Knight may be a changed man

Texas Tech coach takes responsibility, observers say

? Maybe it’s the wide-open spaces of West Texas. Or perhaps it’s all those years of scrapes at Indiana.

Whatever the case, Bob Knight seems to be handling himself differently these days.

This week, the coach acknowledged he was partially to blame for a verbal spat with Texas Tech’s chancellor.

Last month, he apologized for an expletive-ridden tirade during a television interview that coincided with the national broadcast of a Red Raiders game.

Knight’s temper and outburst still surface. But so far there have been no chairs, punches or even salad thrown in anger — at least publicly — during his three years at Texas Tech.

Art Angotti, who did a radio show with Knight in Indiana for eight years, has noticed a change.

“When his emotions seem to get the best of him in Lubbock, he is very quick to recognize it and he has apologized,” Angotti said Wednesday. “When he was here and it would get away from him, he’d stop going to press conferences. He’d kind of withdraw.”

Knight was reprimanded but not suspended Tuesday for his verbal spat with chancellor Dr. David Smith a day earlier at an upscale Lubbock grocery store.

Hours later, Knight guided the No. 19 Red Raiders over Baylor, 83-63.

Knight didn’t take questions about the episode during his postgame news conference Tuesday night. Still, he talked about it and admitted having been partially at fault.

Knight said Smith followed him to the side of the salad bar and said, “You’ve got issues. What are they?”

“Right then is where I think I was at fault. I should have shook my head, walked away, done a lot of other things, and I didn’t,” Knight said. “I went on to tell him what one of those issues was and then it got back and forth a little bit.”

Knight said he “absolutely did not instigate anything.”

Smith wasn’t available to comment Wednesday. When reached at his home late Tuesday night, he declined to comment.

The reprimand was Knight’s first punishment from Tech. He was hired in March 2001, six months after he was fired by Indiana for what then-school president Myles Brand called his “pattern of unacceptable behavior.”

In his 29 years at Indiana, he won three national championships and 11 Big Ten titles. Yet he’s also remembered for throwing a chair across a court, punching a police officer in Puerto Rico and kicking a chair his son, then a player, was sitting in. He also was accused of choking a player.

Knight said he would have ridden out a suspension had Tech decided on that discipline. He said he didn’t eat or sleep much after the flap.