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Knight sounds off on NCAA committee
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The long-running Broadway hit “Les
Miserables’’ is playing at the Imperial Theater, which
is only about two basketball courts away from the Marriott Marquis.
On Monday, the Marquis played host to the latest production of The
Bob Knight Show, which was entertaining as long as you
weren’t a member of the NCAA Tournament selection committee,
otherwise known in Knight’s world as “The
Miserables.”
Texas Tech has won three games to advance to the semifinals of
the National Invitation Tournament.
Knight did not suggest that the final four teams in the NIT were
as good as those in the Final Four, but he emphatically made the
point that the quality of many teams participating in the NIT was
better than that of several NCAA Tournament teams.
“There are 20 teams in the NIT at the minimum that can
beat 20 teams in the NCAA,” Knight said. “I don’t
think anybody in basketball would ever disagree with
that.”
Knight was merely warming up. He may have been in the heart of
the theater district, but his routine was more David Letterman
monologue than Broadway. Knight knew his audience, and he played to
it, pointing out that NCAA headquarters was once in Kansas City and
then moved to Indianapolis – neither of which, as New York
reporters on hand certainly knew, is as sophisticated and urbane as
New York.
“For as long as I have been in coaching, I have never been
for a committee selecting the NCAA Tournament,” Knight
said.
“I think it should all be done electronically. I
don’t think anybody should have an exemption. I think it
should be the first 64 teams picked (by a computer). That’s
it. And then they play according to their spots. And I’ve
always felt that way. But the way it’s set up now, it
provides the NIT with some really good basketball teams every
year.”
“What the NIT committee has done to sustain the tournament
has just been a tremendous help to college basketball – this
tournament and the preseason NIT. I would have liked to see the
NCAA when the preseason NIT was announced. Somebody sitting at a
table saying, ‘… Why didn’t we think of that?’
They’re always a step or two behind the NIT people when it
comes to thinking about good things for basketball,” he
said.
Knight noted that even as the NCAA increased the number of teams
it invited, the NIT never backed down.
In 1978, the NCAA Tournament consisted of 32 teams, and the NIT
had 16.
By 1980, the NCAA had grown to 48 teams, but the NIT responded
by increasing its field to 32 teams.
“The NCAA has tried to eliminate the NIT for 50
years,” Knight said, “and they’re not smart
enough to understand that a bunch of people in Kansas City
can’t outsmart people in New York. They’ve never
figured that out. Or Indianapolis, or wherever …
“If you look at all the tournament committees that have
been together over the years, there are a lot of people that know
nothing about basketball on the committee. Rarely are there former
coaches. There are people on it that have no basketball background
at all.”
Knight was congenial and cooperative with the media, telling
stories of bringing his Army and Indiana teams to the NIT and
demonstrating his knowledge of NIT history by informing reporters
that the first champion was Temple in 1938.
The opening act was well received, and Knight still has a few
more days in town. Who knows? Before he leaves, he may have time
for a Top Ten list. Members of the NCAA selection committee have to
be looking forward to that.
Jan Hubbard, The Dallas Morning News
