Like it or not, Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight will soon make history.
Boo him, if you must. But it won’t change the fact that Knight needs only five wins to surpass Dean Smith as college basketball’s all-time victories leader.
North Carolina’s Smith retired in 1997 with 879 wins and is almost universally liked. The often irascible, always controversial Knight is one of the most polarizing personalities in sports history.
Just two weeks ago, the 66-year-old coach sparked passionate national debate by “popping,” “flipping” or “quickly lifting” the chin of Tech player Michael Prince. Likewise, seemingly no one is neutral about Knight’s pursuit of Smith.
Well, one person is showing indifference.
“I think there are records of ability and records of longevity,” Knight says. “I wish I had some kind of record because of ability, rather than longevity.”
As for how the rest of the country feels, Knight, as usual, says he couldn’t care less. It doesn’t faze him that most fans probably associate him more with the late Adolph Rupp, the curmudgeonly Kentucky coach who with 876 victories sits between Smith and Knight.
“Rupp wasn’t a real friendly guy,” notes a smiling Knight.
It might surprise a lot of fans to know Knight and Smith are friends and occasional golf partners. While Rupp’s career was tarnished by a 1949 player-bribery scandal that led to Kentucky canceling its 1952-53 season, Knight’s and Smith’s programs were never on NCAA probation.
“I’m all for it,” Smith says of Knight closing in on his record. “He’s an outstanding coach, an excellent teacher.
“The record was never a goal of mine, and I’m sure not a goal of his. It mostly means we’ve been at it for a long time.”
Yes, it helped that Smith coached for 36 seasons and that Knight is in his 41st. But it doesn’t make Knight’s impending milestone any less significant.
The record has changed hands only three times in the last 50 years. And if Knight follows through on his stated intention to fulfill the five years on his Tech contract – “I may coach 10; I don’t know” – there is a good chance he will own the mark forever.
As college basketball becomes more of a high-
pressure, mega-dollar industry, coaches who endure three-plus decades are becoming a vanishing breed.
The only foreseeable threat to Knight’s impending record is his 59-year-old protege, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. But he is more than 100 wins behind. If Knight coaches into his 70s, Krzyzewski would have to maintain his current victory pace for a decade or more to catch him.
Krzyzewski certainly isn’t rooting against the man for whom he played at Army in the late 1960s and served under as an Indiana graduate assistant in 1974-75. During last week’s College Basketball Experience Classic that included Duke and Texas Tech, Krzyzewski said no one outside of his parents has influenced him more than Knight.
“I pretty much learned the game from him, and I’m lucky to have him in my life.”
