FAYETTEVILLE — After Indiana guard Keith Smart had a turnover on a bad pass early in the second half of the 1987 NCAA Tournament championship game against Syracuse, Hoosiers Coach Bob Knight took him out.
Syracuse went on a run to take the lead, and Knight talked to Smart on the bench.
“Coach called me over and said, ‘You ready to go back in and play?’ ” Smart said. “I said, ‘Yes sir.’
“He said, ‘I tell you what, I’m going to give you two minutes to go and do something. And if you haven’t done anything in two minutes, I’m probably going to take you out of the game.
“ ‘And if I take you out, I may not put you back in. And if I don’t put you back in, I’m going to need to have a serious conversation about you playing back here next year.’
“So when I went back in the game, everyone thought I was playing for the national championship, but I was really playing for my scholarship.”
A junior college transfer, Smart kept his scholarship and became an NCAA Tournament hero.
Smart scored 17 of his 21 points in the second half and hit the game-winning baseline jump shot with four seconds left to lift Indiana to a 74-73 victory in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.
It was the third and final national championship at Indiana for Knight.
Smart, an assistant coach at the University of Arkansas, said memories of the shot and beating Syracuse, all the practices and games in his two seasons at Indiana, his teammates, and the 36 years he knew Knight came flooding back Wednesday when he heard the Hall of Fame coach had died at age 83.
“Coach Knight is up there with all the giants of the game,” Smart said. “The coaches who saw the game through a different type of prism and knew how each guy needed to play for the team to have success.
“I think about him trying to get you to understand the level you had to play at to be at Indiana. How you had to compete your hardest every day in practice and in games, because everyone wanted to beat Indiana and beat Coach Knight.
“More than anything, he was really pushing our team to stay together. So that when we went through ups and downs, it would be about the team. We made sure to always support each other.”
Former Razorbacks Joe Kleine and Alvin Robertson played for the United States team at the 1984 Olympics that was coached by Knight and won the gold medal.
“Coach Knight treated me like I played for him for four years,” said Kleine, who played in the NBA for 15 seasons and now lives in Little Rock. “He was so loyal to me.
“When I was getting ready for the draft, he called me out of the blue, and as only Coach Knight could, he said, ‘You tell those blankety-blank NBA general managers to be sure and call me about you so I can give you a great reference.’
“That’s just how he was. His loyalty was extreme, his coaching was extreme, his discipline was extreme. Everything was extreme.”
Knight was known for his emotional outbursts as much as for winning 902 career games at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech. Those outbursts eventually led to his firing at Indiana in September 2000.
“Coach Knight had a complicated personality,” Kleine said. “I can’t think of any other way to say it.
“A lot of the things he did were unfortunate, but there were twice as many good things he did for his players, for children, for charities. He had a really good side, but we all know he had a dark side, too.”
Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman got to know Knight because his late father, Bill, was a close friend.
Bill Musselman and Knight grew up in Ohio and competed against each other in high school basketball and football.
“Once when they were playing football, there was a snowstorm and my dad was back to receive the punt from Coach Knight,” Musselman said. “The punt went minus-10 yards. It went downfield, and then the wind ended up blowing it back over Coach Knight’s head. My dad always liked to needle Coach Knight with that story.”
Eric Musselman said he was 7 or 8 years old when he attended a camp where his father and Knight were among the coaches.
“I was in line with the other kids for a drill, and a bee landed on my shoulder,” Musselman said. “Coach Knight saw it and said, ‘What do you do when a bee lands on you and Coach Knight is speaking to you?’
“I said, ‘I don’t know.’ Coach Knight said, ‘Let it sting you.’ So I just stood there, and thankfully the bee flew away.”
Eric Musselman was 7 years old when his father’s Minnesota team beat Knight’s Hoosiers 52-51 in Minneapolis on Jan. 8, 1972, in a matchup of first-year Big Ten coaches.
“What a great game,” Eric Musselman said. “It was a big win for my dad and his Minnesota program.”
In the fall of 1998 during an NBA lockout, Bill and Eric Musselman visited Knight in Bloomington, Ind.
At the time, Bill Musselman was an assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers and Eric Musselman was an assistant for the Orlando Magic.
“During the lockout you couldn’t work with your players if you were employed by an NBA team,” Musselman said. “So my dad said, ‘Hey, let’s go spend a week with Coach Knight.’
“We got in every film session, every staff meeting. At that time I was so young, and it was an incredible experience.”
Knight’s final coaching stop was at Texas Tech, where he went 1-1 against the Razorbacks.
Arkansas assistant coach Ronnie Brewer had 12 points, 5 steals and 4 rebounds when he played for the Razorbacks in their 78-65 victory over the Red Raiders and Knight in Dallas during the 2005-06 season.
“I remember our prep for that game was really, really intense,” said Brewer, an All-SEC guard who played eight seasons in the NBA. “You knew a Bob Knight-coached team was going to play extremely hard on both ends of the floor and be a disciplined, mistake-free team. So we knew we couldn’t beat ourselves.
“We knew if we didn’t come with our ‘A’ game, we were going to be run out of the gym. To win that game meant a lot for our program.
“It made us feel like we accomplished a huge feat by beating a really well-coached Texas Tech team.”
Brewer recalled talking with Knight after the game.
“We shook hands and he said, ‘You’re a hell of a player. I wish you played for me,’ ” Brewer said. “He wished me good luck and said, ‘Stay healthy, because you’re going to have a long career in the NBA.’ ”
Knight’s teams were known for playing smothering man-to-man defense and their motion offense.
“Coach Knight taught us how to see the game differently, how to read the defense,” Smart said. “How to move without the ball and how to screen and cut to get an open shot.
“That’s why a lot of his guys became coaches. We understood how to teach and develop players.
“When I played in France, my coach there said, ‘Hey, teach me that passing game Indiana plays.’ Coach Knight was known around the world.”
Kleine said he enjoyed the several weeks he was coached by Knight during practices and games as part of the 1984 Olympic team
“Even when Coach Knight would get on you, I don’t ever remember it being personal or demeaning,” Kleine said. “I just remember him telling you how you didn’t do something right, and what he needed from you.
“Now, he could ride you, he could let you have it. But to me, it was always from a teaching standpoint.”
When Musselman was the Golden State Warriors’ coach, he asked Knight to talk to his team in October 2002 before a practice.
Knight was in the San Francisco area on a recruiting trip for Texas Tech.
“There are a lot of great coaches,” Musselman told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. “Why not pick their brain?”
Musselman said it’s hard to summarize Knight’s impact as a coach.
“There’s just so much there,” Musselman said. “His intensity and his will to win were incredible, and that showed up with how hard his teams played.”
Smart was among more than 50 former Indiana players at Assembly Hall on Feb. 8, 2020, for a game against Purdue when Knight finally returned to campus and was honored at halftime.
“It was a big moment for Coach Knight, the fans and all of us players who were there,” Smart said. “It was a great celebration and I’m glad I was able to be a part of it.
“I’m grateful for everything Coach Knight did for me.”
Especially for putting Smart back into the 1987 title game against Syracuse.