Bob Knight Sets Win Record

Bob Knight just might be a lot smarter than people realize.

Knight’s Texas Tech team won on New Year's Day, giving Knight career coaching win 880, the most in the history of Division I college basketball. Knight compiled his record and a .713 winning percentage at three schools in 41 seasons.

Knight passed the venerable Dean Smith, who set the victory mark, coaching his entire career at North Carolina and conquering foes at an even more impressive .776 percentage.

So, as the volatile Bob Knight's career is dissected by every college basketball columnist in Lubbock, Texas and beyond, most onlookers consider Knight's win total nothing more than a relative number.

Compared to Smith, experts insist, Knight's coaching record is an arbitrary statistic that few college basketball fans will remember, years from now.

Knight’s win total, they suggest, is jaded by an array of distractions, like a temper that ultimately got Knight ousted from Indiana after 29 years, coaching in three different places and losing more games than Smith lost, en route to the record.

Passing Dean Smith, while coaching at tumbleweed-infested Texas Tech, known more as a football school, is yet another blemish on Knight's coaching legacy, so-called experts say. They call Knight's new digs an exile from coaching, a pockmark on what should be one of the most-respected records in sports.

One writer even suggested that had Knight remained at storied Indiana, his coaching legacy would grow far more than it ever could in Lubbock. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

In fact, when Knight left Bloomington for the quiet, rural flat lands and ten gallon hats of Texas, he found the perfect fertilizer for a legacy that was beginning to take some hits from surrounding weeds at Indiana.

And while college basketball writers and analysts questioned Knight's move to a school that had been to just 10 NCAA Tournaments in 76 years, The General knew what few others believed -- that Bob Knight could win in any place, under any condition.

Knight had done it all in 29 seasons at Indiana, including winning three national titles. The game was passing him by, though, and the focus had turned from his coaching genius to his many tirades with those standing in the way of his objectives.

How, the national media wondered, could Knight make it in Lubbock?

Was he indeed exiling himself from the forefront of the game he loved and from a coaching legacy that should be bigger than the entire state of Texas?

Would Bob Knight be remembered more as a man who tossed a chair across a basketball court during a Big Ten game than as one of the most innovative minds college basketball has ever seen?

Of course, Bob Knight knew the answer to these questions but, as usual, he allows basketball to answer his inquisitors, if they choose to listen.

In just his first season in Lubbock, guiding a Texas Tech team that had won only 9 contests in 2000, Knight won 23 games and the Red Raiders made the NCAA Tournament.

By the end of his third season at Texas Tech, Knight had won 66 times and guided the Raiders to an NCAA Tournament victory for the first time in 28 years.

Talk of Indiana soon blew away, like one of those tumbleweeds rolling into the dusty Texas desert.

Since the move to Lubbock, whenever he's asked about his new home and his new college basketball life, Knight invariably says he couldn't be happier.

He has a new contract, too, one that takes him to the year 2012 with the Red Raiders. He is the winningest men's college basketball coach in history. And he loves the people who surround him in Lubbock far more than those who sat in offices near his in Bloomington.

Knight’s players attend class, excel in academics and graduate – as his players always have.

He competes without NCAA violations. He wins without Parade All-Americans; in fact, most of Knight’s players grew up not far from Lubbock, where the North Carolinas and UCLAs of the NCAA never look for their star recruits.

Yet, some how, some way, Knight finds ways to win, and his college basketball victory record means more now than it would have, if it were set at Indiana.

Meanwhile, Knight is glad any hoopla that accompanied the record is over. His Texas Tech team is headed for yet another 20-win season, away from the fanfare of the NCAA top 20. Knight doesn’t care, though.

He’d never say it, but he knows what most experts do not – that regardless of what critics say about him, his college basketball coaching legacy is firmly entrenched in NCAA history.

Yes, Bob Knight is a lot smarter than people realize.

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