Well, they say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If that is true, then Bob Knight must be pretty damn flattered tonight after the actions of his son Pat.

For those of you who have not seen the highlights, Pat Knight went pretty much nucking futs earlier tonight during Texas Tech’s 82-69 loss to Nebraska. He picked up two technical fouls arguing a horrible foul call against one of his players, and also stormed the court to give the referees a pretty serious verbal assault.

The loss dropped Texas Tech to 11-10, and will likely cost Pat Knight a few dollars and possibly a game or two. It does, however, give him something to talk about the dinner table with his dad when the conversation turns to hunting…referees.

Just watch the video:

It certainly looked like the Texas Tech player got hosed on the call. Here was Pat Knight’s reaction after the game, according to the ESPN.com recap:

“My job is to protect my players,” he said. “If you all didn’t see what happened, then that’s your fault. Just see what happened. My job is to protect my players and you can only sit there and take so much. And so I got to protect my boys. That’s my job.”

….

“I’m not going to get into the officiating,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious what I did and what my feelings are. I left them out there on the court, so it’s pretty obvious.”

He certainly did make his feelings obvious. And as a sycophantic supporter of Bob Knight (and, by extension, Pat Knight) I have to say that I applaud him. And for the record, you’ll have to forgive me, as I grew up in Bloomington sitting seven rows behind the IU bench for most of my childhood. As anyone living in Bloomington and going to IU games between the years of 1986 and 1994 knows, there was Bob Knight and God…in that order. Pathetic? Perhaps. True? Sadly, probably.

The truth of the matter, if I were a betting man (which I am not), is that I bet Texas Tech losing 5 out of 6 games coming into this one, and being down 56-44 at the time of the outburst, has as much or more to do with Pat Knight going crazy than the officiating. Bob Knight may have been crazy back in the day, but he was also often very calculating (sometimes). He would blow up for one of four reasons: 1) because the officiating really was bad and he wanted to make a point; 2) because he wanted to provide a spark for his team; 3) to take the pressure of his team by making the story all about him; or 4) because he really is just crazy and can’t control himself.

Okay, so maybe 90% of his blow-ups were because of reason #4, but what do you want from me? I’m a Hoosier. (And if you can’t already tell from this rambling and fence-jumping post, my feelings about Bob Knight are somewhat conflicting. Welcome to Hoosier Nation.)

Anyway, while I’m sure Pat was having something of an out-of-body experience in which his anger, frustration, and rage completely took over (chip off the old block), I would venture to guess that at least a small part of his blow-up was to light a fire under his team. Send a “hey, look how much I care damnit, you better play hard and card too” kind of message. If so, it kind of worked, as Texas Tech pulled within 5 with 3:16 to go. Never mind the fact that Nebraska still won by 13 anyway.

He’s Pat Knight, and we all know who his dad is and what he’s done. Honestly, it was probably only a matter of time before he went nuts on an official. And, like good little Hoosiers, the Red Raider faithful was behind Pat Knight — cheering him loudly as he provided the “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” example for his players that his father was famous for doing.

Look, I wrote a 30 page paper in high school listing off all Bob Knight’s transgressions and giving the Bloomington “company line” defending him. Only once I got to college and lived through his firing and the aftermath did I start to emerge from my protective early-90s Hoosier bubble and appreciate the nuances, many good and many bad, of the great Bob Knight. (Of course, I didn’t really acknowledge the bad ones until after that speech I gave, the day after Myles Brand fired him, on the steps of Assembly Hall in front of 5,000 screaming Knight supporters.)

Most IU fans I know still love Bob Knight, for obvious reasons. And for obvious reasons they follow Texas Tech and support Pat Knight. And I would imagine that most IU fans, like me, were not surprised by what they saw tonight. My advice to Texas Tech — and what is in the best long-term interests of Pat — is to take swift disciplinary action and nip this one in the bud.

Bob Knight seemed to be empowered a little more each time he acted like an asshole and got away with it. Sure, his ridiculous winning percentage helped, but IU’s kowtowing to him eventually created the massive I-can-do-wrong-and-will-face-no-consequence attitude that got him fired. If Texas Tech shows Pat Knight that there is someone at the school bigger and more important than him early in his career, maybe it will help to curb the development of some of his father’s more extreme, and detrimental, traits.

Luckily for Texas Tech, and for Pat, he hasn’t won enough yet to be immune from or above rebuke.

I think Pat Knight will be a great coach; not as good as his dad, but very good in his own right. He is certainly under enormous pressure living in his dad’s shadow, and his is struggling right now with a mediocre team. Blowing up like he did tonight is understandable (if you grew up watching and rooting for his dad anyway), but certainly not acceptable. I actually hope to see him get suspended, but only if it helps him to realize that while he would obviously do well to emulate his father as a coach, there are certain lessons in the Bob Knight Coaching Handbook that are counter-productive to follow.

Like the one Pat followed tonight.

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