Word: knights
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...order to start coaching at West Point, he was obliged to join the Army. PFC Knight earned $89 a month and all the cadets he could eat. Under an intemperate head coach named Tates Locke and an institutionalized system of hazing, Knight instantly burst forth as the most undisciplined disciplinarian since General George S. Patton, or at least Woody Hayes. By 24, he was the head coach at Army; by 30, he had moved over to Indiana University, and as of last week Knight's Hoosiers are the national champions for the third time in twelve years...
Hoosiers is a hard term to define, though a current movie of that name picks at the synonyms of Indiana, basketball and Knight. The opening scene of rural roads, buckets and barns is faithful to Knight's picture of the place. Driving along, he likes to count the hoops. His best player, Guard Steve Alford of New Castle, learned to count on a scoreboard. Ever since Alford was a high school "Mr. Basketball," the Midwestern equivalent of a peerage, even his regimen on the foul line has been as famous in Indiana as the frost. (Touch your socks, your shorts...
...coach in the film, like Hayes at Ohio State, once punched a player and disappeared. But the object of his assault, much more like Knight, was his own player. Knight regards himself as a teacher with a classroom full of difficult students, though he is no missionary. "The state of Indiana pays the corrections officer one salary and me another. Let him work with the incorrigibles." Knight only treats them like incorrigibles...
...three. "I've survived for four years," he backs off in a panic. "I've only got one more game." Indiana won it, 74-73, over the Syracuse Orangemen. Their perfectly competent but strangely insecure coach, Jim Boeheim, was slightly outflanked at the end of both halves. As always, Knight was worth a few points from the bench...
...reveres the old coaches like Henry Iba, Joe Lapchick and Pete Newell. When Clair Bee was 85 and blind, Long Island's great coach painstakingly scratched out a message for Knight that read: "Clair Bee and Bob Knight do not believe that repetition is gospel." Lately Knight, 46, has actually dabbled in zone defenses and, as the euphemism goes, "broadened his recruiting base." A junior-college transfer, Keith Smart, made the last two jumpers against Syracuse...