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HUTSELL: Knight’s next stop already makes sense
I don’t think Bob Knight is done, not even close.
I can’t buy the fact that Knight’s career would end the way it did. As a footnote to the Super Bowl while spending the twilight of his career playing in a half-empty arena at a football school in Texas.
That’s not Bob Knight’s style. No way, not even close.
Whatever the reason for Bob Knight’s oddly-timed step-aside from a Texas Tech program he crafted into a consistent, if unspectacular winner, it just doesn’t make any sense for him to leave now.
Yes, he eclipsed the NCAA all-time Division I wins record. Sure he made it to that almost unheard of 900-win plateau.
But the coaching tank didn’t seem empty when he signed a contract extension during the offseason, and he sure looked fired up on the sideline coaching the Raiders past Texas A&M; on Jan. 16 for career win No. 900.
There’s no way Knight’s done.
Heck, he’s already hinted as much to ESPN during an interview after his resignation last week. His name’s already come up in association with vacancies at South Carolina and LSU and expect it to at least be mentioned from now until every vacancy in the country is filled in the offseason.
There’s a perfect fit out there — if it ever comes open.
It would be an opening in the Big Ten, it would be a job that would allow Knight to recruit the type of players he thrives on coaching, and it would be a job in a hot spot filled with some of his most ardent supporters who would flock to his arena every tipoff of every night.
I’m talking about Northwestern. No, the job isn’t open. Yes, Bill Carmody is still there.
But change is always a possibility at a school that has lost every conference game it has played by at least 10 points, and tell me turning “The General” wouldn’t be a shot in the arm for the a program that has defined the doldrums of college hoops throughout its feeble existence.
If you can get over the thought of Knight’s potential Grimace-like appearance in a Northwestern purple sweater, you could see clearly why he would be revered in Evanston and create the type of splash his Chicago-sized ego would thrive on creating.
As a Wildcat, Knight could continue recruiting the four-year type of players he loves who are choosing the school based more on its academic reputation than its prestige on the hardwood.
And in Chicagoland, where the Indiana alumni base who already turn Welsh-Ryan Arena into Assembly Hall North anytime the Hoosiers visit campus.
Oh yeah, there’s that whole Indiana thing, too.
Northwestern has played Charlie Brown to the Hoosiers’ Lucy for years and at no point in the history of the program have the Wildcats gone into Bloomington and become a winner on Branch McCracken Court.
Tell me Knight wouldn’t live to be the guy who becomes the first to make that happen.
Contact Mike Hutsell at mike.hutsell@newsandtribune.com.
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