Lubbock, Texas ? It’s been quite an unusual 40th season for Texas Tech coach Bob Knight so far: His successor already has been picked, he’s off to his worst start in a decade, but he’s still got the same intensity that helped him win three national championships with Indiana.
“I’m still coaching. My name is still on there as the coach,” the 65-year-old Knight said. “My name’s on there, then that’s what I’m doing.”
Knight, with 860 career wins, needs 20 to overtake Dean Smith for No. 1 on the all-time list. But with a team that’s struggling and 19 games remaining before postseason play, passing Smith seems like it will have to wait for next season.
After last year’s team made a surprising run to the round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament, this year’s Red Raiders (6-5) are the most inexperienced team Knight ever has coached. There are seven freshmen and one junior-college transfer on the roster. The influx of new players and the fact that several interior players have been hobbled by injuries means Knight is off to his slowest start as a coach since 1995 at Indiana.
“We’ve got an awful lot of work to do to be competitive,” Knight said. “Forgetting the injuries, we’re not where I had hoped we would be at this point.”
Knight said he was “disappointed” so far by this team, which plays Arkansas (8-2) for the first time since 1991 tonight in Dallas.
Knight pointed to a leadership void and the departure of former walk-on Ronald Ross, one of the sparks during the NCAA Tournament, as major factors in the team’s struggles.
“That has been a huge,” Knight said. “I did not think that replacing Ronald, as good as he was and as much as he meant to that team, would be as difficult as it is.”
Pat Knight, who signed a contract in October that designated him as his father’s successor as Texas Tech’s coach, said the team had been inconsistent without a leader.
“We told our team it doesn’t need to one guy,” he said. “It can be the whole team, just as long as somebody takes the burden off the coaching staff.”
Tech started 10-1 in each of Bob Knight’s first two seasons, and the Raiders have won at least 20 games all four years since he arrived — a first for the school. Despite Knight’s first slow start in Lubbock, some who have watched him for years see him utilizing the same techniques he’s been doing since 1965, when he became the youngest coach in Division I history when Army hired him at age 24.
“I don’t see any changes since they made the (successor) announcement,” said Tech senior associate athletic director Steve Downing, who played for Knight in 1972-73 at Indiana and followed him to Lubbock. “He’s doing exactly the same things that he did when he was at Indiana when I was a player.”
Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said he believed that “gradually” his longtime friend and colleague would shift some of the head-coaching responsibilities to his son.