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Knight is 4-5 since taking the baton from his Hall of Fame father, including Monday's tough 109-51 loss at Kansas.
“I’ve already run the gamut," he said, "I’ve beaten a couple of ranked teams. I’ve gotten beat on a last-second shot. I’ve had my ass kicked. I’ve won an ugly game and a road game. Got beat a couple of times on the road. You never know how many games you are going to win, but I think it’s going really well.”
In this short amount of time, Knight has tried to put his own stamp on everything. He has changed the pregame introductions at home to include spotlights on the players and loud, crowd-pleasing music. He wants basketball to be an event at Texas Tech. He wants people to enjoy the entire experience, so he has picked out music he likes, including “Jump Around” by House of Pain. Knight says athletic director Gerald Myers even enjoys the updated look – and sound.
And this Knight loves mingling with the campus crowd. He even does a one-hour weekly radio show from the cafeteria of the largest dorm on campus. That sort of media friendly approach wasn’t part of his father’s philosophy.
He has changed some of the furniture in the basketball office and he’s even changed a few of the X’s and O’s in the playbook. After his first victory, an 84-75 win over Kansas State, he credited Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone for containing super freshman Michael Beasley of the Wildcats.
Zone was a dirty four-letter word in Bob Knight’s vocabulary.
“We couldn’t go see anybody [about playing the zone] but I’ve got a collection of videos in my office on every aspect of the game,” Knight said. “I had my whole staff the day before the game, watching Coach Boeheim’s zone video. We’re probably the only staff that would admit to watching instructional videos.
“[My father] knew I was going to do it. He’s always kidding me about. Even though he would never do it in a game, he knows all about the zone. I really got the idea from him.”
He checks in with his father on a regular basis. He wants to draw on Bob’s extensive knowledge of the game. Why not? There’s no reason to waste such a valuable resource. But at the same time, he is making it clear he is much more than a caretaker or babysitter.
The program belongs to him now. And so far, things are going pretty much as planned.
“It’s like my dad said. This is going to give me a running start into my first full season,” Knight said. “The kids will know what to expect. Next year, for our first game, I won’t be going in cold. You just hope it goes well, and it has.”
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