Bob Knight,
legendary Indiana basketball coach,
dead at 83

By Don Burke
Published Nov. 1, 2023, 6:38 p.m. ET



Bob Knight, the tempestuous winner of three NCAA national championships while the basketball coach
at Indiana University died Wednesday.

Knight — often his own worst enemy while warring with administrators, faculty members, security guards,
the media, his own players and even a random student or two — was 83, suffered from dementia and had
been in ill health for the last several years.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share that Coach Bob Knight passed away at his home in Bloomington
surrounded by his family,” Knight’s family said in a statement.











“We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy
as Coach requested a private family gathering, which is being honored.  We will continue to celebrate
his life and remember him, today and forever as a beloved Husband, Father, Coach, and Friend.”

Knight, who began his coaching career at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, won those titles with
the Hoosiers in 1976, ‘81 and ‘87. He also won one with Ohio State in 1960 as a little-used reserve on
a team fronted by future Hall of Fame players Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek.

Knight, who coached the Hoosiers from 1971 until he was fired in 2000 after an on-campus incident
involving an Indiana student, spent the last 6 ¹/₂ seasons of his coaching career at Texas Tech and
retired in 2008 with 902 victories.

At the time it was the most wins in NCAA Division 1 history. Knight now sits fifth on the all-time list
having been surpassed by, among others, the now retired Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, who played for
Knight at West Point and later was an assistant on his staff there.











And while he wasn’t easy to play for — ask Larry Bird who lasted only a a few weeks before heading
home and later resurfacing at Indiana State to become one of the game’s all-time greats — Knight’s
Indiana teams never had a losing record while winning or sharing 11 Big Ten titles, reaching five
Final Fours and his 1976 squad is the last team in NCAA history to go through an entire season
unbeaten, finishing 32-0. In fact, his 1974-75 and 75-76 teams went a combined 63-1,
the lone loss coming in the 1975 NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight.

Knight was 659-242 at Indiana where his players went to class and, if they stayed all four years,
usually graduated. He was a stickler for following NCAA rules despite his distaste for the NCAA as
an entity and his penchant for bucking authority.

“If my primary purpose here at Indiana is to go out and win ballgames, I can probably do that as
well as anybody can,” he once said. “I would just cheat, get some money from a lot of people
around Indianapolis who want to run the operation that way, and just go out and get the best
basketball players I can. Then we’d beat everybody.”