 issue, and printed three letters: one blasted anyone who criticizes Pat Knight or any IU player; one expressed chagrin at the lack of enthusiasm shown by IU home crowds so far this season; and one dreamed ahead to the day in 1997 when the current freshman class will be challenging for the national title. (February 12, 1995)
- I trekked to Assembly Hall in Bloomington last night (free ticket) to see the Indiana-Minnesota game (won by Minnesota, 64-54). It's hard to recall an IU team as bad as this one on this night, though I expect there were some. Our beloved boys are simply awful. There were two notes of special interest, though. The first occurred when Pat Knight initially entered the game in the first half during a break in the action. The IU public address announcer boomed out the player names of a Minnesota substitution occurring at the same time, but neither I nor my companion, a world-renowned proctologist from Indianapolis, heard the Pat Knight insertion announced. Perhaps we just missed it in the excitement. It seems more likely, though, that the public address fella either was ordered not to mention Pat's name when he enters a game, or decided on his own to do that special favor, in the hope that the fans wouldn't notice Pat's coming in and therefore wouldn't boo. Just a hunch. The second was when IU's Brian Evans was taken out at about the 15:35 mark in the second half after an error. He was royally reamed by Coach Knight as he (Evans) came off the floor and took a bench seat. Coach followed Evans to the bench, shrieked at him some more, then stalked away to his own chair. Assistant Coach Norm (Covenant House) Ellenberger was seated between Coach Knight and Evans. Over the next minute or so, Knight turned to his left and yapped and barked at Evans as play continued on the floor. Suddenly, Coach exploded from his own chair and sat down with full force right on top of Ellenberger. He screamed at Evans, while Ellenberger flopped and struggled beneath Coach's ponderous bulk. Finally, Covenant House was able to push Coach up enough so that he could slip to the right, into Knight's now-empty chair. Coach finished flaying Evans, Covenant House slid back to his original chair, and Knight resumed his. If this wasn't pathetic, it would be funny. Both the Star and the Indianapolis News reported the incident without hysterics, as did Inside Indiana. The Bloomington Herald-Times did not mention it. (February 9, 1995)
- Our beloved boys had 18 points at halftime against Minnesota and fans were wondering if this wasn't an all-time low. Nope. I unearthed two worse efforts in my archives. . .in the famous IU-Illinois game at Champaign late in the 1985 season in which Coach benched his starting lineup and opened the game with four freshman and center Uwe Blab, IU had 12 points at the half, and finished with 41 for the game. . .also in 1985, Indiana trailed Iowa at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, 35-14, in a February or March outing we also lost. That squad--shake down the vomit--consisted of Blab, Steve Alford, Winston Morgan, Marty Simmons, Delray Brooks, Stew Robinson, Daryl Thomas, Todd Meier, Brian Sloan, Steve Eyl, Magnus Pelkowski, Kreigh Smith, and Joe Hillman, more or less (there might have been a redshirt or two among those).
- Pre-game prowling found me cruising a long, court-level hallway lined with large portraits of Indiana's championship and tournament teams. A multicultural diversity bell jangled within me, followed by a disproportionalism warning buzzer, and I took a few notes. Following are statistics on the number of black basketball players appearing in various team pictures (year, won-lost record, number of blacks in total):1973, 22-6, 2 of 16; 1974, 23-5, 3 of 14; 1975, 31-1, 5 of 15; 1976, 32-0, 5 of 13; 1979, 22-12, 4 of 12; 1983, 24-6, 5 of 13; 1989, 27-8, 5 of 14; 1992, 27-7, 5 of 13; 1993, 31-4, 4 of 11. Indiana's 1953 NCAA champions were all white (13 players) and the 20-4 team of 1954 had one black (Wally Choice) on a team of 20 players (no clue given why 20 players--perhaps the then-separate freshman team was included). The average of the nine years cited (1950s teams excluded) is 31.4% (38 of 121).
- Fans were streaming out of Assembly Hall with three or four minutes left to play when Minnesota had only a small lead and the outcome theoretically was still in doubt. Max and Don noted the early bailouts on their broadcast, one of them noting the Hall looked "half empty" with a couple minutes to play. Except for two or three very brief flurries of cheering lasting only seconds, the crowd was apathetic throughout this grotesque evening. There was audible booing when the team left the court at halftime with a 22 percent shooting percentage and 18 points. Apologists will chastise the fans and ignore the truth.
- Late in the game, after guard Neil Reed had been taken out due to another injury and Brian Evans had fouled out, either Max or Don noted in what seemed a strangled tone: "We've only got eight players now." He was wrong. The eight he cited included Pat Knight and a walk-on (Jean Paul). Thus the correct answer was six players. And if Max and Don will do their research they'll discover that this player shortage problem is a recurring one for our beloved team, mostly because we don't carry a full roster like most teams do.
- Let's concede this about The Patrick Knight Unpleasantness. . .the critics and boo-birds aren't really aiming at Patrick. The anger and resentment actually are aimed at Coach Knight. Poor Patrick's only the lightning rod for all of it.
- The Indianapolis Star last week reported the death at age 38 of Sam Drummer, the one-time Muncie schoolboy basketball wonder who briefly was an IU basketball recruit in 1975, early in the Knight Era. Drummer was found shot dead in his hometown, where he had returned in 1983 after a star-crossed basketball career that saw him transfer through three or four colleges, then play briefly with the Harlem Globetrotters. He was jailed for drug possession in Brazil and dropped by the Globetrotters. Drummer's post-basketball employment consisted mostly of janitorial work in Muncie. The Star did not mention Drummer's brief connection to IU, nor that the scholarship offer was revoked before Drummer could enroll. The lad already "had money in his pocket and a new Camaro" and was "under the tutelage of a recruiter" (mid-1970s code for: he was for sale to the highest bidder), according to the Star's article. When Drummer or one of his associates attempted to wheedle money or other "incentives" from Indiana to assure the lad's arrival on campus, Knight canceled the scholarship that instant over the telephone. Drummer was shot once through the chest in front of a Muncie housing project about 1:10 a.m. and died enroute to a hospital.
- I'm not sure the full, stunning, mind-numbing impact of Inside Indiana's analysis of Haris Mujezinovic's talents has yet sunk in. The newspaper described this incoming prize IU basketball recruit as someone who with hard work might become as good as Todd Lindeman and whose chief role will be to fill a "practice player" slot. Have we stopped to fully comprehend what that means, (if true) what an indictment it is of Indiana's entire recruiting effort? We rightly inquire: who recruited this individual, then? That information will not be forthcoming, be certain. Inside Indiana has not printed any further analysis or comment on the matter, and I don't expect it to.
- After Indiana's home finale March 12, Coach grabs the microphone, fixes us with his most malignant stare, and says that not only was this His son Patrick's last game, it's His, Coach's, too, because He is resigning as IU coach effective immediately. Then he drops trou and moons the mesmerized faithful and a breathless nation peeking in on television. The Assembly Hall crowd--the mentor's ever-loyal Grape Kool-Aid legions--surges up in thundering, howling ovation as Coach is borne aloft, shaking His fist, face contorted in florid malevolence, pants still around His ankles, and paraded around the arena by His acolytes for one final, glorious salute. We can dream, can't we? (February 15, 1995)
- My guess is that if Inside Indiana's editors were honest, or we could dart 'em with truth serum, they'd admit that the Mail Call column's disappearance for a month or two in December and January wasn't because there was nothing to print but rather nothing to print that suited the editors' biases. Their clarion call for reader support during the self-imposed Mail Call drought has been answered. The column blossoms effusively with support for the editors in the just-arrived February 18 issue. Jack G. Abel, an Indiana University fan from Pensacola, Florida, wrote to equate booing Pat Knight or any Indiana player with burning the American flag. He further said he would "never second-guess Coach Knight's reasons for playing his son" and that anyone who boos Indiana players is not an Indiana fan. Karen Weigle of Rome City, angry as a hornet, said she wants people who boo thrown out so "loyal fans" can get in. She cheered the editors for refusing to allow anti-Pat Knight letters (name-calling, she calls it) in print, and for criticizing those who boo Coach's son. Dennis Clark of Hammond wrote claiming that bad officiating was one factor hurting this year's IU team. He firmly believes IU is good enough to win the NCAA title this spring. Ken McCormack of Madison, Wisconsin, opined that no one "wants to win basketball games more than Coach Knight" and that "he recruits the best players possible to play the game as he wants it played," though conceding that "Jeff Oliphant was no Steve Alford" and that Coach also "suffers the consequences when his recruiting or coaching methods fail." South Bend's Gene Gardner was allowed to say something negative. He noted that IU seems unable to recruit talented centers (junior college transfer Dean Garrett, 1986-87, is the last good one he can remember) and that he can't recall "an IU team so lacking in (outside) shooting skills." (February 18, 1995)
- It remained for a most unlikely source, non-sports columnist Mike Leonard in the Bloomington Herald-Times, to get most of the Patrick Knight Unpleasantness dragged into the light and laid bare. Leonard interviewed the Coach's son for the February 12 H-T. Young Knight admitted up front that he knew people would say that his roster spot was a gift from his father. "I'm the first one to admit," he said, "I wouldn't be at Indiana University if it weren't for my dad (being the basketball coach), and adding, "There's no way I could go to a school this big to play basketball." Leonard himself got at a core truth in this matter, that "for the most part, the boos probably aren't directed at Pat Knight. . .as much as his father's inclination to play his son at critical times. . .Pat Knight's detractors don't question his effort--just his ability." Young Patrick confessed to disillusionment, bitterness, and anger over the controversy, while acknowledging that his father's gift has been worth two Big Ten championships and a trip to the Final Four, made it possible for both his parents (divorced) to get to see him play college basketball, and drawn Pat and his father closer together. CBS briefly interviewed Coach Himself for a spot Sunday, February 12, at halftime of the Indiana-Purdue broadcast. Asked what he thought when his son told him he wanted to play basketball at Indiana University, Coach replied that what went through his mind was a picture, if he didn't take Pat on the IU squad, of a day in the future when Pat Knight's children would ask their father 'How come you didn't play for your father at IU?' Coach said he didn't want any part of that and so made room on the team for Patrick. That's probably as close to an admission of the truth as we'll get from Coach. The interview with young Patrick suggests he is confronting reality, too. So the major pretenses which Coach and his acolytes, and occasionally his son, were so insistently foisting upon us, have finally been abandoned. All this said, it's probably time to let go of it and get on with our lives. We do have lives to get on with, don't we? (February 13, 1995)
- I saw Pat Knight throw a pass out of bounds during the IU-Michigan game Sunday (Feb. 19) and heard it verified on the radio by Max and Don. Yet the next morning's box score in the paper showed Pat with zero turnovers. This is the second or third time this season I've seen this happen (the Minnesota and Eastern Michigan games, I believe, were the others). Does the official scorer get to make a judgment about whether a pass was "catchable" or not? Obviously, there's something going on I just don't understand. (February 21, 1995)
- The February 19 Indianapolis Star had an article about Pat Knight and the booing that's plagued him this winter. The writer, Tom Rietmann, didn't quite get it straight when he said young Knight was puzzled by fans booing him "for his attempts to do his job." That's not quite on-target. They're really booing Pat's dad's efforts to shove him down our throats. We all know that Pat's for the most part an innocent in this sordid business, that it's not his fault he lacks the talents needed to play at this level. It's the fraud and arrogance of his father's insisting that he does that people object to. Reitmann quoted Pat joking that he's considered writing a poem for his critics and reading it to the crowd like his father did after 1994's home finale. "When he does it," young Knight said, "it's looked at as being colorful. But if a kid like myself did it, people would think I'm kind of a jerk."
- The Pat Knight Unpleasantness occupied considerable air time Thursday night on WIBC radio in Indianapolis, where Robin Miller of the Indianapolis Star and co-host Jim Barbar fielded several calls on the topic. Felix from Noblesville called to say he'd heard from a source close to the IU program that Indiana's assistant coaches were "concerned" before the season began that Pat would be given a lot of playing time this year (at the expense of more talented teammates). Felix said he'd heard Coach asked the assistants to write down their preferred starting lineup before the season opened at the Maui Classic tourney in Hawaii, and none of them included Pat and none rated him very highly overall on the roster. Coach, it was alleged, was plenty mad about it, and the conflict has simmered secretly since. Barbar or Miller said Felix had good sources because he'd heard the same story from two or three people, that Coach and his assistants were at odds about Pat's playing time. Another caller said he'd heard Coach say on his radio show that "IU would be better next year and maybe with different players" and the caller wanted to know about IU's new players next year. Jim and Robin guffawed, and said there was only one recruit, Haris Mujezinovic, and beyond that there was no clue about who IU was looking at. An especially interesting note came when one of these Indy radio guys offered the opinion that Iowa was probably the best team in the Big Ten right now. (February 23, 1995)
- We remember Malcolm Sims, don't we? He was recruited by Indiana in 1993 but quit the team during his freshman year to transfer to Cleveland State. Malcolm, now CSU's second-leading scorer (10.9 point average in 26 games), has been suspended for the remainder of this season for "conduct detrimental to the program," according to a tiny note tucked away in the Star sports section. (February 24, 1995)
- Indiana University's redshirting seven-footer, Richard Mandeville, has been arrested for underage drinking following a ruckus at his off-campus apartment. The university issued its typical terse announcement that Coach would handle it and no further information would be forthcoming. It's a good thing Coach doesn't have one set of rules for everybody. If he did, Mandeville could sleep easy, knowing he'd be back on the team in no time, just like Coach's son, Pat, was a couple years ago when he was arrested for public intoxication.
- Over the transom floats a scrawled note that says IU is interested in 6-9, 265-pound Thalamus (Gotta Nickname Him "Hypo") McGee, out of Trinity Valley (Texas) Junior College--where the legendary Sean Kemp picked up a two-year degree one weekend in the 1980s. Yeah, yeah, but can he shoot the trey, take it to the orifice, vacuum the glass, dish the rock, and pop the 20-foot jumper? (February 28, 1995)
- The multiple weaknesses--inside, outside, all over the court--of this year's IU basketball team have left Brian Evans naked, exposed, and a disappointment. Evans would be a fine No. 3 or No. 4 player on a balanced, strong team, where the strengths of his teammates left Evans free to do what he does best--shoot from the perimeter behind screens. Evans is a typical IU slow, white guy who can't jump and can't create his own shot. He's reasonably effective inside (say up to six feet from the basket), rebounding, scrapping, slopping in a garbage basket here and there, and a fine outside shooter. He's poor at shooting on the run or off a dribble, poor at most any medium-range (say 10-15 feet) shooting. I suspect Evans' field goal statistics are down this year from last, and inconsistency and fan disappointment have dogged him the entire season. He hasn't gotten worse as a ball player--he's just been asked to do things he can't. If we think Evans will inherit Alan Henderson's scoring, rebounding, and "go-to" guy roles on next year's team, we're probably dreaming.
- The Illinois and Michigan State games well sum up 1994-95 for our beloved boys. Illinois was one of our two or three best efforts of the year, sustained strong play with contributions from everyone (excluding Pat Knight). Three days later everybody but Henderson went in the tank against Michigan State in another of those dismal, depressing, bone-grinders we're grown accustomed to in this sorry season. IU had five assists compared to 18 turnovers, shot below 50 percent (7 of 15) on free throws and 43 percent from the field. Michigan State was as bad or worse. IU had a chance to tie with under a minute to play and Evans bricked an air-ball. Seconds later Henderson has a jump shot blocked by MSU's white guy center, Jamie Feick (who got 9 points and 15 rebounds against our shaky front-court).
- Following IU is bad enough. Sunday we had to endure reading about Kentucky's 127-80 bombing of LSU, a fray in which Pitino's Wildcats rained in 20 (twenty!) three-point shots in 35 attempts (57 per cent). If you're a blue-chip high school basketball player, Kentucky makes a compelling case as the country's premier place to play college ball, with its running, gunning, full-court pressing defense, and three-point bombing galore. Indiana pales by comparison. It's heartbreaking.
- I'd contribute money to a Bob Knight Retirement Fund.
- The Bogtrot Slasher weighs in with this tip: there's trouble brewing with IU's Michael Hermon. The Slasher's sources say Hermon's class attendance is shaky, his grades in the 1.8 range, he'll probably have to take summer school, and may become academically ineligible. Hope not, but nobody should be surprised if it's true. (March 1, 1995)
- I've run across a metaphor which applies to IU basketball. This is something we intuit more than we know, of course: chimera, n. originally the fire-breathing monster of Greek mythology, having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail, an organism having tissues of two or more kinds differing genetically. The modern definition has evolved to a double meaning: either an actual or imagined creature made up of parts from more than one species, or, an impossible or idle fancy. Dan Dakich is an example of the former definition. My dream that IU football will someday escape the gods' curse or that Bob Knight will become a normal human being are examples of the latter.
- Much noise is being made about Alan Henderson becoming IU's all-time leading rebounder. He slipped past long-time leader, Walt Bellamy in IU's final game this season. Will anyone notice Henderson took four years to do what Bellamy did in only three? Bellamy had 1,088 rebounds in 70 games in 1959-60-61, a 15.54 average. Henderson's career totals are 1091 rebounds in 124 games, an 8.8 average. If Bellamy had played 124 games at his career average he would have bagged 1,927 caroms. Case closed. (March 7, 1995)
- Memory Lane Department: A sports item in the March 8 Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette briefly noted, in one-paragraph coverage of the local CBA franchise, the Fort Wayne Fury, losing a road game to the Rockford Lightning, that (former Indiana University player) Jay Edwards, "in his first game back with the Fury, scored two points in 18 minutes on 1-for-7 shooting." No clue as to back from where. Poor Jay. (March 8, 1995)
- Let's give both Coach and Pat credit for a dignified exit Sunday after the Iowa game. The Pat Knight Unpleasantness, which bubbled at or near the surface over the past season, did not produce the boiling bile explosion some had anticipated. There was a moment of breathlessness, though, when Coach took the microphone and thanked the IU fans, except for--and how many of us were thinking at that instant, oh-oh, here it comes?--"a few sorry people I hope I never see or hear again as long as I coach here. I'd just as soon those people take their tickets and go elsewhere. . ." in obvious reference to those who'd booed when Coach's son, Patrick, entered some games. That was all Coach said about the traitorous hecklers. Pat, too, resisted the temptation. Aside from noting, after he was greeted by a warm ovation, that it "sounds like my critics went on Spring Break," Patrick said no more about the Unpleasantness, either. Good. This was a classy performance history wouldn't have assured us. And the next time IU loses, it will be the last time Coach or Pat can torment us with Pat, and then we can get on with our lives. (March 12, 1995)
- "I wish he'd shoot it more. I think he's a pretty good shooter." --Coach Bob Knight, commenting on his son, Patrick, in the "Knight Verbatim" column, January 14, 1995, issue of Inside Indiana.
- "He has worked his ass off, being a very average athlete at best, to play and have a chance to play. . .I really think he has earned it." --Coach Bob Knight, commenting on his son, Patrick, in the "Knight Verbatim" column, January 14, 1995, issue of Inside Indiana.
- Facts: Pat Knight's career shooting statistics at Indiana University are: (Year FG-FGA FG % FT-FTA FT %): 1990-91, 16-39, .410, 7-10, .700: 1992-93, 14-30, .467, 4- 9 , .445; 1993-94, 8-30, .267, 5- 7, .714; 1994-95, 15-56, .268, 12-16, .750. CareerTotals: 53-155 FG (.342), 28-42 FT (.646).
- IU's 65-60 opening round NCAA tourney loss to Missouri seemed an appropriate and merciful ending to a stinking, sorry season. I suspect the players are just as worn out from it as many fans are. This is a dog best buried and forgotten. Coach, though, assured that the aroma would linger, when he blew up at a post-game press conference and treated a national audience to a classic Knight bullyboy performance, complete with the F-word and other profanities aimed at a hapless media coordinator (the unfortunately named Rance Pugmire) who mistakenly told the breathless waiting media that Knight wouldn't be showing up. Well, Coach did show up, but as is usually the case, he couldn't be gracious to the miserable wretch who'd offended him, and so unloaded in a tantrum humiliating for all concerned. We will all grow old and die waiting for there to ever be any consequences for Coach, though. (March 18, 1995)
- Writing in the March 18 issue of Inside Indiana, editor Rick Notter said that after IU's season-ending rout of Iowa, he thought IU surely had "played their way into a (number) 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA tourney," instead of the No. 9 spot it received. If they played only one game, the Iowa game, Notter would have been right. Unfortunately, Indiana played 30 other games and was awful in many of them. I'd have seeded them lower than ninth.
- In a press briefing following the Indiana-Iowa game, a reporter's suggestion that the Big Ten wasn't a very good league this year brought the predictable lecture from Coach, whose very genes seem to compel him to always take the contrarian position. Coach corrected the ink-stained wretch, disagreed emphatically, used the artful logic that it was a tough league for IU to play in so therefore it was a tough league. By Friday night of the NCAA's opening round, of course, five of the six Big Ten entrants had been bombed into first-round ruins and sent home in disgrace. Only league champion Purdue was an opening-night survivor, and barely, as the Boilers needed a controversial call in their favor at the game's end to squeak out a one-point victory. Two days later, Purdue was gone, too, leaving the powerful Big Ten with a 1-6 tourney record for 1995.
- We have arrived at the point where even parts of basketball games now have sponsors. IU broadcasters Max Skirvin and Don Fischer informed us in the lead-in to the Indiana-Iowa game that "Today's opening tipoff is sponsored by. . . ." We already have special sponsors for pre- and post-game shows. I can foresee a day when the game itself will be broken down into 60-second segments, each with its own sponsor. Who would want it any other way?
- The opening of the March 19 Bob Knight Show was one of the most bizarre I've seen. There was Chuck The Babbler, as usual. But no Coach. Chuck was all by himself. "Well. . ." Chuck began awkwardly, "as you can see, I am by myself. I'm in Boise. Coach is in Boise. The team is in Boise. . ." Chuck then offered a grotesquely convoluted explanation of how he came to be in an empty room for the show (veteran watchers can recall this occurring a time or two before), saying that following a "very disappointing loss" this is "one of the few times logistically during 24 years of working together that Coach and I have not been able to hook up. . ." Chuck told us that the IU team "is at another location preparing to go home. . ." The program continued with Coach and Chuck in apparently separate locations, Coach summarizing the season just ended, but with none of the warm, personal interaction viewers have grown so accustomed to over the years. Chuck, by himself in the studio, or appearing to be, wore the dazed, piercing smile of a man just a half-step away from a complete mental breakdown. The stuff he must go through staggers the imagination. (March 19, 1995)
- Things are so testy in Bloomington, Indiana, now that citizens are writing letters to the editor to criticize people who leave IU basketball games early. Bill Willems fulminated in the March 10 Bloomington Herald-Times letters column against big business, big alumni and other criminal elements who wore red shirts to a recent game and who got up to leave with two minutes to play in a close contest. "People would kill," he wrote, "to see a game" from the great seats these people have, and here they are trying to beat the crowd by leaving early. Who did they think they were? Willems seemed to be asking. Anyway? Or anyhow? (March 15, 1995)
- Bill Benner of the Indianapolis Star, in a March 19 college basketball column, commented on the Big Ten's sorry NCAA performance and wrote "You also wonder if the Big Ten isn't falling behind the times in recruiting. Some of the top prep players are gravitating to programs that feature high-octane styles. The game is played faster with the 3-pointer and shot clock causing an evolution that coaches like (Purdue Coach Gene) Keady and Bob Knight hate but players love." Even Knight has acknowledged this. It must be true. IU fans have only to look across the Ohio River to Kentucky to see an example of it. Kentucky plays all-out, run-and-gun, with dunks and raining rainbow treys, attacks foes with a wall-to-wall-full-court-press. What thoroughbred talent, offered a chance to play at Indiana and Kentucky, would chose Indiana?
- The Star's Mark Ambrogi, covering the Midwest NCAA Regional first-round from Austin, Texas, offered us a charming side of Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson not seen often enough. Richardson was apparently amused by reports of Indiana Coach Bob Knight's much-publicized tirade at the Boise regional site, and used it as a backdrop for an anecdote he told reporters about being criticized earlier this past season for "calling his critics a bunch of turds." Richardson said he didn't think "turd" was a bad word "because my grandmother called me that every day. She said, 'You little turd, come here.' For a long time, I thought my name was 'turd.' When I used that, it didn't dawn on me that I said something to erupt the world because I heard it all the time when I was a kid. So I apologized. But then I heard a man (Knight) go bleep, bloop, bleep. I'm sure glad he didn't use that where I came from. Different strokes for different folks." Indeed.
- An Associated Press story out of Bloomington, Indiana, March 21, reported the NCAA was investigating Indiana Coach Bob Knight's F-word-laced tirade against an NCAA media liaison who erroneously said Knight would not be attending a post-game press conference following Indiana's 65-60 opening round tourney loss to Missouri last week. Gregg Elkin, an IU sports information department flack, said neither the school nor Knight would have any comment on the incident. The AP reported--big shocker, here--that "nobody in Indiana president Myles Brand's office was immediately available to comment." Nor will anyone ever be, as the university does what it always does when Coach creates another local or national embarrassment: duck for cover. The IU president's office has a long and disgraceful tradition of cowardice in dealing with these recurring Knight episodes. President Brand was doubtless hiding under his desk, teeth chattering in fear, within minutes of Knight's latest tantrum. He at least had a comfortable, well-worn place to huddle, in the nest comfortably hollowed out by his gutless, nutless predecessors, John Ryan and Thomas Ehrlich. You can bet money that neither the NCAA nor the university will do a thing about this. It will be allowed to drift quietly away downstream without so much as a whisper of protest. (March 21, 1995)
- Not everyone fell into line, though. Bloomington Herald-Times columnist Mike Leonard bid IU's depressing basketball season good riddance with quick but pungent references to Coach's "master-to-dog tirade" directed at the hapless NCAA liaison person, Rance Pugmire, and closed by quoting Randy Holtz of the Rocky Mountain News, who said, "Nobody deserves the public upbraiding Pugmire got. Count him among the thousands this horrible man (Coach) has needlessly humiliated during his pockmarked career." Leonard, who himself often falls short of this standard--and, by golly, don't we all?--closed by suggesting Knight was less than a fine example for America's youth.
- A couple of miserable post-scripts to the IU basketball season. . . not a single time during this 31-game season did Indiana shoot .500 from the field two games in a row. . .the team's .666 free throw shooting percentage was the lowest in Knight's 24 seasons and the lowest since the 1970-71 team shot at a .644 rate. . .Indiana has lost in the first round of the NCAA tourney four years of the last nine (Cleveland State, Richmond, California, and Missouri the perpetrators)
- As I always do at tourney time, I checked the rosters of some of the teams for head-count. I discovered that UCLA had 13 players suiting up, Florida International (UCLA's first-round opponent) 14, Missouri 14 and Indiana 11 (one of whom is a walk-on, another Pat Knight). What's wrong with us, anyway? Why don't we carry a full roster?
- Seeing Oklahoma State's monster center, Bryant Reeves, lead his team to the Final Four reminds me of that day long ago when Indiana was reportedly checking out Reeves as a potential recruit. Word leaked then that Reeves was too much of a "project" for us to be interested. If I'm not mistaken, we wooed and won Shivaree Lindeman instead.
- "Michael Hermon has a chance to be as good a player as (Quinn) Buckner was." --Indiana Coach Bob Knight in the Knight Verbatim section of the March 25 edition of Inside Indiana.
- Inside Indiana is the only publication I saw which mentioned a second, largely unreported incident involving Coach at the NCAA tourney site in Boise. Editor Rick Notter described it as "a somewhat heated exchange at the airport (on Knight's arrival in town) with a news crew from an Indianapolis television station. That altercation, which was shown on many TV stations, was actually no big deal. It was the result of a misunderstanding between Knight and Indy sportscaster Ed Sorenson, who later told me that the situation had been cleared up and everything was fine." In the same column Notter went on to address--rather delicately, I thought--the matter of Knight's more-publicized tantrum at the post-game press session, which was broadcast across the country by CBS, ESPN, and CNN (the latter ran the film with a dubbed-in sound of a baby crying). You could practically hear the shoe shine rag poppin' and the slurpy sound of Notter's tongue licking Coach's boots as Notter summarized This Most Recent Unpleasantness by writing, "The headline in the Boise paper described this as a 'Typical Knight Tirade.' Yet, at least this year, this was not at all typical. In the minds of those who cover the Hoosiers on a regular basis, however, it probably seems that way. Acually, what is more typical is for the media to report on Knight only when he behaves in this manner. Three years ago in Boise, Knight left most of the media smiling. He talked about cerebral reversal, camping trips, and having players sit in tubs of ice. He was as entertaining a personality as there was to cover in the tournament. . .I am not saying what Knight did was right or wrong. He was angry about something that was not his fault, and he expressed that anger. But that moment when the anger flowed from his mind through his lips will be entrenched in the minds of many people for months." Not only is Notter fawning and gutless, he doesn't even know the difference between right and wrong. This is pathetic. (March 26, 1995)
- It is instructive that when Indiana's quarterback coach and lead in-state recruiter, Bill Lynch, resigned to take the head coaching job at Ball State University, and IU had a chance to thoughtfully analyze and search for a high-quality replacement, the position was filled within 48 hours by Deon Chester, an Indiana native who played at Ball State and was an assistant coach at that great football factory, Temple University. Yes, yes, yes, Deon or some other undiscovered nugget on IU's staff may yet prove to be the next Ara Parseghian or Vince Lombardi. . .but this has the look of more of the same at Indiana, where Peewilly Lockjaw appears to surround himself with cronies and second-raters. Even the sycophantic editor of Inside Indiana, Rick Notter, was surprised at the quick selection. Notter confessed in a March column that he was going to urge IU to go on an extensive and careful search for a quality replacement for Lynch, but before he could get the next issue out, Chester'd been hired.
- I'd like to know who IU chose to recruit instead of Iowa's long-bombing guard, Chris Kingsbury. When Chris was a high school senior in the Cincinnati area, he was reported to be strongly interested in Indiana, but was turned down and went to Iowa. Chris averaged 17 points a game and led the Big Ten in three-point shooting in this his sophomore season, one in which Indiana flopped around miserably all year at the guard position and was outscored by its opponents, 186 to 107, in three-point field goals.
- Indiana has recruited a 6-2 guard (Michael Lewis) from Jasper, Indiana, who is now a junior in high school, and who chose IU over Purdue, Wake Forest, and Evansville University. Question: Why, given our usual desperate need for thoroughbred talent, are we offering a scholarship to a junior in high school who is not at the blue-chip level (the teams recruiting him constituting sufficient proof of that)? I know, I know. Dan Dakich had Michael Jordan for lunch, and nobody recruited Pat Knight, either, and lookit how good they turned out to be.
- Basketball scout Bob Gibbons calls one of IU's latest recruits, 6-9 Larry Richardson, "one of the true sleepers" in prep basketball, and notes that although most recruiting services don't have Richardson rated very highly, Gibbons thinks he has the "potential to develop into a solid college player." Richardson chose Indiana over national powerhouses Notre Dame, Seton Hall, Nebraska, Penn State, and Auburn. This is not a confidence-builder, but it is what we're so agonizingly used to from Indiana.
- The Bob Knight Show opened this morning with Coach in his usual posture of bored exhaustion: head down, arms folded, sagging down in his chair, but today wearing sneakers with the laces loose and untied. Chuck The Babbler said we'd have a review of the season just ended, which started with a tournament in Maui. Coach immediately corrected Chuck, told us that the season started well before Maui, began, in fact, clear back in the spring of the previous season. "You can't just show up on October 15 and say, 'Let's see what we've got here'," Coach noted. Coach said he'd expected Marvin Lindeman and Steve Hart to be full-time players this year, but it was apparent early on they wouldn't be. That forced the coaching staff to look for other combinations only a few games into the schedule. He said that in his four years on the team Lindeman has "gained a lot of ability but has difficulty putting it to use in games. We haven't been able to unlock him as a game player." For the history-minded, Coach noted that Bob Wilkerson, the 6-7 guard who played alongside Quinn Bucker on Indiana's unbeaten national champions in 1976, "may have been the best athlete I've ever seen play at Indiana." Hart has the same kind of athletic talent, Coach said, but hasn't been able to do the things the coaches want yet. He noted that he was "incredibly disappointed" with the way the 1994-95 season ended (a desultory 65-60 first-round tourney loss to Missouri). (March 26, 1995)
- The troublemaking South Bend Tribune ran a reader survey late in March and more than 75 percent of the 1,517 respondents said they believe Purdue basketball Coach Gene Keady is a better coach than Bob Knight of Indiana. They're right.
- Headline in the March 31, 1995, edition of Inside Indiana: "Basketball Recruiting Hype Surprises Coach Dakich." The story presented an interview with Indiana University assistant coach Dan Dakich in which he ridiculed the numerous recruiting services which scout and publish information on high school basketball players, sneered at fans who pay attention to these services' ratings, and mocked anyone who thought the ratings or the hype meant anything. With iron logic, he reasoned that if a school recruits players who become the No. 1,2, or 3-rated team in the country then it has actually recruited good players, "but if you haven't, then the people that are ranking them (the incoming recruiting classes) have shown once again that they don't know what in the hell they're talking about." Dakich remembered when he came to Indiana (in 1981) "with five kids basically from the state of Indiana. I don't remember any hype." (It's no wonder: Dakich's recruiting class included Uwe Blab, Winston Morgan, Cam Cameron, John Flowers, and Rick Rowray, in addition to the chimerical Dakich himself, and had been preceded by 1980's Mike LaFave and Craig Bardo and followed by 1982's Stew Robinson, Mike Giomi, and Tracy Foster, three years of the most grotesquely inept Frankensteinian recruiting imaginable. The only sound a listening Dakich could have heard in those days was the sound of vomit splattering.). He pointed out examples of college stars who went unheralded as high school players--IU's Calbert Cheaney among them. He is correct that that happens, and there are also touted high school players who don't excel in college. But later in the article Dakich was unintentionally revealing when he made fun of "some schools" which are turned down by 15 kids and get one and consider that decent recruiting. Dakich said Indiana has fewer recruiting disappointments because "we recruit less kids. Coach Knight is not going to want to go to 15 kids' homes," Dakich said, warming to the defense. "He is going to want to know who wants to come to Indiana. It is really important to us that they want to come to Indiana. If a kid wants to come to Indiana, he is going to bust his butt at Indiana." He expressed amazement that "There are guys in Indianapolis that put Bob Gibbons (scouting service reports) and your (Inside Indiana's) column on the computer and fax it to 100 people. This is all they are concerned about. They say, 'I don't know why Indiana isn't recruiting this guy.' They say, 'Why doesn't Indiana recruit Jones or Smith?' What they don't know is that the kid may have all D's in school or has been in trouble with the law." Inside Indiana associate editor Alan McDonald let all this pass without comment or challenge, but Dakich is being disingenuous when he suggests that some of--or any significant portion of--the players Indiana isn't chasing are academic dolts or bad actors. I think we all agree--fans, coaches, anyone following the Indiana athletic program--that we don't want IU to be recruiting outlaws and scum like some schools do. Dakich is attempting here to evade the far more serious criticism of Indiana recruiting, which is that IU simply does not aggressively recruit truly top talent. It is far more interested in recruiting a kid who above all else "wants to come to Indiana" than in having to romance a top-ranked talent and convince him to come to Indiana, and Coach's towering arrogance is the reason for it. This interview offered continuing evidence of the level of self-delusion and denial necessary for those in Coach Knight's coterie of assistants, wheedlers and sycophants. (April 1, 1995)
- Was it more than mere coincidence that Inside Indiana's hard-hitting interview with Coach Dakich ran within days of a Chicago Tribune article March 26 whose opening paragraph read, "Combining elements of the sublime and the macabre, scientists have created flies that grow large, perfectly formed eyes on odd parts of their bodies: their wings, their legs, the quivering tips of their antennae."? The Tribune said research reported in the March, 1995, issue of the journal, Science, suggests researchers may have made a major breakthrough in their study of "the master control gene" for the formation of the eye, one of the most complex structures in nature. The work was done in a Swiss laboratory using fruit flies, whose eye gene, it was noted, is similar to a gene identified in mammals, including humans. Walter Gehring, the Science report's senior author, said he and his colleagues inserted the gene into regions of the primordial fly larva normally destined to become wings, legs, antennae, or other body parts. When the flies hatched, they displayed fully formed eyes wherever the gene had been inserted. Some had eyes bulging up from their wings. Others grew on the thorax or on the tops of the stalklike antennae. As so often happens, the interviewers and reporters stopped just short of asking the truly tantalizing questions: Dr. Gehring, have you or any of your associates ever been involved in gene manipulations of Indiana University football or basketball players? Have you ever worked on a patient named Dakich? Lindeman? Sloan? Pelkowski? Witte? Kirchner? Noort? Hmmmm? Hmmmm?
- Life's Ongoing Mysteries Department: Sportswriter Andy Graham wrote in the April 8 issue of the Bloomington Herald-Times of Indiana's incoming 6-9, 230-pound Joliet Junior College recruit, Haris Mujezinovic. Five days later in the April 13 issue Graham described the lad as a 6-9, 250-pounder. The March 18 issue of Inside Indiana, in a piece about highly-recruited high school center Robert Traylor of Detroit, said he was 6-8 and weighed 305 pounds. Three weeks later when Traylor announced he was going to attend the University of Michigan, the Indianapolis Star said he was a 6-8, 280-pounder. Inexplicably, both stayed the same height. (April 13, 1995)
- Chuck "The Babbler" Marlowe continues to embarrass himself publicly and last night's Coca Cola All-Star Basketball Game was the latest degradation. Marlowe was joined by Indianapolis radio celebrity Jimmy "Mad Dog" Matis, proof positive that WNDY-TV, the originating station for the broadcast, has no discernible standards. Matis's fame stems from his WFBQ (Q-95) radio persona as a foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, bawdy womanizer. To be fair, last night he was least a neutral presence, and didn't embarrass himself or the viewers. Marlowe, though, continued his role as a fawning, shameless shill for Bob Knight and his family--indeed, for anything even remotely associated with the Indiana University athletic program. Last night it was Coach's son, Tim, the Coca Cola game's lead promoter and executive director. Marlowe oozed on and on about Tim's talents in putting the game together, brought Tim on for a little post-game bootlicking. This despite panoramic camera shots that showed square miles of empty seats in Market Square Arena and an attendance estimated about somewhere in the 4,000-5,000 range. Another of Marlowe's irritating traits was on full display as well, his tendency to gush and ramble about the physiques of these young men, these very athletic boys, about their amazing conditioning and talents and strength. In post-game interviews, Marlowe said to Louis Moore, an IU recruit next fall, "Great game, my friend." He referred to IU recruit Larry Richardson as "big man." If Marlowe were an injured farm animal, he'd be put to sleep. As it is, though, he's central Indiana's Chinese water torture. And like Coach and Pat, it appears Chuck is going to go on forever. . .(April 16, 1995)
- The Babbler also interviewed New Mexio recruit Kenny Thomas after the Coca Cola game and noted that at 6-9 and 270 pounds, he sure was a mighty big boy. Thomas's eyes widened and he asked Chuck where he got that weight figure. The Babbler said that's what it said in the game program, 270 pounds. Thomas smiled and said he weighed 245. Sounds like something Tim Knight should investigate. Or maybe one of the big foundations would be interested. We have a right to know the truth.
- After seeing the Coke All-Stars on TV twice I'm ready to say the 6-9, 215-pound recruit Haris Mujezinovic is already better than Jambalaya Lindeman. Lou Moore looks like he'll make a contribution and 6-9, 135-pound Larry Richardson has a way to go. Richardson missed a standing slam dunk attempt early in the game when he failed to jump high enough to get the ball over the front of the rim. Chuck The Babbler said it was probably just a case of inactivity, being out of shape, something like that. Whatever, it wasn't encouraging. Mujezinovic actually seems able to catch the ball, dribble it while walking or running, and he seems energetic around the hoop. Faint praise, granted. These kids are a far cry from the level of athlete pursued and successfully recruited by the North Carolinas and Kentuckys and Michigans of the college basketball world. All three look like the kind of recruits IU is famous for, though: second-tier kids that we recruited on impulse just to get the process over and get on with our next fishing trip.
- The Indianapolis Star finally went public April 18 with what had been weeks-long speculation among the hype-happy kooks who follow Indiana basketball: IU freshman guard Michael Hermon was indeed in academic trouble. IU beat writer Tom Rietmann ran into the usual stone wall from the university. Coach, unreachable, was believed to be in Australia. Assistant coach Dan Dakich did not return phone calls. Basketball publicist Gregg Elkin was the only one unable to avoid being contacted, and he denied there was any change in Hermon's status. One of Rietman's "sources" told him of a recent vote among IU players which "went against Hermon and his continued membership on the team," apparently due to his "indifference" toward academics and team-related activities. Hermon's high school Coach, the legendary Landon Cox at Chicago King High School, said he'd "heard they (Hermon and his teammates) had trouble. . .the problem was. . .he was slow going back to class at the beginning of the second semester." Hermon's Bloomington phone number was reported disconnected. Hermon's mother, reached by another publication, said she believed her son was still part of the IU team. That story apparently flushed IU bureaucrats into the open. The Bloomington Herald-Times confirmed April 19 that a letter had been sent by IU to Hermon notifying him his scholarship is being revoked, and that there had indeed been a team meeting which resulted in a thumbs down vote on Hermon. The next day, Indiana athletic director Clarence Doninger, an attorney, dipped into his bag (made, be sure, from the finest Corinthian leather) of euphemisms and was quoted in the April 20 Star confirming, in utterly tortured English, that indeed, the athletic department and basketball team had "taken steps to initiate the non-renewal of Hermon's scholarship." Asked for reasons, Doninger cited Hermon's "difficulty in attending class and following prescribed details and procedures of the program." (lawyerese for: Hermon's violated team rules, is flunking out, and we're canceling his scholarship.) Days of radio silence have followed. Most IU fans are likely not surprised at this turn of events surrounding Hermon, who came to Bloomington an atypical recruit and wearing warning flags (he was, in fact, the very sort of recruit Coach Dakich has suggested only other schools pursued). The real tragedy seems likely to be Hermon's. He's apparently let a golden opportunity slip through his fingers: a chance for a college education, connections to a network of alumni and supporters, a ticket out to a better life. (April 23, 1995)
- IU has raised ticket prices for its Big Ten home football games to $23 (up from $20?). Sorry, not worth it. Prices for non-conference home games, against the usual collection of third-rate cupcakes, have been left at $20. They're not worth it, either.
- The Bogtrot Slasher attended the April 8 "Pancakes 'n Pigskin" football gala in Bloomington, a special public scrimmage for Peewilly's Lockjaw's 1995 Hoosier gridders. The Slasher says quarterback Chris Dittoe, whose first two years were wasted while Peewilly indulged the fantasy that John Paci was a better quarterback, looked exceptional, adding that, "IU fans are going to wonder where this guy's been for two years." Answer: Paci had pictures.
- Inside Indiana's staff offered extensive coverage and comment on IU's basketball recruits in the April/May issue out this week. Their analysis isn't comforting. Writer Pete DiPrimio interviewed 6-9 (or it is 5-9?) frontcourter Haris Mujezinovic and quoted him admitting, "I'm not a very skilled offensive player. I don't have a lot of shots and moves, so I hit the boards hard," then asked the rhetorical question: How good is Mujezinovic? DiPrimio's answer: "Some recruiting gurus (including Inside Indiana's associate editor Alan McDonald) have compared him to Todd Lindeman, the Hoosiers' passive 7-foot center." DiPrimio said 6-9 incoming freshman Larry Richardson from Florida "probably will not make an immediate impact for the Hoosiers. He has improved in the past year, but still needs seasoning before becoming a Big Ten caliber player." McDonald himself, in a separate column, wrote that "Mujezinovic needs a lot of work on his shot, but his aggressive nature will quickly win the hearts of IU fans. Whether or not he'll get significant playing time is anyone's guess. One of Haris's biggest contributions will be his physical play against Todd Lindeman and Richard Mandeville at practice. McDonald said Richardson "looks like a redshirt candidate, but I have no doubt he will flourish after a few years. IU's player development program is one of the best. Richardson, continued McDonald, "did not develop on the prep level until last year. He never attended a summer basketball camp and is considered a raw prospect." Apparently intuiting that readers might be dialing Dr. Jack upon hearing these indictments, McDonald hastened to tell us that incoming junior college transfer Lou Moore "will make an immediate impact. . .and will become a fixture in the IU rotation as soon as next season." McDonald, momentarily addled by Knight Worship Syndrome, also told us he saw all three of our beloved boys play in this spring's Tim Knight All-Star games, even though they were sponsored by and named the Coca Cola All-Star games with Tim Knight having the role of executive producer and organizer. One hopes McDonald can get down from the Knight family's lap before the next issue comes out. McDonald's column closed with a recap of Big Ten recruiting, calling it the "same old story: Michigan has the top class as (coach) Steve Fisher signed three of the nation's top 15 players. The Wolverines have NBA-caliber talent at every position and should be a national title contender for years to come. Experts rank Minnesota's and Ohio State's recruiting classes behind Michigan, with the rest of the conference about equal." He noted, too, that rumor had Indiana still scrounging around looking for another junior college player, likely a guard, for next season. "However," McDonald said, "all the big-time juco point guards have signed elsewhere. So if IU gets a junior college player, it will be one most other programs did not want." Nothing new there. Five bucks says Indiana didn't chase a single one of Michigan's recruits, excepting its silly and hopeless last-minute flirt at 6-8, 480-pound center Robert Traylor after Traylor let it be known he liked Indiana. No, we were off chasing Larry Richardson and Haris Mujezinovic and Odin knows what other second-rank frauds instead. I know, I know, Coach knows best, and DiPrimio and McDonald and all the rest are mere wretched journalistic scum who learned to write in high school but never went on to anything else. But we do have a quarter of a century of history as a guide. Still, it's best to wait and see, trust in Coach and the staff, and be comforted by the rumor that we have the lowest recruiting budget and probably the highest acceptance rate of any recruiting program in the powerful Big Ten. (May 10, 1995)
- Here it is, mid-May, and we're still waiting for the NCAA to complete its investigation of Coach's Most Recent Unpleasantness, his profanity-filled tantrum at the Boise regional site in March. We know, we know, these things take time, and the NCAA wants to be fair to everyone and not rush to judgment. . .
- Meanwhile, bet money that down in Bloomington, the man who should be investigating, Indiana University president Myles Brand, is hiding beneath his desk, shivering in fear, praying that it will just go away. . .Let's be fair to President Brand, though; it's not fair to expect him to discipline his boss.
- The University of Michigan lowered hypocrisy to new depths with its handling of The Recent Gary Moeller Unpleasantness. Moeller, the school's head football coach, was arrested and jailed April 28 on disorderly conduct and assault and battery charges following an apparently booze-fueled escapade at a Southfield, Michigan, restaurant which saw Moeller smashing two glasses, harrassing a waitress, throwing a lamp shade at the restaurant manager and challenging him to a fight, accosting another patron, punching a police officer in the chest, resisting arrest, swearing at police and restaurant employees and patrons, screaming at nurses and police who were tending him when he was taken to a local hospital for possible alcohol poisoning. Moeller, obviously recognized as an important person worthy of leniencies not offered to mere rabble, declined "countless opportunities to save himself the embarrassment of going to jail" as police, holding Moeller up, tried to get him to go home quietly in a cab. UM president James Duderstadt announced Moeller's suspension a few days later, promised the coach a fair hearing, assured us the university would fully investigate, denied early speculation Moeller would lose his job, but did intone, somewhat piously, it seemed, that, "The University of Michigan is a large place. On occasion such unfortunate incidents occur." Less than a week later Moeller was allowed to fall on his sword by resigning. Moeller's bosses, Duderstadt and athletic director Joe Roberson, were at pains to tell us the decision was Moeller's amd was made out of a desire to do the right thing in the circumstances and to presrve the university's integrity. Roberson bit his lower lip and said it was "terribly painful" and that in his view "it would have been quite difficult for Gary to be an effective leader of this team." Roberson's tearful angst sent me hearkening back to a wintry February night in 1993 when none other than Roberson was a halftime guest of IU broadcasters Max Skirvin and Don Fischer. The occasion was an IU-Michigan basketball game and the burning topic was Michigan's reinstatement--just in time for the IU game--after a one-game suspension of three of its basketballers who'd been caught on videotape stealing beer from an Ann Arbor convenience store. Roberson's tone that night was quite different indeed. "These young men," he lectured Max and Don and the IU radio audience, "have constitutional rights which must be protected. They're 20-year-olds who also must have protection from the university. A one-game suspension (the lads missed a game against Michigan State) was plenty. It was an important game, too." He acknowledged that the youngsters might be subject to civil law even though they were University of Michigan basketball players. Roberson offered no comment on--and Max and Don let the matter lie untouched--the peculiar curiosity of the university suspending the three miscreants before the authorities charged them with anything, then reinstating them to the roster after they were officially charged by civilian authorities. Everyone--Max, Don, Roberson, and I'll bet even most IU fans crouched by their crystal sets out there in the stygian gloom--agreed that it was just an unfortunate incident, a misunderstanding, an error in judgment, that none of us was there and so couldn't have all the facts, that everyone meant well, and that it was best, really, to think and talk about more important and positive matters. After Moeller's unforced, uncoerced resignation, Roberson conceded that the school's "investigation" into the matter had not been completed and that it might not ever be, now that Moeller had quit. "We have a standard at Michigan concerning levels of behavior," Roberson said. "I didn't have to recognize that; Gary already did. His resignation was the most appropriate thing at the time." This is code for: get this disgusting corpse offstage so we can get on with our business, and don't pester me about apparent inconsistencies in the way we treat players who steal from local retailers and coaches who get drunk and act obnoxiously in public. Besides, the man lost eight games the last two years and we're not all that sorry he's gone. (May 15, 1995)
- Thousands of IU fans must have wryly noted The Moeller Unpleasantness and the price paid, and conceded the contrast with Indiana, where Coach Knight's episodic tantrums and outrages in a typical season exceed Moeller's in a lifetime yet produce nary a murmur from IU's pooh-bahs about standards of behavior.
- Closure. A nice modern, touchy-feely word. That's what IU basketball fans need now. Closure for the Michael Hermon Unpleasantness. The semester's over. Final grades have been released. It's time for the media to nail down the last loose end, tell us what, indeed, is Hermon's final status, put this story to rest.
- A recent issue of Smithsonian magazine reminisced on the magazine's report 16 years ago in 1979 of the astounding discovery by farmers near the city of Xian in Central China of an entire buried army of male figures sculpted from terra cotta, some 7,000 of them, larger-than-life, including infantry carrying spears, archers, horses and chariots. The Chinese entombed this terra cotta army to protect Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, who died over 2,200 years ago. The Chinese government has since opened a museum at Xi'an, and a sampling of the soldiers and other museum treasures is touring outside China this year. Smithsonian noted that the terra-cotta army is only part of a vast, still largely unexplored complex believed to have taken 720,000 workers 37 years to complete, and called it "one of the most monumental archeological discoveries of all time." I suspect a similar madcap stunt has been launched here in North America, up in Kendallville, Indiana, at Treasure Me Dolls, which last winter manufactured 1,000 porcelain Bob Knight dolls and claims to have sold some. Treasure Me's owner, who soon after was pictured in Harper's surrounded by a platoon of his "Coach" critters, promised buyers, who shelled out $545 apiece, plus tax and shipping, for these treasures, that only 1,000 would be made and that the mold would then be smashed. Hrumph! Did anyone see them smash it? I suspect the truth is otherwise and that, thousands of years from now, when they are excavating our irrelevant civilization, some three-eyed android will turn over a spadeful of nuclear ash and discover the first of hundreds of thousands of entombed Bob Knight dolls in what, long ago and far away, was known as Indiana, proof final that there did indeed exist a species known as Grape Koolaidicus Crowdicus. (May 26, 1995)
- IU's basketball recruiting took another bizarre turn May 26 with the announcement that Chris Rowles, a 6-1 guard from Carl Sandburg Junior College in Galesburg, Illinois, will show up at IU next fall with a scholarship. Rowles has three years of eligibility and will join a class of eight sophomores on next year's team. In Dakichean fashion, he arrives without hype, and deservedly so. An all-state high school player in Kansas City, Missouri, Rowles apparently had no big-time scholarship offers, so enrolled at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (our state's equivalent, may we assume, of IU-South Bend, IU-Kokomo, or IU-Purdue-Indianapolis?). He stayed on campus five days. He then attended Southwest Missouri State for the rest of the year, but did not play basketball there. Still not ready for prime time, he moved to mighty Sandburg Junior College and averaged 19.2 points a game. This attracted the attention of major college basketball powers Colorado, Oklahoma, Colorado State, Washington, and Washington State. Somehow, Indiana got wind and joined the chase. How IU ever found out about this kid and Kentucky, North Carolina, Arkansas, Michigan, UCLA, Duke and other elites didn't is a mystery. It's obvious, though, that IU got what it wanted: another second-tier talent it didn't have to spend a lot of precious time and money on, and one where the competition wasn't too tough for us. Yes, yes, I know: we must trust Coach and the staff. And who do we think we are anyway, questioning their judgment? We will have to wait and see about Rowles and the rest, see what they actually do in competition. But for now, with no further information, this has the same depressing stench so many of the others do.
- The NCAA tried to get Coach's attention in mid-June by levying a $30,000 fine for his Boise tournament tantrum, but it didn't try hard enough. Coach reacted as He always does when His behavior or righteousness is challenged, using a tactic well-known to those who deal with children: He attempted to deflect, to blame others. Coach issued a snotty statement accusing the NCAA of violating its own press conference rules at Boise--so His tantrum was actually their fault. Then He got positively Biblical, pointing out that seven of the nine members serving on the panel which penalized him had worked for schools which had violated NCAA rules. He suggested that only the pure had a right to sit in judgment on Coach. He lectured the NCAA pooh-bahs on the number of tournament games He's coached (56), reminded them of His thorough knowledge of NCAA rules, and expressed indignation and mock puzzlement that prior behavior--most notably His $10,000 fine for slamming His fist down on a scorer's table during a 1987 tourney game against LSU--would be cited by the NCAA as weighing in its deliberations on this Most Recent Unpleasantness. This exchange of sniper fire between Knight and the NCAA had immediate and predictable fallout. First, IU officials scuttled frantically for their burrows. I imagined them crouched in the back seats of their limousines, hurriedly covering themselves with blankets, donning wigs and fake mustaches enroute to the airport for suddenly-planned trips to Asia, Africa, Europe, India, Antarctica, or other hideouts. Those unable to leave the country adopted the usual tortured, handwringing, hem-hawing posture. Athletic Director Clarence Doninger, for one, said he had no problems with Coach's statement, saying "it reflected the coach's questions over the severity of the penalty" and suggesting that perhaps "there does appear sometimes to be a disparity and maybe an unfairness in the way things are handed out. But sometimes life is that way." Doninger reminded an Indianapolis Star reporter that "We're still in a free country with freedom of speech and he (Coach) certainly has the right, I think, to issue a statement reflecting his point of view on the matter." Doninger hastened to add that he'd like to see the matter end. "He's certainly a very essential part of our program," Doninger said of Knight, "and I hope we can now go on to other things. Here's some news for Doninger: "It" isn't ever going to end as long as Bob Knight is alive. History shows this to be a pattern destined to be repeated over and over and over and over, endlessly, until we all are dead. The howling Grape Kool-Aid Legions boiled forth in full protest against the NCAA fine and shouting their praise for Coach in letters to the editor and calls to talk shows. A few media cranks--Bill Benner of the Indianapolis Star, Rick Bozich of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and "public issues" columnist Kurt Van der Dussen of the Bloomington Herald-Times among them--weighed in with criticism of Coach and the University. Benner in particular scorched IU's presidents, board of trustees, and athletic directors for cowardice in failing to confront and rein in the rogue hormone, Knight. An Indianapolis FM radio station disc jockey, the legendary Adam Smasher, launched a "Bucks for Bobby" fund-raising drive among his listeners. They'd responded with $167 after two weeks. Several Bloomington, Indiana, business moguls erected billboards along Indiana 37 urging the faithful to send money to the University to pay Coach's fine. My advice to the NCAA is next time to get serious--open with a fine between $500,000 and $1 million, and tack on a year's suspension with it. And if Knight offers another snide reply, double it, and double it again each time He opens His vile mouth. (June 15, 1995)
- Indiana University officials bow to none in their eagerness to play games with the English language, and IU athletics department spokesman Gregg Elkin has the latest entry in the ongoing doublespeak derby. One of the Bloomington Herald-Times's reporters with a hyphenated last name contacted Elkin about efforts by private citizens to solicit contributions to pay Coach's $30,000 fine. Elkin, whose duties include the unfortunate responsiblity of explaining away Coach, said he was unaware of anyone sending in such donations, then hastened to explain that it is a "misconception" for anyone to think that the university has to pay any money because of Coach's transgression. Rather than IU's paying any fine, Elkin reasoned, the NCAA will simply deduct the $30,000 from the approximately $350,000 that IU gets from its NCAA tourney appearance. Therefore, IU doesn't actually pay a thing! "They're just taking it out of our money," Elkin said. "It's not as if anyone here is writing a check." We readers couldn't be there, of course, to see Elkin's face, measure the tone of his voice, or read his body language, but it seems apparent from the H-T account that he actually believes this preposterous Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning and expects his audience to believe it, too. Next thing we know, he'll be running for Congress, where self-delusion and heavy traffic in the tissues of fraud and flimflammery are one's daily stock-in-trade.
- I think I've figured out what's at the core of Coach's visceral appeal to millions, what inspires the foaming-at-the-mouth, jack-booted, don't-confuse-me-with-facts-just trust-in-Coach loyalty he commands, what so animates the Grape Kool-Aid Crowd. It is this: Coach is our surrogate. He does with impunity what angry, resentful millions and millions of us dream of doing. He stalks into their office (For "their" substitute boss's, wife's, husband's, neighbor's, enemy's, anybody who's ever crossed you, done you wrong), jumps up on their desks, urinates in their faces. He defecates all over their desk top, their engraved desk pen sets, their important papers, and their family pictures. He jumps off, rips out their telephone, their modem, their fax, grabs their desk by the edge, turns it over in their lap. He smashes their furniture, slashes their priceless oil paintings. He throws their chairs, their personal and laptop computers through their plate glass windows. He jumps up on their chests and vomits all over their faces, their expensive suits, and their $200 silk ties. He sprays the wreckage with foul-smelling urine, then turns, brushes his hands briskly, and stalks out with a supremely satisfied smile. We see him in the distance, flipping the bird, both hands pumping, purpled face contorted, as a swarm of breathless talk show hosts and network TV cameras clusters 'round. And nobody can do a thing about it. Nobody can touch him. He has the entire universe bullied, hushed in awe.This demonic force is invulnerable. He is our surrogate, our proxy asshole. (July 10, 1995)
- Quite by chance, I've stumbled across another term which surely must relate to IU recruiting: trephine, n. a small, cylindrical saw used to remove circular discs of bone from the skull in surgery. Five bucks says Dan Dakich has trephineprints all over his gourd, and a bunch of the others, too.
- Jamaal Davis, a 6-8 forward from Merrillville, the top-ranked junior basketball player in Indiana and rated in the top 15 juniors nationally by certain hoop junkie-gurus, has been in Bloomington this summer playing on the local AAU team. An informant, said to have a pipeline direct to the heart of the IU basketball program, reports that the AAU coach and Coach's secretary scheduled a meeting for Davis with Coach Knight. Vicious rumor has it that Coach was golfing and unreachable while Davis waited approximately three hours in the IU athletic offices with assistant coach Dan Dakich. Finally, so the story goes, Davis said he had to go, and told Dakich to tell Coach that he, Davis, would be attending Purdue. Somebody has to be making up this stuff.
- Former IU basketball recruit Michael Hermon, who was dropped from the team this spring, has resurfaced in his hometown of Chicago and told the Chicago Sun-Times that he plans to enroll this fall in Parkland Junior College in Champaign, Illinois, and hopes eventually to play at the University of Illinois. "I guarantee you I'll have the last laugh and I will see Indiana again," Hermon quipped. Closure. Gotta love it! (July 22, 1995)
- An eyebrow or two surely lifted around Hoosierland with the announcement that one of Indiana University's most promising recruits, 6-5 lineman Bo Barzilauskas, has decided to sit out a year of football this season. News stories contained odd, brittle references to stress, burnout, the need for a break, and "personal reasons" and bore the impression that all parties--the lad, his parents, coaches, and university officials--had agreed on the language all would use in dealing with the inevitable questions. The rumor mill is, of course, busy. One involves the lad's father, himself a former IU and professional football player, who is said to be the classic "Little League parent" who attends all his child's practices and games and expects to be involved in coaching staff decisions affecting his son. Nobody's saying much. Young Barzilauskas won't even be practicing this season. One thing we can be sure of: there's more to this story than we're being told. (August 10, 1995)
- In the space of a few days this week we learned that IU basketball guard Steve Hart had been declared academically ineligible and shortly thereafter decided to enroll at Indiana State University in his hometown of Terre Haute. Hart was gracious in departing Indiana. He noted that his style of play was "up and down the court, and that's not what they do there. Coach Knight is a great Coach, but I need a program with more tempo. I was just too tense playing down there and I was under a lot of stress." The rest of us are left to regret that neither IU's sharp-eyed recruiters nor Hart himself realized at the recruiting stage that Hart's style and IU's were a poor match. The likelihood that we'll bring in some last-minute joke to replace Hart on the roster is notcomforting, either. (August 20, 1995)
- The Chicago Tribune celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Big Ten Conference with a 20-page special section in its July 31,1995 edition. The Trib named "all-time best" teams in football and basketball at all conference schools and chose All Big Ten selections as well. What fun! The Trib's picks are sure to stir hours of debate among fans. Here are the Tribune'sbasketball choices and my own. Let the tweaking begin!
- Chicago Tribune: FIRST TEAM: Scott May, Calbert Cheaney, Don Schlundt, Isiah Thomas, Steve Alford. Kratchlow's Kids: George McGinnis, Calbert Cheaney, Walter Bellamy, Isiah Thomas, Steve Alford.
- Chicago Tribune: SECOND TEAM: George McGinnis, Alan Henderson,Walter Bellamy, Quinn Buckner, Jimmy Rayl. Kratchlow's Kids: Scott May, Mike Woodson, Archie Dees, Quinn Buckner, Tom and Dick Van Arsdale.
- Chicago Tribune: FIRST TEAM: Scott May (Indiana), Glenn Robinson (Purdue), Jerry Lucas (Ohio State), Rick Mount (Purdue), Magic Johnson (Mich. State). SECOND TEAM: Rudy Tomjanovich (Michigan), Calbert Cheaney (Indiana), Don Schlundt (Indiana), Cazzie Russell (Michigan), Isiah Thomas (Indiana)
- I have no All Big Ten choices. I don't follow the league closely enough to have any opinion. The most controversial of my Indiana choices will probably be putting George McGinnis on the first team and Scott May on the second, and perhaps leaving off Don Schlundt will draw protest. I was alive and an ardent follower of Scott May's IU years and George's single season of 1970-71. I must have missed something in May. His supporters cite his national player of the year selection in 1976, the stupendous won-lost record of IU's teams when May played, and May's All American status for two seasons. All fine and impressive. I just don't recall May as a great player. I counter by noting that McGinniss led the Big Ten in scoring and rebounding in the one season he played, and that I believe McGinniss was a much more talented athlete than May, period. Don Schlundt is overrated in my view. He was 6-11 in an age when players that tall were rare. He scored a ton of points and for many years was Indiana's all-time leading scorer (till Alford and Cheaney came along). He still shows up in IU's top-ranked scorers and free throw shooters. I saw him play, but my memory of him is vague. Schlundt does not appear in lists of IU's top rebounders, doubtless because no rebounding records were kept in those years. We're thus missing a vital statistic in evaluating Schlundt. I would take Bellamy over Schlundt regardless, based on scoring, rebounding and athletic talent. I chose Archie Dees over Schlundt for my second team center. Dees seems to be one of IU's most overlooked fine players. How many IU fans know, for example, that Dees averaged over 25 points and 14 rebounds in his junior and senior seasons? I'd be tempted to take Steve Downing at center ahead of Schlundt, too. I don't include Rayl in my top ten choices. His field goal shooting percentage was in the low 40s, that he was a one-dimensional player, an offensive bomber and not much else. I'd take either of the Van Arsdale twins ahead of him, and probably Greg Graham, Damon Bailey, and Randy Wittman, too. Henderson had a fine career at IU, but was a good player, not a great one. Other IU names that rattled around for me in this exercise were Slick Leonard, Frank Radovich, Ray Tolbert, Tom Bolyard, Bob Wilkerson, Kent Benson, even one of my personal favorite players, Dean Garrett. Where would these guys fit on the "all-time" lists? Could you argue that Woodson ought to be in the top five ahead of Alford? That Buckner should be? I suspect Buckner's offensive statistics would be embarrassingly bad, that "intangibles" like leadership, plus defense, account for his mention in these top ten elite lists.
- The all-Big Ten selections are difficult for any but real Big Ten junkies. Rudy Tomjanovich's selection puzzles me. I feel about Mount as I do about Rayl, but consider Mount much the better offensive player, perhaps one of the best pure shooters ever to play in college. Magic's a no-brainer, ditto Isiah Thomas. Jerry Lucas? Probably, but I have reservations. Cheaney? Probably. Cazzie Russell? I draw a blank on him. There are some pretty amazing players who didn't make the Tribune's Big Ten elite ten: Kevin McHale and Michael Thompson of Minnesota, Shawn Respert, Steve Smith, Johnny Green and Scott Skiles of Michigan State, Glenn Rice and Chris Webber of Michigan , Dave Shellhase and Terry Dischinger of Purdue, and Jimmy Jackson, John Havlicek, and Robin Freeman of Ohio State.
- The Tribune took itself seriously in its special edition, and declined the opportunity to have some fun by selecting, for example, all-time listings for: Most Corrupt Athletic Programs; Most Corrupt Coaches and Athletic Directors; Biggest Assholes (Coaches and ADs); Biggest Assholes (Players); Worst Teams (It would be hard to top--or should it be bottom?--IU in football and Northwestern in basketball); Biggest Buffoons.
- The Tribune also chose its five greatest coaches. In order they are: Bob Knight (Indiana), Walter Meanwell (Wisconsin), Piggy Lambert (Purdue), Gene Keady (Purdue), and Fred Taylor (Ohio State) for basketball, and Amos Alonzo Stagg (Chicago), Joe Paterno (Penn State), Woody Hayes (Ohio State), Fielding Yost (Michigan), and Bo Schembechler (Michigan) in football. Arguments? Branch McCracken of IU might get some votes. I'm mildly surprised that the overlooked and underrated Keady made the top five. The Tribune said it considered Purdue coach Jack Mollenkopf for its football honor list. (August 15, 1995)
- The August, 1995 issue of Inside Indiana arrived today and includes associate editor Alan McDonald's latest basketball recruiting insights. A possible recruit, he tells us fans, is Chris (No Relation to Bing or Norm, One Prays) Crosby, from Littleton, Colorado, a "6-6 swing player who can handle the ball and shoot the three-pointer. He's not explosive and not rated very high by the scouts," McDonald reveals, and IU's chief competition is Colorado, Utah, and several PAC-10 schools. I sometimes feel Inside Indiana was invented just to torment us. Seldom does an issue go by without one of its scribes reporting that IU is chasing another thalidomide dandy. This stuff is so mind-boggling, and occurs with such relentless regularity, that no other explanation seems possible. God must be testing us. (August 22, 1995)
- Has anyone noticed that 50 percent of Indiana University's 12 basketball recruits in the 1992-93-94 period have left the program? Sherron Wilkerson, Rob Eggers, and Richard Mandeville (from the Class of 1993) and Andrae Patterson, Neil Reed, and Charlie Miller (Class of 1994) are still with us. The casualties include 1992's sole recruit, Malcolm Sims; Steve Hart, Rob Foster, and Monte Marcaccini from the Class of 1993; and Michael Hermon and Rob Hodgson from 1994. And three of four members of the incoming Class of 1995 are junior college transfers, an additional sure sign that recruiting's screwed up.
- The aroma of nut-crunching hardball being played hung over a story in this morning's Indianapolis Star sports page. It was just a little two-column thing, about six inches of type: WTTV Vetoes Bid to Keep Knight Show, the headline read. Seems WTTV, which has broadcast the Bob Knight Show for 25 years, has said no to a proposal from Coach's son, Tim Knight, who is apparently negotiating on his father's behalf. Young Tim wanted a one-hour show on Mondays (instead of the half-hour show Sunday at noon), a chunk of the show's advertising time given to Tim to sell (apparently for his own enrichment), and what WTTV described as an "outlandish" fee for Coach himself. WTTV, in an unusual display of courage, thought the price too steep. At least one other station is panting for a chance to steal the show for its own, and a meeting was scheduled between Coach's emissaries and WNDY-TV honchos. The Star reached an IU spokesman who refused to comment but did say that Coach was "out of town and unavailable for commment." We can be sure that all this story hasn't yet been told, but that eventually it will see the light of day, thanks to the Internet, the rumor mill, and various others out there who'll keep yapping and digging till they get it. My vote goes to "Who Cares?" This show is a worthless joke on its viewers, though it does keep Chuck The Babbler employed. Our country would be better off if it were not broadcast at all. (August 31, 1995)
- The football season hasn't even started yet and troublemaking Bill Benner of the Indianapolis Star has a column predicting the Big Ten results. It'll be Penn State again, he says. "Indiana has seven home games but will weigh in around .500, especially if Alex Smith's hamstring doesn't heal quickly." Benner thinks Purdue has a shot at a first-division finish and a bowl game, and he predicts the Boilers will beat Notre Dame Sept. 9 at West Lafayette.
- Since 1990 colleges and universities have been required by Congress to publish campus crime statistics. Indiana University just released its 1994 numbers and they show drug and alcohol arrests boomed upward by 55 percent last year, and rapes and attempted rapes also increased. Unpleasant news on the face of it. This situation cries out for IU athletic department spokesshill Gregg Elkin's fine-tuning. Elkin makes his living explaining away Coach. He's the university's current reigning expert at showing us that white is black and black is white, that $350,000 minus Coach's $30,000 fine really isn't a fine paid because IU never wrote a $30,000 check to pay the fine, and that what we see and hear are not, in fact, real, but confused illusions and hallucinations. Give him a few minutes with these crime statistics and we'll see that the campus was actually a safer place than ever in 1994.
- This morning's Indianapolis Star confirmed yesterday's rumor that The Bob Knight Show will move to WNDY (Channel 23) this year after a 25-year stint at WTTV-Channel 4. Coach's emissaries reached a handshake agreement with WNDY pooh-bahs which provides: 1) a weekly one-hour show, probably at 7 p.m. on Mondays (compared to the old half-hour each Sunday); 2) Chuck (The Babbler) Marlowe, Coach's longtime lapdog and WTTV show host, will host the new WNDY offering; 3) WNDY sports director Vince Welsh will also be allowed to take part in the show; 4) Not only will Coach "talk heavily about basketball, but the show will also feature his other interests, such as hunting and fishing, and possible interviews with his famous friends." (I am not making this up; it's a direct quote from the Star.); 5) Coach's deal also includes half-hour pre-game shows, several prime-time specials, and possibly home videos.
- Chris Duffy, president of Wabash Valley Broadcasting, which owns WNDY, ignoring the maxim that when they say it isn't about money it's the principle, you can be sure it's the money, was quoted saying, "Coach stressed that moving the show was never about money. It was about the opportunity to try new things. . ." All lips were sealed regarding the financial aspects of the big deal. So, as Duffy said, it was about money. Adding Coach's "famous friends" to the menu is a stroke of programming genius, too; one that will fill a yawning void in our lives. (September 1, 1995)
- The Chicago Tribune carried a short Associated Press item last week about a few University of Michigan fans complaining because the school's football uniforms now sport a Nike logo. The grumpers found something unseemly about making the proud maize and blue costume a "billboard," in the words of one. The university announced last October it had signed a seven-year, $7 million deal with the Nike people. The school gets Nike apparel and equipment each year, plus money for women's sports scholarships and--perish the thought--a sportswriting fellowship. It's no particular shock that Michigan would agree to rent commercial space on team uniforms. There's no sound in the world more compelling, after all, than that of a sheaf of crisp new thousand-dollar bills held up close to your ear and riffled like a deck of cards. What's instructive is the background to the Michigan deal. The AP story said "the deal was cut when athletic director Joe Roberson got fed up with his coaches doing their own endorsement deals with sporting goods manufacturers. If the schools' reputation is going to be sold, Roberson wanted the checks made out to the school itself, not its coaches." These "deals" between college coaches and apparel and equipment companies are widespread and highly lucrative, and in most cases the coaches pocket the money. Though I haven't taken notes, I have the nagging feeling--and it could be just my imagination, I know--that our own beloved Hoosiers are involved in clothing, uniform, and shoe deals galore, and that they change according to the highest bidder or the coaches' latest whim. Does the cash go to the coaches, the university, charity? Isn't it about time for some courageous media member--or perhaps one of the big foundations--to investigate? It's obvious we can't count on IU's wheedling sycophant of an athletic director, Clarence Doninger, or university president Myles Brand, to set things right.
- Northwestern's 17-15 upset of Notre Dame to open the 1995 college football season suggests there is, indeed, a god. But it caused a twinge of envy when I asked myself when was the last time my beloved Hoosier gridders had risen to such heroic levels and upset a foe of this magnitude? Offhand, I can't recall such an instance in my lifetime. (Perhaps IU's upset of Purdue in 1967 qualifies--I can't recall if Purdue was highly ranked at the time.)
- I'm struggling with a mystery. IU quarterback Chris Dittoe was a high school All-American. So was Michigan's new freshman quarterback, Scott Driesbach. (wasn't he?) Let's assume he was and that he is as talented or even better than Dittoe. What I can't understand is this: how come Michigan, with a football program light years better than Indiana's, will start a freshman quarterback--Driesbach--but Indiana wouldn't start a quarterback who's on a par with Michigan's? Does Peewilly want to tell me that John Paci, the journeyman he started for two years while Dittoe rode the bench, was a better quarterback than Driesbach and Dittoe? The mystery endures. Can someone explain this to me? Did Paci have pictures? America wants to know!
- This will be Indiana's 108th year of intercollegiate football. The death march began in 1887 with an 0-1 record. Except for 1890, when the season was skipped--were they briefly coming to their senses?--they've been at it every year since. Here's the toll: Overall, 390 wins, 493 losses, 44 ties, a .444 percentage; Big Ten, 169 wins, 349 defeats, 24 ties, a .334 performance. (Source: IU Football Media Guide, 1995.)
- The Big Ten's been around for 100 years. One dismal century's primal scream of football toil finds our beloved Hoosier gridders dead last (through 1994) in league play. Here's the ugly truth (team, won-lost-tied, pct., titles won): Penn State, 14-2-0 .875, 1; Michigan 380-143-18, .719, 37; Ohio State, 360-139-24, .711, 26; Michigan State, 174-128-8, .574, 6; U. of Chicago, 120-99-14, .545, 7; Minnesota, 282-271-28, .510, 18; Illinois, 291-291-30, .500 ,14; Purdue, 249-289-30 .465, 7; Wisconsin, 251-308-40, .452, 9; Iowa, 221-290-25, .436 ,9; Northwestern, 189-390-21, .333, 5 ; INDIANA ,167-348-24, .332, 2.
- Might as well get some statistics gathered, because the inevitable IU Football Attendance Unpleasantness discussion will continue this year. Despite blatant shilling and pleading by IU's coaches, players and staff, an embarrassingly small crowd of only 30,856 showed up for the Western Mchigan opener. They were treated to a shabby stumblebum performance by our beloved Hoosier gridders, who won, 24-10, and shook down only a few flakes of vomit doing it. Here are attendance figures for the last 15 seasons (year, overall record, Big Ten record, average attendance): 1980, 6-5, 3-5 ,46,904; 1981, 3-8 ,3-6, 48,185;1982, 5-6 ,4-5, 42,652; 1983, 3-8, 2-7, 45,313; 1984*, 0-11*, 0-9*, 39,905*; 1985, 4-7, 1-7, 39,638;1986,6-6, 3-5, 37,641; 1987, 8-4, 6-2, 45,175; 1988, 8-3-1, 5-3, 51,446; 1989, 5-6 ,3-5, 48,265; 1990, 6-5-1, 3-4-1, 46,505; 1991, 7-4-1, 5-3, 47,296; 1992, 5-6, 3-5 ,43,907; 1993, 8-4, 5-3, 38,243; 1994, 6-5, 3-5 ,39,101; Totals, 80-88-3, 49-69-1. *1984 was Peewilly Lockjaw's first season at IU
- The highwater mark in attendance was the 1969 season (Gonso's senior year when the team was 4-6 overall, 3-4 and tied for fifth in the Big Ten) with average crowds of 53,319 in a stadium with a listed capacity of 52,354. In the 1967 Rose Bowl year IU attendance averaged 43,641 and in 1968 the figure was 48,290. Interestingly, the "Gonso" team's record went down each year (from 9-2 to 6-4 to 4-6) while attendance rose. Perhaps fans were buying tickets in the fumes of 1967's glory, and it took a couple years for them to sober up. IU's 1995 football media guide says 186 games have been played in Memorial Stadium since it opened in 1960 and the average crowd has been 40,187. It's difficult to draw conclusions from the 15-year figures. Oddities abound. For instance, Mallory's first team went 0-11 and averaged bigger crowds (39,905) than his 6-5 team of 1994 did( 39,101), and 1989's 5-6 team averaged more than the 7-4-1 squad of 1991. The bottom line for me is the same: Indiana University football, as a "product," does not deliver value; ticket prices are too high for the quality of product delivered. A family of four would have spent close to $100 (tickets, parking, and modest refreshments) to attend the Western Michigan bonegrinder, and gotten a crappy IU performance in exchange. It won't change until IU can play competitively with the big boys (meaning beat a Michigan, Ohio State,or Penn State, say, once every four years--not too high a standard), or until ticket prices are slashed significantly. (September 9, 1995)
- The sad part is that stinkers like the Western Michigan game only prove what the critics say about IU football, and reinforce the perception loose in Hoosierland that this team is just more of the same sad, endless parade. Peewilly and the PR flacks promised us a more balanced offense, told us things would be different. Instead, IU's offense ran nearly exactly the ratio of run and pass plays it did last year (2:1) with the abominable John Paci, who had pictures, at quarterback. Against Western Michigan, IU rushed the ball 50 times, passed 26.
- Still questing for clues, I've tallied IU football attendance figures for the four coaches--John Pont, Lee Corso, Sam Wyche, and Peewilly Lockjaw--who've guided teams exclusively in the "new" Memorial Stadium since it opened in 1960. It looks this way: (overall record and percentage, number of home games, average attendance):Pont (1965-72), 31-51-1, (.380), 40, 41,277; Corso (1973-82), 41-68-2, (.385), 56, 40,232; Wyche (1983), 3-8-0, (.273), 6, 45,313; Lockjaw (1984-?), 63-61-3, (.508), 63, 43,213. Alas, no insight emerges. What to make of this?
- One thing to explore in our search for the key to Indiana University's sagging football attendance might be the quality of our non-conference opponents. In the John Pont years (1965-1972), our non-conference foes included Kansas State, Texas, Miami of Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas, Baylor, California, Colorado, West Virginia, Syracuse, Miami (Florida), Washington State, and Texas Christian, with a record of 11 wins and 13 losses. Lee Corso coached from 1973-82 and played non-conference foes such as Arizona, Kentucky, West Virginia, Nebraska, Utah, North Carolina State, Washington, Louisiana State, Miami (Ohio), Vanderbilt, Colorado, Duke, Southern Cal and Syracuse with 14-14 results. Since Peewilly Lockjaw took the Hoosier reins in 1984, following Sam Wyche's one-year stint in 1983, Indiana has played non-league foes such as Duke, Kentucky, Louisville, Navy, Missouri, Rice, Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Notre Dame, Miami (Ohio), Northern Illinois, Cincinnati, and Southern Mississippi, with results through 1994 of 24 wins, six losses and two ties. The non-conference results account for Lockjaw's winning record at IU, and camouflage his Big Ten record of 37-51-1. It would be interesting to have attendance figures for the non-conference games. Intuition tells you the crowds should be better for "name-brand" opponents, but without facts it's hard to know. Our most recent encounters with non-conference cupcakes are a strong lure to this correlation. Last year IU drew 31,284 fans for the Cincinnati game and 33,489 for Miami of Ohio, but only 38,195 for the Minnesota game, 39,208 for Homecoming against Northwestern, 47,754 for Penn State, and a surprisingly modest 44,672 for Ohio State.
- IU's loss to Kentucky gives the word dismal a new meaning, but it's a familiar experience for IU followers. Another foul-smelling performance, and against a team that was rated nearly the worst in NCAA Division I football. Our radio guys, Max and Don, were courageous enough to tell us Indiana played atrociously (though they didn't use words quite that strong). They so far haven't figured a way to filter out the crowd boos for the listening radio audience, so those came through loud and clear. Another crappy crowd, this time of 37,225 (several thousand of them from Kentucky). When Max and Don asked Peewilly on the post-game show about his feelings, Peewilly said, "We're just gonna to have to get ourselves better. We're gonna have to get ourselves better." He didn't seem to have much of a clue. The Kool-Aiders accuse those who don't buy tickets of disloyalty and treason. They say we owe it to our school to attend games. Clarence Doninger, IU athletic director, fends off people who are alarmed at the terrible attendance by saying attendance is cyclical. Maybe it is. But how much longer will IU's accountants be able to put up with 15,000 to 20,000 empty seats per game? At $20 per ticket, that's between $300,000 and $400,000 of lost ticket revenue per home game. That times seven home games this year is a loss of over $2 million, and that doesn't include refreshments, automobile parking, and miscellaneous items. It's obvious the school will tolerate mediocrity on the playing field. But this money thing, that's serious! (September 16, 1995)
- Another way to consider IU football attendance is this: consumers are making an economic decision in the marketplace. Many thousands of them are declaring the product a crappy one by refusing to buy tickets. Fairly simple, actually. If this were a well-run business, IU's athletic pooh-bahs would be sparing no efforts to attract more customers. Instead, they shuffle their paper and their feet, sniff sanctimoniously, offer lame excuses, and suggest that non-ticket buyers are disloyal.
- I tuned in the Peewilly Lockjaw Talk Show last night on radio WIBC-1070. The first caller, Patrick from Wabash, tried in a sad, halting, inarticulate way to suggest IU runs the same plays over and over and over and over. Peewilly said "a lot of it was just poor execution." Tom from Fort Wayne said he'd rather see IU play some big-name programs in non-conference games. He said in the Lee Corso days he could go to Bloomington and see IU play LSU, Colorado, Washington, and others and it was fun and worth the money (even though, in those days as well as these, IU football was mediocre or worse). Tom said he was a longtime season ticket holder and it wasn't worth the trip south to see IU play Mid-American Conference and similar second- or third-tier opponents. Peewilly bristled. "Well, that's your choice," he snapped at "Tom from Fort Wayne." "I get plenty tired of hearing about this," Lockjaw said, and told Tom that he, Lockjaw, had nothing to do with the scheduling, that the "schedule was made 12 years ago." Lockjaw defended IU's playing MAC opponents, said they were "good schools, good programs," and added that he'd really prefer to play 10 league games--meeting each opponent once--and only one non-conference game, that against Kentucky. Another caller, from Chicago, said he'd been going to game for 20 years and had never seen anything as humiliating as the loss to Kentucky. He criticized the play-calling, asked why Lockjaw didn't send in another quarterback after watching Dittoe flounder. Peewilly said he thought about changing quarterbacks but then decided not to. Moderator and show host Don Fischer later said that Tom from Fort Wayne was really Donald from South Bend and that "Donald" was really a pseudonym for someone--obviously a snotty critic of the program--who calls the show frequently and is "very negative." Fischer said he wished Snotty from Wherever would at least give his real name and location. Fair enough. Ball's in Snotty's court. Lockjaw's remarks for the most part were lame recitations of the mantra, "We've just got to get ourselves better." He said it three, four, half a dozen or more times. I was never once tempted to call. This show is a waste of everyone's time. And unless Peewilly promises to resign on-air, I don't imagine I'll ever bother tuning in again. (September 21, 1995)
- Reports filter southward that Fort Wayne radio station WOWO's nightly sports talk show has been heavily bombarded by callers critical of Lockjaw and IU football and that from the sound of it, the show's host is not sanitizing or screening the callers to assure "balance" or prevent undue criticism as WIBC seems to do. I have a hunch that Lockjaw, too, will have a sizable legion of Kool-Aiders rallying to his support if this stink continues. Until IU football gets decidedly better, you can bet money the stink will continue, as will the denial. I don't think we're imagining these performances.
- The closing two minutes of IU's game with Southern Mississippi offered classic IU football moments. First, running back Alex Smith ran 81 yards for a touchdown but fumbled the ball as he crossed into the end zone. It was recovered by Southern Mississippi, costing us seven sure points. A few seconds later IU got the ball back and needed only to run out the clock to assure victory. Southern Mississippi had two time outs left, and used them both on IU's first two downs. Proper use of the 25-second clock, fans thought, would end the game. Broadcasters Max and Don thought so, too. They described the final plays in alarmed disbelief. IU didn't seem to know how to run out the clock. Quarterback Chris Dittoe took snaps amd twice kneeled to STOP the clock. On the final play, all Dittoe had to do was take the ball and run, backwards if need be, for a few seconds. Instead he kneeled. Mississippi State got the ball back with seven seconds to play but a final desperation pass was awry and IU won despite six fumbles and numerous other miscues. This team is shockingly inept. If it doesn't do a rapid turnaround we're looking at an utter disaster (3-8 or 2-9) of a season.
- IU's football plight--a free fall to the septic tank bottom--is drawing little media or public attention. The Indianapolis Star gave cursory coverage to the 31-7 humiliation at Northwestern (one Sunday story, zero editorial/columnist comment). Little to no interest is heard from callers to Indy's two radio talk shows. Attendance is pathetic. Fan sentiment seems to be that this team may not win another game this year, so awful is its performance so far. This is a team its coach, Peewilly Lockjaw, said could compete for the Big Ten title. Onesuspects a moment of truth is near at hand for this team and its coaching staff.
- The Gang of Four was spotted at the IU-Illinois game, lounging some 54 rows deep in goal-line seats in the southwest corner of Memorial Stadium. Just over 38,000 (several thousand of them Illini fans) showed up for another dismal performance. Illinois may be the only Big Ten team close to IU in ineptitude. Numerous angry fans were yapping in the surrounding bleachers. Cries of "Fire Mallory" floated toward the Hoosier bench, mixed with other taunts and jeers as this bonegrinder unfolded. There were some 14,000 empty seats on a perfect football afternoon, temperatures in the 60s under a partly cloudy sky. Disinterest, indifference, and surliness were the prevailing emotions. Pre-game gawkers saw IU president Myles Brand and his wife hurrying along the west concourse. Athletic director Clarence Doninger and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney were seen in tandem as well. There were no lines at the concession stands. It was hard not to feel resentment toward the disloyal people who declined to pay $23 to attend this hideous, depressing spectacle. This team is so inept now that it's all but irrelevant, and beyond caring about. The Internet "Hoosiers List" is full of people ridiculing the football program, calling for Peewilly's firing, and doing countdowns to the start of basketball practice. Ever-vigilant Kool-Aiders swarm like white cells to attack anyone saying anything critical, particularly about Coach or the basketball program. If you can't be positive, says one, then get off the Internet and out of this group because we don't want to hear you! I'll admit it's tempting, but I think I'll hang around. It's too much fun to abandon. (October 7, 1995)
- The Indianapolis Star's Bill Benner devoted an October 10 column to the cosmic question of college football mediocrity at Indiana and Purdue. He confessed a fondness for the two coaches, Purdue's Jim Colletto and IU's Peewilly Lockjaw. He spent the weekend in Bloomington and reports that "the faithful" (fans who actually attend IU's games) aren't happy. He mentioned the obvious--Indiana "piling up wins over non-conference patsies has proved to be nothing more than fool's gold--and concluded that decision-makers at IU (de facto president Bob Knight, athletic director Clarence Doninger, and nominal university president Myles Brand) and Purdue should take a hard look at their floundering programs. Not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but Benner probably counts it a triumph to sneak that "de facto president" description of Knight into print. (October 10, 1995)
- Mini-Classic IU Football Moment Department: during today's game with Iowa, IU walk-on quarterback Adam Greenlee was standing up behind the center looking right and left and had not even bent over to take the snap when Indiana's tight end jumped offside. He jumps to a different drummer, I suppose. (October 14, 1995)
- The phone rang mid-evening after the Western Michigan game. A ragged, hoarse voice said, "I think I've found the cancer. It's George Belu (IU's offensive coordinator in football)." This was an obvious reference to Indiana's disorganized and inconsistent play on offense against Western Michigan. "Mark it down," the voice said. Click. Dial tone. (September 9, 1995)
- The Indianapolis Star quoted IU's former walk-on (now scholarshipped) quarterback Adam Greenlee in the October 10 issue talking about his decision last summer to return for a fifth year, saying "I looked at the talent on this team and there was a legitimate chance of going to the Rose Bowl." Is he sure he wasn't looking at Ohio State's chances? Or Penn State's or Michigan's? Have you ever heard anything as silly as this? Greenlee's coach, Peewilly Lockjaw, didn't help the silliness index any when he was quoted saying of Greenlee, "He's quality-plus. He's got a great attitude. He's got that bright look to him. He's got a bounce. I mean, he's alive."
- About 30,000 seats went unsold in Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium for two baseball playoff games with the Atlanta Braves. The Reds were offering centerfield bleacher seats for $30. Pundits wrung their hands. Kool-Aiders muttered angrily about the disloyalty of those who didn't show up. Still, there will be no justice in America until they play in empty stadiums. None. (October 16, 1995)
- Broadcaster Jim Barbar, commenting before today's Indiana-Michigan football game, said "IU defensive coordinator Joe Novak can't figure out why IU is last in the Big Ten" in turnover ratio (10 takeaways, 18 giveaways equals a "minus eight" ratio). Novak told Barbar that the IU defense is more aggressive this year than last year's "vanilla" version. The answer is simple: this is a terrible team, one that is not fundamentally sound, one that game after game makes stupid mistakes of omission and commission, and a team that is out-talented by most of its opponents. Novak just needs to think a little harder, that's all. (October 21, 1995)
- And when the game was over, IU had added four more turnovers to its dismal giveaways, dead last in the league.
- Placekicker Bill Manolopoulis pulled the hip flexor muscle in his right leg October 21 while kicking a 37-yard field goal on the first series of IU's loss to Michigan. No other player on either team touched Manolopoulis. Merely swinging his leg caused the injury. He missed the rest of the Michigan game and is out indefinitely. IU fans with longer attention spans will recall that Manolopoulis dislocated his shoulder while giving a "high five" to a teammate to celebrate a big play against Michigan State in 1993. This stuff happens nowhere but in Indiana football.
- Creative Sports broadcaster Wayne Larrivee early in the IU-Michigan game said, "There's Adam Greenlee, the senior quarterback out of Columbus, Ohio (Greenlee is from Columbus, Indiana) and Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr, acting just plain silly, told an IU broadcaster in the pre-game interview, that "There's no one in the Big Ten who can't beat anyone else." even though his team was playing a team that couldn't beat Michigan, Ohio State or Penn State once in a hundred times this year.
- More Mantra: IU Broadcaster Don Fischer saying "Whatever the case, Indiana just made another big mistake and it really cost them" after an IU defensive end (Joe King) was "nowhere near" the Michigan fella who caught a 38-yard pass at the two-yard line to set up another Michigan score. . .and IU's return team fell asleep on the ensuing kickoff, almost allowing Michigan to recover its own kick. "Indiana's special teams are killing them today," said the broadcasting team of Larrivee and Randy Wright. (October 21, 1995)Attention Joe Novak: Watch This Film Segment For Clues
- Indiana free safety Eric Smedley ran downfield and plastered a Michigan player about to catch a punt, giving the Wolverines a big chunk of penalty yardage. . .and soon after Smedley was mysteriously in the IU backfield as a punt returner and fumbled the ball to Michigan. . .late in the third quarter IU tried an onside kickoff but Joe King, earlier beaten on a huge pass play, touched the ball before it traveled the required 10 yards, negating IU's recovery of the kickoff.
- The Indianapolis Star printed a lengthy article October 20 focusing on the floudering IU (and Purdue) football programs under the bold headline: What's Wrong? Despite a Downturn in Hoosier Fortunes, Mallory Vows to Ride Out Storm of Criticism. Exceptionally astute readers could have stopped right there, for while the major headline promised hard-hitting analysis, the subhead revealed the real story: more of the same head-in-the-sand denial. Writer Mark Montieth acknowledged the angry letters and phone calls to newspapers and talk shows around the state, the booing and ugly taunts of fans at IU games, and the shoddy on-field performance by our beloved boys. But Montieth only got five or six paragraphs into the story before the focus began to turn to excuses--all those injuries--and unlimited space given to Lockjaw and other IU apologists to explain why things really aren't so bad after all. Peewilly, offering a credible imitation of Alfred E. Neumann, said, "I'm not worried about crowds (poor attendance at IU games). I'm not worried about down the road. I'm not worried about bowls. I'm not worried about anything." He said he and the boys were going to stay "focused" and "stay on (our) game plan " and "not panic and run around here like a nut" and---grab the barf bags, here comes the mantra!--"we're just going to keep working and get ourselves better." Lockjaw took issue with all the fan complaints. He countered charges of poor recruiting by saying he did a good job in Indiana, and added, in a real shocker, "Wherever I go (to recruit), there's a lot of competition. But we get out and kick the bushes. There're pockets out there." To critics who accuse IU of having a predictable offense, he responded that the fans "don't know what mixing it up is. Just because something doesn't work, they say mix it up. We're mixing it up." (Montieth noted that so far IU has had 297 running plays and 173 pass plays, a 63% to 37% ratio--it's up to us to decide if that represents "mixing it up"). Lockjaw said all those plays that don't work--you know, the blocking and tackling, the running and passing and catching the ball--all come down to one thing: "execution." Fans who accuse Lockjaw of surrounding himself with a calcified pack of mediocre, second-rate assistants were told that "Before I got here they weren't keeping their staff together, and I don't think their record was very good. They really lacked stability. I've got stability. Coaches aren't running off all the time." (Note the adeptness with which Lockjaw turned this question on its ear here; the issue was never "stability," but rather the competence of the Lockjaw staff). And just in case we didn't know it, Lockjaw said, "I'm the one who judges my coaches. Sure you can criticize us on some things, but as far as hard work and commitment, all that, they're good football coaches. I've been doing this for 38 years. I know good coaches when I see them." (Again, Lockjaw evades the question by telling the critics that hard work and commitment are enough to satisfy the boss). Finally, Montieth trotted out Clarence Doninger, the IU athletic director, who steadfastly denies that he needs Bob Knight's's permission before making decisions. Doninger's tack was typically arrogant. He lectured fans on their failure to see the big picture. He implied (a bit preposterously, I thought) that only a select few had looked at history and "analyzed our program based upon our history. I have done that and most people don't." Doninger praised Lockjaw for an "excellent job," for building the program "from the very bottom to one of respectability." Peewilly Lockjaw, he said, "has done a tremendous job at Indiana University. He's our coach. He will be our coach." Lockjaw himself closed out Montieth's interview by promising to "stay in there and hack away," and added he's always believed that if you hang in and hack away, "that's when you pop it. That's the way I look at this." Numerous observations could be made here, among them that IU had the worst record of any team in the history of the Big Ten when Peewilly Lockjaw was hired, and it has the worst record today, 12 years later. That's history. That's what Clarence Doninger claims to have analyzed and decreed to be "an excellent job" by Peewilly Lockjaw. Doninger's and Lockjaw's comments, coupled with an utterly bizarre column on IU football offered by Inside Indiana's associate editor Alan McDonald (October 7, 1995) make a strong case that there's something in the air or water down in Bloomington that a lot of insiders and schmoozers are ingesting and it's seriously impacting the gene pool.
- The October 21, 1995, issue of Inside Indiana reveals that IU is interested in still another thalidomide baby. This time it's 6-8 Dan Langhi from Marshall County (Kentucky) High School. Langhi weighs 190 pounds and "wasn't considered a Division 1 prospect until recently," (is that code for: until IU became interested?) according to associate editor Alan McDonald. What is Indiana, which considers itself one of the country's premiere programs, doing chasing another one of these third-tier recruits? Kool-Aiders will say we must trust in Coach. Instead, I think I'll pray that Langhi turns us down.
- The Chicago Tribune sports section had a story today about how Northwestern and Illinois are grappling with sagging football attendance. Northwestern's athletic people have discovered that winning games sells seats. With big-time wins over Notre Dame and Michigan this year, the Wildcats expect sellouts for their remaining home games. Somebody in Northwestern's athletic department calculated that the empty seats represent $2.4 million in lost potential revenue and admitted it was a deadly serious problem. Attendance is down at Illinois. And to fill up the stadium, an Illinois athletic department spokesman says, "our team is going to have to produce." Contrast this open acknowledgement with the circle-the-wagons-and-blame-the-fans-and-deny-reality approach of Indian University A.D. Clarence Doninger and his gang of lackeys. (October 26, 1995)
- An Internet rumormonger reports that former IU star Jay Edwards has been kicked out of a professional basketball league in the Philippines for failing a drug test. Jay, Jay we hardly knew ye.
- Something The IU Athletic Department Publicists Didn't Tell Us Department: Indiana University no longer has an AM radio outlet in the state's largest market, Indianapolis, for its football broadcasts. Most fans discovered this while scrolling up and down the dial on the season's opening day, as I did. Where were the familiar voices of Max and Don? Their former outlet, WIBC, offered no clue. I tried the FM band in desperation, hoping some little tin-can outlet in rural southern Indiana might be offering the game. Finally found them on WNAP-FM (93.1) in Indianapolis. Not a peep in the press about this embarrassing state of affairs. We may safely assume that big boomer WIBC bailed out for lack of advertising and sponsorship dollars. This is clearly a case for IU athletic department spokesshill Gregg Elkin to handle. A few moments' massaging by Gregg will have us believing IU is not in fact on a tiny FM station with a 10-mile signal on good days but instead just signed on to a 10-billion watt clear channel superstation booming Hoosier glory to Fiji, Indonesia, Tibet and on, on, on to Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and deep space. Not to worry, though. For as athletic director Clarence Doninger would surely say, these things, like attendance, are cyclical, and the problem is the disloyalty and lack of faith among advertisers, not the miserable, stinking shambles of a football team. (October 28, 1995)
- A sports broadcaster on WNDE radio Friday night said he knew what play Indiana would use to open the Penn State game Saturday--tailback off left tackle. Sure enough, IU's first play at Penn State was tailback off left tackle. I wonder how the guy knew that?
- On Penn State's first drive Saturday, a long pass was thrown to wide receiver Bobby Engram. IU defender Joe King had no idea where the ball was, never once looked back, and mauled Engram as he tried to catch the ball. Pass interference on IU. King makes glaringly stupid, inept plays like this nearly every game, yet he starts. Is this because we have nobody better or because the coaches don't even notice? ESPN2's broadcasters made much of IU Coach Peewilly Lockjaw's decision to go to a "hurry up" (no huddle) offense to exploit some "confusion" said to have been noticed in the Penn State defense. As the game soon proved, all this was was hurry up and vomit. There was pre-game talk about Penn State's various tailbacks, and how one of their freshmen had stepped in to average five or six yards per carry. A sad contrast: at IU, the fourth-string tailback may not even have arms or legs. Quarterback Dittoe's return was no confidence-builder. . .three interceptions and two fumbles. "Absolutely incredible," wailed broadcaster Don Fischer. "Can you believe what's happened today? It just continues and continues. . ." Answer: Anybody who's more than a casual fan of IU football can believe it, has seen it before. IU abandoned its "no huddle" offense midway through the second quarter. Decided to slow down and vomit. Don Fischer signed off the first-half broadcast with these words: "As this first half mercifully comes to a close for Indiana. . ." Encouraging sign: scrub quarterback Adam Greenlee took a third quarter snap, dropped back to pass, slipped and fell down, trotted off the field with a flicker of a smile on his face. Good. This is a sign he is in touch with reality and not in denial like the athletic director and many others. . .We're starting to hear talk of injuries, injuries, injuries, and how they've robbed our beloved boys of any chance to be competitive. Best to remember that this was a bad team before anybody got hurt, one which lost to Kentucky with Alex Smith and NFL-bound quarterback Dittoe in the lineup. Nowhere in all this season's bonegrinding horror have I heard anyone cry out, "Bring back John Paci!". In the fourth quarter Dittoe ran out of the pocket for good yardage on a broken play and broadcaster Don noted it was scary watching Dittoe run because he carried the ball in his hand, away from his body, a high risk for fumbling. Two or three plays later Dittoe was flushed from the pocket, ran left, carried the ball in his hand, a defender knocked it loose and Penn State recovered. Its first play after the turnover was a 55-yard touchdown pass, giving Penn State five TDs off IU flubs. Has any coach ever noticed Dittoe's terrible ball-carrying technique and suggested he change it? A few of IU's players were said to be grumbling about Penn State "running up the score" late in the game. They seem to have forgotten that Penn State may have lost a national championship last year by defeating Indiana by only six points. An irked IU player offered the lamentable promise that IU "will be back next year" to avenge this insult. Anywhere else but in Bloomington, this promise would provoke snickers. We'd all be happier, and the world better off, if they didn't return next year. . .At day's end Indiana was leading the nation, or close to it, in "worst turnover ratio" (10 takes, 28 gives) and coaches and players alike expressed puzzlement. Answer: this is a very bad football team. Why the puzzlement?
- Indiana's football team has been on television five times this fall. Isn't there some way we can get them OFF television?
- Indiana University basketball fans will be pleased to know that one of next year's recruits is growing rapidly. Michael Lewis of Jasper High School is now a 6-4 guard, according to an article by new Indiana beat writer Mark Montieth in the Nov. 7 Indianapolis Star. Lewis has been reported at 6-0, 6-1, 6-2, and 6-3, but not in that order, over the past 12 months. Just one dedicated investigative reporter could resolve this mystery with a simple trip to Jasper with a measuring tape. But alas, journalists sit in their cubicles and pick heights at random, instead. A national bureau of standards for measuring athletes' height and weight is urgently needed! This at a time when we ought we were trying to get government out of our lives. (November 7, 1995)
- Former IU basketball beat writer Tom Rietmann reports in the Star's Nov. 7 issue that former IU basetball player Damon Bailey went to Fort Wayne Tuesday to renegotiate a contract he'd signed with the Fort Wayne Fury last summer. Here we thought Damon was something special, above this sort of unseemly business. Is this some sort of contract renegotiation record? Damonhasn't yet practiced with the Fury, and already he wants to break his word of honor.
- A recent issue of Inside Indiana published a short list of college basketball teams who'd recruited McDonald's All-Americans to their ranks. Indiana, said the article, had bagged 13 of them, but of course didn't trouble to list them. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, here they are: Eric Anderson (1988), Neil Reed (1994), Damon Bailey (1990), Daryl Thomas (1983), Jay Edwards (1987), Isiah Thomas (1979), Greg Graham (1989), Ray Tolbert (1977), Pat Graham (1989), Landon Turner (1978), Alan Henderson (1991), Sherron Wilkerson (1993), Andrae Patterson (1994).
- An Internet correspondent has compiled a list of former Big Ten basketballers on current NBA rosters. Michigan--anyone surprised?--leads with 10. Illinois has six, Iowa and Michigan State five, Indiana three. The names: MICHIGAN (10)--Roy Tarpley, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Terry Mills, Loy Vaught, Glen Rice, Sean Higgins, Eric Riley, Jimmy King; ILLINOIS (6)--Ken Norman, Kendall Gill, Derek Harper, Nick Anderson, Eddie Johnson, Stephen Bardo; IOWA (5)-- Matt Bullard, B.J.Armstrong, Kevin Gamble, Brad Lohaus, Acie Earl; MICHIGAN STATE (5)--Steve Smith, Anthony Miller, Kevin Willis, Shawn Respert, Eric Snow; INDIANA (3)--Alan Henderson, Greg Graham, Calbert Cheaney; PURDUE (2)--Glenn Robinson, Steve Scheffler; OHIO STATE (2)--Jim Jackson, Herb Williams; PENN STATE (1) John Amechi; WISCONSIN (1)--Michael Finley; MINNESOT and NORTHWESTERN (0). Wonder how accurate this is? Where did Frank Brickowski go to school? Is he sure there aren't any Minnesota alumni in the NBA?
- Remember Brian Gilpin, the beanpole 7-footer from North Vernon High School who declared for Indiana as a junior, then quietly shuttled off to an Eastern prep school, then quietly announced he'd decided to go to Dartmouth instead of IU (rumor at the timewas that IU gently steered him away)? Athlon Basketball magazine's 1995-96 issue describes Gilpin as one of two "sensational players coming back" this year for the Big Green, and noted that Gilpin had "terrific numbers" last season, averaging 12.1 points, 7.3 rebounds, and a league-leading 3.5 blocked shots per game. What did IU get to endure in his place? Chico Lindeman? Richard Mandeville? It all blurs.
- Ugly Rumors Department: Haris Mujezinovic appeared for last week's televised IU basketball scrimmage wearing a Phantom of the Opera-type hockey mask to protect a broken jaw. Rumor says Haris and guard Sherron Wilkerson got into a fight during a practice and exchanged punches. The TV broadcasters were their usual circumspect selves about it.
- Ever heard of Luke Jimenez? An Internet message from Minnesota says Jimenez, 6-3 guard, has received permission from Coach to walk-on for basketball next year.
- Even Peewilly has hinted that $23 for a college football game ticket--IU-style, anyway--is not the best deal in the world. IU was off last week and the Indianapolis Star's IU beat writer, Mark Montieth, talked to Peewilly about what he did on the Saturday IU didn't play. Watched college football on TV, said Lockjaw. Over 10 hours worth on the family's satellite dish. One game cost $9.93 to watch, prompting Lockjaw to observe that "for $9.93 two of you can sit there and watch the game as opposed to buying tickets at twentysome bucks apiece for four people. You can sit there and tailgate in your own living room and watch all the games you want." Meantime, IU's averaging 36,404 for five home games so far, and has lost something like 13 of the last 14 televised games it's played. Here is a real case for those crusading to kick trash off television.
- You'd think that the Indiana University beat would be a prized plum for sportswriters on the state's largest daily, the Indianapolis Star. One has the odd sense, though, that the IU beat suffers from a spot of turnover. Once it was one of the Benner boys (Dave?) . Then one of the Star's best writers, Phil Richards, took over but only for a year or two. Last year it was Tom Rietmann. This year it's Mark Montieth. A source deep within the bowels of Central Newspapers Inc. hints that having to deal with IU basketball coach Bob Knight renders this plum unappetizing enough that a couple of these chaps actually volunteered to be taken off the IU beat. Surely someone's making this up.
- I wish I felt better at the news that IU has landed Jason Collier, the (now) 6-11 center from Springfield, Ohio, who, most gurus agree is one of the top players in the country. Better IU than Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, or any Big Ten rival, of course. It's just very difficult to muster enthusiasm for IU basketball these days. As one of Coach's worst critics, fairness requires that I leap forward to give him credit for recruiting a highly touted player and succeeding against big-time opposition. This is not some kid we snatched out of Bradley's hands, or Washington State's, or Austin Peay's, as many of our recruits are. If only Knight's standards and his level of personal involvemnt were this high for every player he brings to Bloomington. (November 11, 1995)
- IU's football abomination continued today in a game against Michigan State which was so bizarre as to render me nearly speechless. But not completely, I notice. I swear I'll puke if I hear Peewilly Lockjaw say one more time that "we've just got to get ourselves better" or make any more references to staying in there and hacking away at it. He is a decent man, all can agree. But the football program is spiraling down the toilet and he's the reason. If he's truly decent, he'll resign. (November 11, 1995)
- Only 24,027 hardy souls attended the IU-Michigan State game. The weather was poor--temperatures in the 30s, windy, snow on the ground, and IU apologists will make much of it in explaining the skimpy crowd. A few hundred miles to the north, though, over 102,000 braved equally bad or worse weather to watch Michigan play Purdue, a hint that the proble in Bloomington isn't the weather, it's the football program. (November 11, 1995)
- I watched the Cream and Crimson public scrimmage and the exhibition basketball game against the Russian team and based on just two glimpses, it's hard to imagine this team being much better than last year's. We still have no outside shooting and if we don't find some we'll again be killed by the three-point shot. Mujo is already better than Mandy and Lindy combined, which isn't saying much. If Andrae Patterson is one of the top five high school players in the country I'm Bhoutros-Bhoutros Gali. Reed looks awful (quick bet: he'll be the first of this bunch to transfer), Rowles is Chris Reynolds Revisited (i.e., a complete liability on offense) and Haris is already my favorite player. They should finish somewhere between third an fifth in the Big Ten and get knocked out of the NCAA in the first or second round.
- At some point in the Russia game a scrawny, skeletal, silly-looking white kid appeared on the floor for IU and millions and millions of us wondered if this was the latest thalidomide whose recruiting we'd somehow missed. The face was unfamiliar, though the look wasn't. Laz and Kitch later offered a few clues, but not a complete explanation. It was Kevin Lemme, a student manager who'd been practicing with the team recently when three players were sidelined with injuries. Laz and Kitch said it was something the young man would remember all his life, getting to put on that uniform and play in Assembly Hall. No clue as to whether this will be an ongoing treat for viewers or not. My guess is Lemme is this year's Pat Knight, and that Coach is just letting us know, by god, who's in charge here. Fair enough, isn't it?
- Peewilly is quoted in this morning's Indianapolis Star article on the IU-Michigan State game: "That's the most different game I've been around. Gee whiz. Wow. It's amazing. I thought I was having a dream--or nightmare. I guess that's the way to term it. I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. We were so poor. I don't have an explanation. It was terrible, really bad." This was in apparent reference to Michigan state scoring three touchdowns while having possession of the football only 24 seconds in the first quarter: a 59-yard touchdown run on the first play from scrimmage, a 76-yard punt return, and an 87-yard kickoff return. (An Indianapolis proctologist who attended the game said the three "stunning" plays weren't cases of our beloved boys missing tackles, they were cases of our boys being nowhere near the Spartan ball-carriers.) As for Peewilly's bewilderment, he simply hasn't sufficiently studied and suffered IU football history. Allowing for the likelihood that each IU team seems capable of taking ugliness to still new abysses, Saturday's spectacle really wasn't all that remarkable. Veteran IU-watchers have seen worse. (November 12, 1995)
- WNDY-TV in Indianapolis, which stole Bob Knight from rival WTTV-Channel 4, is touting its new one-hour long Bob Knight Show with large ads in local newspapers and on billboards proclaiming "Now There's More of Him to Love." Coach's old show on WTTV was a half-hour production. Now, trumpets WNDY, there's "Twice as Much Coach, Twice as Much Fun!" Unless Coach is a changed man, "fun" will not describe this show. I'll tune in and report back.
- It's hard to imagine the chill that must have settled over the room November 8 when a man stood up at a Bloomington Varsity Club meeting to ask guest speaker Bob Knight this question: "What would you say to those who believe it is time for Indiana to find a new football coach?" It is not, however, difficult to imagine the answer. Coach scorched the poor fool. First he set the stage the way Knight often does, by noting that only a few people on our planet--and perhaps only just one, Coach himself--have the wisdom and the special insight needed to comprehend the real truth, the reality of whatever is under discussion. To wit, Coach's opening comment: "I'm not so sure that there is anybody that knows anything about either sports or football that would even begin to think that Indiana is in need of a new football Coach. (Bill) Mallory has done a great job." There. Does everyone clearly understand what a dumbass uninformed wretch he is? Knight then continued: "The thing you people need to understand, that a lot of you don't understand, is this, and I'm just going to tell you. There isn't a helluva lot of good football played in Indiana." At this point someone could have jumped up and said wait, wait, Coach, we do understand that--we've been following IU football for years, most of us, and if there's anything we know, it's that. But no one dared challenge Coach, not even Inside Indiana's intrepid editor, Rick Notter, who was there questing for truth and light and justice but found none of it. So Coach lectured the slack-jawed rabble some more. He told them that Indiana high school football was "astronomically" worse than Illinois's or Michigan's or Ohio's (where Coach himself played on an Orrville team that was, he said, "every bit as good" as the Bloomington South team which won 60 or so consecutive games in the 1960s and 70s). "The same (college) teams that were good in 1945, with the exception of the service schools, are good in 1995, fifty years later." He mentioned Ohio State, Michigan, Southern California, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Penn State, situated in places "where there are a helluva lot of good football players. It's the same schools, always going to be the same schools." Coach told the rapt Clubbers that "You don't go to Florida or California or Texas and talk the best players into coming to Indiana to play football. That doesn't happen. And if people would ever realize this, you'd understand that Mallory has done an absolutely great job coaching football here over the past ten years. . .nobody's coached it better than the guy you've got here right now." Notter, who seems to say one insipid,foolish thing after another, closed his column by noting that "Next year, Indiana will return a significant number of starters. It has the potential to be one of Mallory's best teams ever. And the best way to start next year is by ending on a positive note this year." Notter's final plea was, "If you go to only one game this year--make it the Purdue game. Strong fan support will mean a lot to the team, the administration, and Bill Mallory." That panting, slurpy sound you hear is Notter sitting, wagging his tail eagerly at Coach's feet, licking his boots and praying for a scrap of approval, perhaps a jocular cuff on the back of the head, before lying down to snooze on his IU afghan in front of the IU fireplace. (November 18, 1995)
- Knight's speech seems a fairly clear signal to Doninger that he'll not be firing Peewilly Lockjaw, don't you think?
- Interestingly enough, years ago Knight used the same rationale to explain to an audience why he only recruited basketball players from Indiana, Illinois, or Ohio. It was because you just couldn't get kids from far away places to go to school far away from their homes. This bromide he dispensed without regard to facts in those days (and these), namely that high school athletes from all over were criss-crossing the country to attend faraway colleges. The difference was that IU did not try to recruit them, while other schools did.
- Those dismayed with IU's continuing football mediocrity and degradation have few places to go and no cause for hope now. They've been told, in ways both explicit and subtle, that what they perceive as dismal football is in reality an excellent performance, and that it's impossible to get better even if the big cheeses wanted to. Coach is probably too smart now, after the famous Connie Chung brouhaha, to utter the words, but the message is clear enough: we're gonna continue to get hosed, so might as well just lie back and enjoy it. Our only hope is that Peewilly Lockjaw, known and believed by all to be an honorable and decent man, will resign.
- In the second half of the IU-Ohio State game ESPN broadcaster Gary Somethingorother referred to IU's "Brian" Wilkerson (it's Dorian) and to "Damon" Smith (it's Alex) within a 10-minute span. No doubt he's paid several billion dollars an hour to do this. A play at the end of the game typifies IU football over 108 years. With Ohio State playing second- and third-stringers, one of its backs roared into the line into the full grip of one IU would-be tackler, shook him off, then was grabbed by two, then three, maybe even four other IU players, shook them all off and kept running for about a 15-yard gain. It seemed obvious to television viewers that Ohio State was taking it easy on us late in the game. Coach John Cooper benched his Heisman candidate, running back Eddie George, in the third period, and had second- and third- stringers playing much of the fourth quarter. Yet IU quarterback Chris Dittoe--who is on target for the Most Miserable IU Quarterback of Most of Our Adult Lives award--whined in Sunday morning's Indianapolis Star coverage that he thought the Buckeyes were pouring it on, lording it over our beloved boys. What game was Chris watching? (November 19, 1995)
- The Internet Hoosiers group is speckled with chatter about how "if we can just beat Purdue we can salvage our season." Sorry. We've moved beyond that. "Just beating Purdue" is no longer good enough. This may be Peewilly Lockjaw's curse. He's elevated the program to mid-level mediocrity, and IU fans now rightfully want more, want to "take the program to the next level," as the ciche-mongers say. No, this season is a disaster even if we beat Purdue 95-0.
- IU Broadcaster Don Fischer commented Saturday that Ohio State seemed to know exactly what IU was gonna do, that it was as if "Ohio State had Indiana's playbook." Was Don gently trying to tell his listeners what many IU football observers have been griping about for years, the childlike simplicity and predictability of the offense?
- A dunderhead play by quarterback Chris Dittoe late in the first half challenged even the Chamber of Commerce boosterism of broadcasters Max and Don. Dittoe, scrambling for his life in the IU backfield, ran one way, was trapped, broke free, ran the other way. He could easily have thrown the ball out of bounds for no loss but instead held onto the ball and was sacked for an ll-yard loss. "All he had to do was throw it out of bounds, but he wouldn't do it--he took an ll-yard loss instead," said Don. Not long after, when Ohio State went 60 yards for a touchdown in three plays, one a wide open pass play, Max observed drily that "Something happened on the (IU) coverage there--a receiver can't be that wide open." Five bucks says he non-defender was Joe King, though of course it could have been anyone.
- "He's done an excellent job. . .Bill Mallory has done a tremendous job at Indiana University. He's our coach. He will be our coach." --Indiana University athletic director Clarence Doninger, quoted in the Indianapolis Star October 20, 1995, responding to critics of the football program.
- "The way we approach it (recruiting) has been good for Indiana. I think I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this state. . .we get out and kick the bushes. There're pockets out there." --Indiana University football coach Bill "Peewilly Lockjaw" Mallory, quoted in the October 20, 1995, Indianapolis Star.
- "Most of Indiana's players would not make the two-deep squad for Ohio State. IU players work hard and fans should be proud of the effort. . .(IU) should feel fortunate OSU Coach John Cooper had enough class to avoid running up the score. . .his Buckeyes could have scored 70 or 80 points." --Inside Indiana, commenting in its November 25 edition on IU's 42-3 loss to Ohio State.
- Rumor has it that IU dressed Kevin Lemme, the student manager, for last week's season-opening tournament in Anchorage. Brows are furrowed in puzzlement. What does this mean? IU fans are asking. Why does someone like this occupy a roster spot at one of the nation's elite basketball programs? Simple. Lemme is this year's Pat Knight. Lemme is Coach's way of letting us all know who, by god, is in charge, of giving his critics the finger, of proving that He can start the family dog at IU if He wants to, and nobody can do a thing to stop Him. As Coach himself once said, best to just sit back and enjoy it.
- During Tuesday night's IU-Notre Dame basketball game, Notre Dame's Matt Gotsch elbowed IU guard Sherron Wilkerson in the face, sending Wilkerson to the floor. WTTV broadcaster Ted Kitchel immediately said Wilkerson was "faking it" and deserved a prize for play-acting. Slow-motion television replays clearly showed Wilkerson's head snap from the impact of the blow. Kitchel repeated his jibes and kept insisting it was an act. Why, I wondered, can't Kitch see what the millions and millions and millions of us out here in viewerland, flopped out in our BarcaLoungers cuddling our Bob Knight Dolls, can see so easily? Kitch was not only at the game, but saw the same replays all of us did. Strange, indeed.
- While Kitch waxed so aggressive in covering this elbowing incident, his courage waned when it came to IU's Most Recent Unpleasantness, the Vanishing Lou Moore Caper. Alert IU fans discovered Moore, a 6-7 sophomore junior college transfer, was missing from the pre-game warmup. I experienced several interruptions of my game viewing, and did not have Max and Don on the radio broadcast, but heard not a peep from Laz and Kitch about the missing player. The next morning's Indianapolis Star did acknowledge Moore's absence but escaped its responsibility to investigate and report by saying that IU coaches and players would not meet with the press after the game, that "Bob Knight had no comment. He sent word that he had gone hunting (at 10 o'clock at night) and that his players were off limits because it was a school night. That left unanswered questions regarding the whereabouts of Lou Moore. . . (who) was absent when IU took the floor for warmups and did not appear during the game." Assistant Coach Norm "Covenant House" Ellenberger didn't mention Moore during his post-game interview with Kitch, and Kitch didn't ask. I've yet to encounter anyone who heard Max and Don mention the matter. The next afternoon on Don Fischer's IU Report, a daily sports feature on WNDE-1260 radio in Indianapolis, Don did acknowledge that Moore was not in uniform the night before. "There are many rumors (about Moore's status)," Don said, "but until we hear officially from the University we're not going to engage in the rumor mill." Then he signed off. The Star on Thursday morning contained a brief item on an inside page noting that Moore's status was still "uncertain," that Coach Bob Knight was not available to comment, and that (the legendary) Gregg Elkin, basketball sports information director and athletic department spokesshill, told reporters he did not know if Moore was on the team or not. "It's between him and Coach (Knight)," Elkin bleated. Elkin, whose main job seems to be explaining away Coach, is a man we all ought to remember in our Christmas prayers.
- Bottom line here is that this is gutless journalism. The Lou Moore Unpleasantness is a legitimate news item, and it is within the province of self-respecting journalists to explain and report on it. Here, though, as in most matters involving IU athletics and particularly Coach, abdication of duty is the order of the day for this gang of lackeys. It would only take a few phone calls or a short trip to Bloomington for some clever snooping, to get the story. They could even call The Indiana Daily Student to get the facts, since it's usually more aggressive than its real-world brethren in pursuing stories Coach and IU's other athletic pooh-bahs would rather not have covered. Instead, Max and Don and Laz and Kitch and the Star and all the rest of them are hiding under their desks, teeth chattering in fear, waiting for Coach to mail them a press release. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but I'm sure they aren't.
- A rumor flipped over my transom says that some fella code-named The Bogtrot Slasher is No. 1 on the IU football office's most-hated list. . .that an IU athletic department shill has delivered a promise to Inside Indiana that if II prints any more Slasher diatribes, its reporters and editors will be cut off from access to IU's athletic programs. Surely this can't be true.
- The odd thing about this is that there's no greater bunch of fawning, obsequious shills for the IU athletic program than those rollicking guys and gals at Inside Indiana.
- Credibility was no concern for the shills who wrote the copy for an advertisement touting Indiana University's 1996 football camp for youngsters. "Coaching by one of the country's best football teaching staffs. . ." it said, obviously oblivious to the grotesque season our beloved boys and their coaches just completed. But then maybe they'll be featuring turnover ratios, or dunderhead plays, or least points scored in a decade, things like that. Then I'd pay to attend, sit at the feet of the masters. . .
- In his IU football season wrap-up piece, Indianapolis Star writer Mark Montieth quoted coach Peewilly Lockjaw promising there'll be no major changes in IU's coaching staff and summing up Indiana's atrocious 1995 campaign as a matter of simply not "getting the job done execution-wise." He meant, apparently, that if IU's players had just executed each play as diagrammed, they'd have been unbeaten and nearly national champions instead of 0-8 in the Big Ten basement and 2-9 overall. This ignores, sadly, the small matter of the other team lined up against our boys also trying to executive its plays and stop us from executing ours. Listening to Lockjaw is often a bewildering experience, but I think this is code for: IU had a crappy team and a crappy season. Lockjaw unveiled a new hobgoblin for us to blame, too--the university's public relations and marketing squads which made quarterback Chris Dittoe and tailback Alex Smith the focus of preseason poster and billboard advertising. Lockjaw himself told reporters at the Big Ten's preseason media day in Chicago that he felt Indiana could challenge for the conference title if the defense improved. "We don't need him (Dittoe) on posters or a lot of hullabaloo made or any of that stuff," Lockjaw said. "I'm not for that a bit. You prove yourself and the publicity can come after that. I'm not saying that had a direct effect. . .we get in this media hype and sometimes it does a real injustice to the players. . .I'll take the blame for a lot of things, but I had nothing to do with that poster." How to explain this, though? Certain other teams hype their players and they go out and win Heisman Trophies, conference championships, bowl games, and finish high in national rankings; when IU hypes its players, they do triple gainers into the septic tank. Could this be code for: we have crappy players and the good programs don't? Denial remains a leading growth industry in Hoosierland. (December 3, 1995)
- Yesterday's IU-Kentucky game was surprisingly easy to watch. No gagging, no stomping out of the house, no elevated pulse or florid-faced screaming. Our boys avoided the blowout humiliation many feared, gave a decent account of themselves before a withering onslaught of Kentucky talent. But not for a moment throughout could a non-Kool-Aider IU fan really have believed our boys were going to win. Indiana could play Kentucky 10 times, or 20, and not win more than one or two, so severe is the talent gap between them. Other than Brian Evans, who on IU's team could even crack Kentucky's top 10? These points and others were made by the Indianapolis Star's Bill Benner in a Sunday column sure to inflame the Grape Kool-Aid Crowd. Benner drew sharp contrasts between the two programs. I'd sum up the game and the differences by contrasting sophomores. Kentucky's Antoine Walker played like an NBA all-star, hitting 10 of 12 shots for 24 points, and adding seven rebounds, three assists, four steals and two blocked shots. IU's Andrae Patterson, widely regarded as one of the top five or 10 high school players nationally when IU recruited him, played a shaky 18 minutes, scored six points, had three turnovers, three rebounds, and two blocked shots. Apologists explain away these matters by saying IU's system is so complicated that it takes even the most gifted players several years to comprehend how to play, or that The Mentor must first break down IU recruits, purge them of their individualistic tendencies, before they can be recreated to play "the Indiana way." The answer is simpler than that. Kentucky relentlessly and nationally recruits thoroughbred talent. Indiana recruits lazily, with no discernible planning, recruits locally if it possibly can, elsewhere only when forced to, and prefers lesser talented but more malleable recruits who are no threat to The Mentor's towering ego. Indiana's overriding question for any recruit it considers is, "Does the kid really, really want to come to Indiana?" Kentucky's is, "Is this the best possible talent we can recruit?" The Mentor is arrogant enough to continue to believe that his own superior genius and the brilliance of his "system" will overcome talent. This was true more often in the early years of Coach's IU tenure. Many have the uneasy feeling that times and the game have passed The Mentor by, and that we've already seen the best we'll see of IU basketball in his reign.
- Lou Moore's departure from the Indiana basketball team was finally confirmed by a university press release Friday, three days after he did not appear for the Notre Dame game. No IU athletic department official was available for comment. Moore is the seventh player to leave the program since the fall of 1992, a period in which 16 scholarships have been given. The casualty list would be six if we don't count Monty Marcaccini, who was given a scholarship in 1993 but reneged on it before enrolling at IU. The departees include: Malcolm Sims, Steve Hart, Rob Foster, Marcaccini, Michael Hermon, Rob Hodgson, and Moore.
- I'm sure somebody at the Star is keeping track, but Coach has already skipped post-game press conferences for the Kentucky game (his demanding TV schedule prevented it), Notre Dame (he sent word he went hunting immediately after the horn sounded), and Connecticut (no reason revealed).
- "We've got a good, bright future. We're looking forward to that future." --IU athletic director Clarence Doninger, commenting on the school's football program, quoted in Inside Indiana November 30, 1995, following Indiana's 51-14 loss to Purdue to end the season in last place in the Big Ten (0-8) with a 2-9 record overall and the lowest home attendance in the past 21 years. "I am not going to talk about the future. We have a banquet tomorrow to honor these seniors. After that we will get things better." --IU football coach Peewilly Lockjaw, declaring all questions about the future off limits at a post-game press conference following the loss to Purdue, quoted in the same edition of Inside Indiana. (November 30, 1995)
- A story circulating in Hoosierland and generally conceded to be fact is that Martinsville's much-ballyhooed high school quarterback, Earl Haniford, told Indiana University's athletic pooh-bahs that the only way he'd enroll at IU is if the university promised to retain current football coach Peewilly Lockjaw. Athletic Director Clarence Doninger quickly gave the lad that assurance and Haniford soon after announced at a press conference he was going IU. Two observations here: 1) If Haniford truly believes Peewilly Lockjaw is a great coach and the one to whom he should entrust his future, then Haniford is a self-proclaimed moron, and 2) allowing Haniford to blackmail the school, and playing along with it, brands Doninger as both nutless and gutless. (December 1, 1995)
- Reaction to Haniford's decision splits into two camps: those who are ecstatic and believe Haniford will carry the football program out of its present slime-decked cesspool on his own broad shoulders, and those who feel sorry for Haniford for wasting his talent and who believe that fixing IU's football woes would take about 50 Hanifords and an entirely new coaching staff and athletic department administration as well. Both camps, I suspect, can unite in praying for both Haniford and their beloved Hoosier gridders. So let us pray.
- The Indianapolis News has reported that the subject of Lou Moore's disappearance from the IU basketball team "did not come up Thursday evening (Nov. 30) on Bob Knight's radio show." Mogo revived me with smelling salts after that one. Do you suppose it's because Coach some years ago quit taking "live" calls, now only takes screened or write-in questions, which are then read aloud to Him by the show's host, Don Fischer, who makes sure nothing that would upset Coach ever gets asked?
- Local radio broadcaster Jim Barbar apparently has not been paying attention. He's quoted in the December 16 Indianapolis Star saying that "The Big Ten is not that strong (in basketball) anymore. The beating they took last year in the (NCAA) tournament wasn't an accident." Barbar obviously missed Coach's declaration last spring, just before tournament play began and in response to an ink-stained wretch's suggestion that the old league didn't look very strong, that the league was indeed a strong one. League teams immediately were bombed out of the tourney with a 1-6 record. Barbar had better check with The Mentor before he trots off half-cocked this way.
- A mystery caller reports that on his December 13 radio show Coach said that Chris Rowles, a 6-1 or 6-2 or 6-3 guard on Indiana's basketball team, played a lot of forward last year in junior college and was having trouble learning to play guard for IU, but that the coaches felt and hoped that eventually he would make a contribution. Rowles played the last minute of the first half of Saturday's game against Kansas and in those 60 seconds was beaten by his man on a baseline drive for a layup, threw a bad pass which Kansas intercepted for another layup, then traveled at midcourt for another turnover. "Eventually" obviously will be later. (December 14, 1995)
- Rumor has it that
The Bogtrot Slasher goes live on the Internet December
26, 1995. His first official act, sources indicate, will be to
join the Hoosiers List. They can't possibly imagine what they're
in for, though a clue may be found in a drive past his Bogtrot
aerie. There, on a massive steel I-beam reinforced deck at the
back of the Slasher's house, is the Hoosier equivalent of The
Guns of Navarone, sporting twin direct satellite dishes and
radar at the barrel-ends, and at the rear those big chromed
tractor seats with heavy leather seatbelt strapping, the whole
thing commanding a 360-degree arc of the sky. I was able to creep
through the low brush close enough to see two glittering metallic
crimson crash helmets equipped with black-glass welding goggles
dangling from hooks beside the gun control panels. Crawling back
to my car in the moonlight, I received quite a start when I mistook
the electric power cabling running to the gun emplacements
from the bunker beneath the Slasher's house for a python. He's
tanned! He's rested! He's ready! He's taking notes! (December
26, 1995)