Roy Williams held some goodies in his hands as he knocked on Bob Knight’s Lawrence hotel room door eight winters ago.

“The night before we played Indiana at the fieldhouse, the night before Jacque (Vaughn) made the three (at buzzer to beat Hoosiers, 86-83), I took some brownies to his hotel room.

Kansas coach Roy Williams, center, smiles as he listens to Bob Knight, left, while official Rick Wulkow looks on. The action took place in December 1995 at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., when Knight was Indiana's coach. Knight's Texas Tech team will meet Kansas on Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse.

“I told him my wife sent ’em,” Williams, Kansas’ coach, related, his eyes lighting up at the memory.

“He wanted to know where the ‘blankety-blank’ ice cream was. I’m gonna make him mad from the start this year. I’m going recruiting Friday night so I won’t be taking him any brownies.”

Knight he had a 1-5 record against Williams’ teams while at Indiana returns as first-year Texas Tech head coach on Saturday.

You can bet the two coaching buddies will be trading one-liners on the sidelines before the 3:05 p.m. tip.

“I walked in a gym last summer and told him it looked like he was losing weight,” Williams said of bumping into Knight on the recruiting trail. “He called me every name in the book. He thought I was teasing him. It did look like he lost some weight.”

Williams has a million stories about Knight, a coach he has “stolen more things” from than anybody except Williams’ own mentor, Dean Smith.

Williams remembers his first meeting with the Hoosier legend. “In 1984 he came to Chapel Hill to meet with Michael (Jordan) and Sam (Perkins, who played for Knight on Olympic team) and we all went out to lunch, players and coaches. It was the first time I was around him very much.

“My first year here … he doesn’t remember it, but we were at the Final Four in Seattle. I got off the elevator at the same time as he did. He said, ‘I want you to know I enjoyed watching your team this year. You are doing things the right way.’ As a young coach it meant a great deal to me.”

Also as a young coach just two or three years into his KU tenure, Williams traveled to Bloomington, Ind., to watch the Hoosiers’ practice.

As late as last summer, he played 28 holes of golf with the volatile coach at the Big 12 meetings. There’s a good chance Knight may have uttered an expletive or two during the round.

“I’m not an angel myself. I myself cuss at times, too,” Williams said. “Most of the time I do a pretty good job with my language. Sometimes I mess it up. I just heard a guy say one time, ‘Don’t listen to how somebody says something, listen to what they say.’

“That’s a lot of it with him. I am never greatly offended by somebody’s vocabulary. I try to listen to what they say. He shows me respect, that’s the biggest thing. I think he’s treated me just like I’ve been his assistant for several years, instead of coach Smith’s assistant. He and I joked one time. I told him, ‘My wife would have never let me be your assistant.”’

Williams says, specifically, he’s studied Knight’s motion offense, man-to-man defense and the way Knight runs a total program.

“Even allowing seniors to speak to the crowd on Senior Night. It’s where I got that. I saw Indiana do that on TV one year and I thought it was really cool. We decided to do it ourselves,” Williams said. “The greatest gift you can give somebody is knowledge and he’s given me that.”

Williams was elated when Knight, who was dismissed at Indiana, was given a second chance at Texas Tech. His Raiders are 16-5 overall, 5-4 in the conference.

“I’m extremely happy he’s in the league. I hated to see a true coaching giant, and I’m not talking about his weight, finish like that,” Williams quipped. “I was ecstatic that he was back into coaching. It’s great for our league, great for him personally to be recharged and refreshed.”

Williams can joke about Knight, but he won’t let others criticize the Hall of Fame coach.

“I’ve heard people say negative things about him, but they don’t say them very long around me before I stop them,” KU’s coach said simply.

Knight quip: KU senior Drew Gooden was asked about Knight on Jim Rome’s national radio show on Thursday.

“He is so unpredictable, you don’t know how he’ll be (Saturday). It’d be a nice thing to see if he did blow his top, but that’s between him and his players,” Gooden said.