Where would Gopher Basketball be if in 2000 ........

The Gophers fired Monson and hired the newly available Bobby Knight as the Head Basketball coach?

Would we be a blue blood now?
How many banners would we have?
Would a 6 year "Bobby Knight Revenge tour" have boosted fan and national interest to get the Athlete's Village earlier?

I for one would have wholeheartedly endorsed the move. After all, he is a close personal friend of Sid's!

No thanks. You think Bobby was mellowing in old age? He was explosive as a young coach, cranky as an old one.

I don’t think that would have ended well. Knight was a great coach and a deeply flawed individual, a classic bully. He would have put himself above the University, and that is a recipe for disaster.


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No thanks. He left Indiana with problems that wouldn’t have gone away at another B1G school.


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Bob Knight had one of the best minds ever for coaching in any sport. A absolute master. However, by that time he had lost control of himself. He did have great influence in Beard getting the Tech job and he teaches like a young Bob Knight. Defense, quality shots, low turnovers, high efficiency. They both recruit on intangibles, super high basketball IQ players. Tech was a machine last year.

MN was in a recovery mode from the Clem era and was taking no chances.

Bob Knight had worn out his welcome by that time. He would have tried to pretend to be a tough guy, and about that time, that type of coach was becoming obsolete. Of course there are examples of me being wrong (Saban in football and probably more). But I think his personality would have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in Minnesota. People in Indiana expected it after years of seeing it and the success he made. He wasn't terribly successful at Tech. He had Texas to recruit, and at the time, Minnesota wasn't the hotbed it is today.

In 2000, the Gophers were 2 years removed from a devastating academic scandal. It remains, partly because others seem to have been whitewashed, one of the worst academic scandals in NCAA history. If they fired good guy Dan Monson after one season where Monson did everything asked of him (including kicking Joel Pryzbilla off the team for not going to class- an act that got him a standing O at Williams arena) to bring in Knight, who had just been fired for abusive behaviour, it would have made Minnesota a laughingstock.

Monson didn't work out but in 2000, he was a much better hire than 2000 era Bobby Knight.

Knight's coaching style was more well suited for the 1970s where the last of the Baby Boomer generation was going through High School/College but still played reasonably well with the GenXers through the 90s. It wasn't just Knight that was a high pressure screamer, many coaches used the drill sergeant approach to reshape the young men (including Tubby). Not to say there were not coaches using other approaches to getting results but discipline was high on the list for everyone. There was no flaw in this style of coaching - it was expected as their generation came from the hardened WWII era generation parents.

By the time the internet-savvy Millennials began to come of age around 2000 the shtick was already on its way out. Today the same level of pressure (well intended or not) will completely alienate the players and turn them against you and destroy your recruiting via the internet. If you were close to the Tubby years you saw this happen. They players were so fearful of making a mistake and getting pulled that every mistake was followed by a quick glance over to the bench to see if tubby was about to pull them from the game. Some hated him and looked for ways to transfer, some stopped caring quietly biding their time, and, of course, some grew and flourished under the heat. By the time he left many the team culture and recruiting was growing more and more toxic. God bless you Tubby and I hope you do well - but I am glad we moved on.

The Knights of the world do not really work anymore. The smart, game savvy, personable, funny, firm-but-fair, caring fatherly types that are able to communicate well are going to get much more out of the young guys. Pitino is a good fit for this generation - so was Clem (minus the internet savvyness). Perhaps this was always the best approach...

Winnipegopher said:

In 2000, the Gophers were 2 years removed from a devastating academic scandal. It remains, partly because others seem to have been whitewashed, one of the worst academic scandals in NCAA history. If they fired good guy Dan Monson after one season where Monson did everything asked of him (including kicking Joel Pryzbilla off the team for not going to class- an act that got him a standing O at Williams arena) to bring in Knight, who had just been fired for abusive behaviour, it would have made Minnesota a laughingstock.

Monson didn't work out but in 2000, he was a much better hire than 2000 era Bobby Knight.

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There would have been a better chance of a 90 year old John Wooden coming out of retirement and coaching the Gophers than Bobby Knight being hired. Neither were ever going to happen.

I did not expect to see Bob Knight's name when I clicked on this thread. Knight was a disaster by this time and would not have recruited well anywhere. There were plenty of coaches that could have done much better at Minnesota, but Knight is such a bizarre choice for a thread like this. Also it's hilarious that someone in this thread thinks Minnesota's academic scandal was a big deal. It was funny that people thought that in 1999, but in 2019? What rock are you living under? College athletes not doing their own work? What a scandal!

EG#9 said:

I did not expect to see Bob Knight's name when I clicked on this thread. Knight was a disaster by this time and would not have recruited well anywhere. There were plenty of coaches that could have done much better at Minnesota, but Knight is such a bizarre choice for a thread like this. Also it's hilarious that someone in this thread thinks Minnesota's academic scandal was a big deal. It was funny that people thought that in 1999, but in 2019? What rock are you living under? College athletes not doing their own work? What a scandal!

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It was a very, very big deal. It crushed MN bb program for years.

And, thank you for making my point that the playing field is anything but level in 2019..

#excusesareforlosers

#levelplayingfield

EG#9 said:

Knight was a disaster by this time and would not have recruited well anywhere.

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That's not really accurate. Knight took Texas Tech to the Sweet 16 in 2005. Not that I would've supported hiring him at the time, but he had some pretty decent success at Tech.

Knight probably would't have worked, but man it would have been fun having him around.

What should have happened was the U should have stood up for Clem and told the NCAA to piss off. That is what all these other schools have done. That was never a coaching or athletic department failure. That was a failure from the top down at the University and it hamstrung all of our programs for almost an entire generation.