Wasting time berating his players during timeouts.  Does Billy think for one second that a Kentucky basketball player does not know he messed up when he made a 40-foot balloon pass in the offensive zone that turned into an easy transition bucket for the opposition?  How does Coach Gillispie not know that he should be coaching instead of acting like a jerk, making a point that absolutely did not need to be made?  Bear in mind that this occurred when the Kentucky lead, which had been 20 at one point, was 6 points…and it was a T.V. timeout (i.e., a free opportunity to provide some extra coaching for your team that just turned a 20-point lead into a 6-point lead). 

Kentucky players picked up their dribble and got trapped on 6 out of 7 possessions.  This happened with no fewer than 3 time outs taking place between the first instance and the sixth instance.  Do you think the players of a top flight college basketball coach would do that a second time, much less a sixth time, during the final 7 minutes of a tournament game in their own gym?

Billy Gillispie was standing up on the sidelines wringing his hands during play.  While I was watching this, I was at first reminded of Jerry Tarkanian’s towel.  Then, as I started to think about it more and more, it occurred to me that for some reason, it was endearing with Tark, whereas Gillispie looked like the geekiest 6th grader in school contemplating exactly what level of rejection is about to befall him as he works up his nerve to ask a girl to dance for the first time…or maybe an alcoholic just trying to get to the end of his workday and taste that sweet first drink of the night.  It was, without a doubt, the least confidence-inspiring thing I have ever seen a college basketball coach do at any time.

Players dunking with an insurmountable lead at the end of the game.  Ahead by 9 points, Patrick Patterson executed a dunk with 20 seconds left on the shot clock and under 30 seconds left on the game clock.  When your coach is a punk, I guess you can’t really expect your players to behave any other way.

Kentucky is better than their coach will ever be.  They need to cut their losses, pay Gillispie whatever it takes to make him go away for good, and call Bobby Knight.  If you want to still be considered a top 5 program, get yourself a top 5 coach.  Your current coach had a nice run down there in College Station where the expectations were easy to exceed…he does not have the intelligence, intestinal fortitude or coaching skills to achieve success at a top flight college basketball program.

By all means, if you want to have a future of partying in the streets every March and watching the games on T.V. every April, then you have your man.  If you would like to restore your program to its once-proud traditions, then you need a coach capable of matching the big boys (Calhoun, Calipari and Self) in the big games.  Gillispie has proven time and again that his big game coaching ability is somewhere between Division II and YMCA.

FOOTNOTE

You will note the absence of Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Billy Donovan, Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski from the list of “big boys” in this article.  That is because the only time I have seen any of these coaches win a big game is when they absolutely, without question, had the better team…but they usually lose several big games every year, and one in the tournament almost every year, to inferior competition…that does not make you one of the big boys in my book.  Sure, they are some of the big-time coaches, and any program would be lucky to have a guy that can recruit players and assistant coaches like those guys, but in the biggest games of all, they have never, ever been capable of making a team exceed their capabilities…only reach them.  Obviously, The General, if and when he returns to coaching, goes on the list of big boys.

Let’s get right to the clip.  Before you click the link, let me tell you what you are doing.  You are about to laugh your behind off and, if you choose to keep reading after you see the video, you are about to listen to me tell you why Bobby Knight is great.  Flawed perhaps, but definitely great.

WARNING:  THIS CLIP CONTAINS GRATUITOUS PROFANITY!!!! And I wish I had enough command of the English language to come up with a word more powerful than gratuitous.

Golf Your Way Outtakes

I hope you enjoyed watching that clip as much as I did the first time I saw it.

In order to properly understand Bobby Knight, you only need to understand how he came by the moniker “The General”…according to West Point legend, while he was a rookie coach for the Black Knights in 1965, he placed a phone call to the cadet barracks to talk to one of his players.  The CCQ (Cadet-in-Charge-of-Quarters — believe me, it’s as boring as it sounds) notified Coach Knight that the cadet was in talking to Captain So-and-So and could not come to the phone…and was promptly told that “General” Knight would like to talk to one of his players and Captain So-and-So should defer if knew what was good for him.

In that one moment, as in just about every other waking moment of his life, Coach Knight lets you know what he thinks is important…basketball and himself, in that order. 

Even at that early stage of his coaching career, he was so certain of his eventual success on a grand scale that his arrogance was somehow engaging.  He has had many successes and a few failures along the way, but when all is said and done, his legacy will be that he had a profound, positive and lasting impact on the game of basketball.  In fact, I think we can probably describe his impact in terms of legacies, as in, more than one.

Winning is appropriately Legacy #1.  He built winning programs everywhere he went and no one could out-think, out-wit, out-maneuver, or out-coach him in a big game.  In the words of the immortal Bum Phillips, he “could take his’n and beat your’n, or he could take your’n and beat his’n.”  Of course, Bum was describing Don Shula, but I believe the analogy is appropriate here. 

I am aware that some of The General’s approaches have become obsolete and he is perhaps a bit too much of a throwback, if there is such a thing, but you cannot for one second forget about the winning.  In 41-plus years of coaching basketball, his teams:

- won 902 games

- compiled a .700 Big Ten Conference winning percentage

- won 3 national championships

- won 20 or more games 27 times

- averaged 22 wins and 9 losses per season

- appeared in 28 NCAA tournaments

- won Olympic and Pan-American Games gold medals

His incredible effect on the modern game, particularly offensively, is his second legacy.  Sure, his defenses would always give you 40 minutes of  hustle, but the motion offense is what really cemented Knight’s legacy as a teacher of the art of basketball.  Screen..backcut…2 points.  Any questions?

His ability to graduate players at a staggeringly high rate compared to his contemporaries is perhaps the most impressive of all of his legacies.  The General has graduated 98% of his players…the national average for Division I basketball programs is 42%.

Lastly, his future legacy will be all of his former players that are coaching successful college basketball — Steve Alford and Mike Krzyzewski, to name just two.

Speaking of Coach K, please take a gander at this photo from the “General Knight” days. 

Yes indeed — the legend of Army basketball.  Sure, we haven’t played a game in March for the past 35 years, but we can claim The General and Coach K, and every single West Point graduate feels a little swell of pride in our chest every March when Coach K’s ring gets some air time on national TV.

While history may certainly remember the bitter end of his time at Indiana more than anything else, what I will remember most about Bobby Knight is that he genuinely cared about the things that mattered to him.  I was fortunate enough to live in Indiana for several years before his demise and unfortunate enough to live in Indiana and be forced to watch the turn of events that led to his dismissal played out in excruciating detail. 

He had a rough few years there — but that is but a tiny fraction of his time coaching.  I will choose to instead remember how much fun it was watching him out-coach everyone and how hard his teams fought for him.  I, for one, will miss The General.