Bob Knight is a former American basketball coach who is most known for his time coaching the Indiana Hoosiers between 1971-2000. At the time of his retirement, he won 902 games which was a record at that time. He won three NCAA championships as a head coach, one NIT championship, and 11 Big Ten Conference championships as a coach for Indiana including going undefeated in the 1975-1976 season. He is one of the most innovative coaches in history, popularizing the motion offense.
Knight went on to play basketball for Ohio State. He was a star in high school, but struggled to get playing time at OSU under future Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor. He was a reserve forward on the 1960 Ohio State team that ended up winning the NCAA Championship. The team also featured basketball legends John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. The Buckeyes reached the NCAA Championship games each of the following two years and lost to the Cincinnati Bearcats each of those years.
“Where there’s a great painting, there’s a great painter. Where there’s a great and unique building, there’s a great architect. Where there’s a great team, there’s a great coach. No team ever won a national championship with a better coach than Fred Taylor,” proclaimed Knight.
In 1971, Knight was hired as the head coach for Indiana. In his first season, he defeated No. 14 Kansas, No. 7 Kentucky, No. 8 BYU, No. 16 Michigan, and No. 14 Ohio State and reached No.5 at one point during the season. However, Knight’s team reached the NIT and lost in the first round to Princeton.
Knight’s team improved drastically in his second season, reaching the Final Four and losing to John Wooden’s UCLA team that went 30-0. Knight did secure the third place finish with a victory over Providence in the Third Place Game.
Indiana reached the Elite Eight in 1974-1975 with Indiana’s first loss to Kentucky over the first four seasons Knight was coach over their six meetings (4 in regular season, 2 in post-season). This was a disappointment for the Hoosiers who rarely had any close games throughout the whole season and were No. 1 rank from 1/11/1975 till the end of the season. They swept the entire Big Ten by an average of 22.8 ppg. One of the biggest hurdles faced was losing Scott May to a broken left arm in the 83-82 victory at Purdue. Kentucky lost to eventual national champion UCLA.
In Knight’s fifth season as head coach, he ran the table and reached the perfect 32-0 record and Indiana’s third national championship in school history. They went perfect in Big Ten games this season as well. In the preseason, they defeated the reigning World Champion Soviet National Team by a convincing 94-78 margin. They were No. 1 the entire season and played one of the most dominating performances on 11/29/1975 against No. 2 UCLA where they won 84-64 In Gene Bartow’s first year as head coach of the Bruins.