Even a lot of Indiana fans were ready to see you go, although that might have had more to do with your players, upon another early-round NCAA tournament exit (surely you realize you’re working on your 20th year without a title), looking like they were on the last stage of the Bataan Death March.

In this latest case, Prince and his mother have taken great pains to say what you did was right, and that they are ready to forget about it. As is your wont, you haven’t said anything yet to defend yourself, though maybe you feel like by now there’s nothing you can say. But whether the brushing of Prince’s chin was right is not the point. You know that coaches today are not supposed to lay a hand on a player. Maybe a hand to the shoulder if a player isn’t facing you and the crowd is loud, but that’s it.

Then again, it’s clear you don’t really care to change. Only two weeks before the Prince incident, you spoke at a basketball luncheon in Lubbock and took a potshot at recently departed Texas Tech chancellor David Smith, referring to him only as the "last guy" and saying he only worried about "self-promotion." Smith is the guy, as you well remember (because you don’t forget a thing, as Indiana’s lawyers know in the lawsuits you’ve filed about losing your old job), you screamed at and called a liar during an impromptu salad-bar meeting that began with Smith, of all things, complementing you on how you were controlling your temper.

I know you desperately can’t wait to break Dean Smith’s all-time men’s NCAA Division I coaching record of 879 wins. With the Gardner-Webb victory being No. 871, you’re only nine away from Smith, and only five away from Adolph Rupp. But your temper is impeding your soon-to-be status as the winningest coach equating into status as the college game’s greatest coach. After all, did anybody witness John Wooden yelling at someone, much less raising a hand?

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Coach Knight, when the video montages come upon your 880th victory, the few shots of your three NCAA tournament victories will be interspersed with your famous tantrums. I suspect the first one to come up will be your career-defining incident — Feb. 23, 1985, when you chucked a red, plastic chair across the court, nearly hitting Purdue’s Steve Reid at the foul line while he shot a technical.

Your brushing of Prince’s chin is but one more log atop a huge bonfire of raging incidents that have overshadowed what otherwise has been a fine career, one of winning and believing in the student-athlete ideal. Coach Knight, you’ll never be able to erase the past. But for your legacy’s sake, you might think about leaving your hands by your sides, keeping your temper in check, and ending your career without tarnish.