In many ways, Bob Knight is a tragic figure. No one doubts his coaching genius, but his inability to to control his emotions ultimately cost him his job at Indiana, where he put the Hoosiers into a different orbit, and kept him from being the GOAT of college basketball.
When you look at his early career though, he was freakishly good. Knight got the Indiana job in 1971, when he was just 30. He made the Final Four in his second year. In his fourth season, he finished 31-1 and lost in the Elite Eight,
after an injury to Scott May. The next season, IU finished 32-0 and won the national championship. No one has gone undefeated since.
He won the national championship again in 1981 and again in 1987.
In the 1987 Final Four, Indiana faced UNLV in the semifinals. As this video reminds, they called UNLV the Runnin’ Rebels for a reason and Indiana played a more deliberate style.
Usually.
Against UNLV though, Knight didn’t think his normal style would work against UNLV’s pressure and told his guys to shoot as soon as possible and that they would run with UNLV, and it worked.
Indiana would go on to play Syracuse in the championship game where Keith Smart would hit a legendary shot that denied Jim Boeheim a national championship.
