WACO, Texas (AP) – Pat Knight realizes he will always been known as Bob Knight’s son, no matter what he does on his own.
“That shadow is so big, you’re not getting out of that one,” Knight said Wednesday, hours before succeeding his father as Texas Tech’s head coach.
That’s OK with 37-year-old Pat Knight, who is finally getting to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a college head coach. But he’d also eventually like to be recognized as something else.
“I desire to just be known as a good coach. Now I don’t desire not to be known as Bob Knight’s son. … That’s great for me, that’s my dad,” he said. “In my mind, I want to be established as a good head coach, and that’s what I’m going to try to do.”
rst of at least 11 games remaining for the Red Raiders this season.
Bob Knight had already mentioned to his son a couple of times in the past month the possibility of resigning in the middle of this season.
“I kind of talked him out of it. He wasn’t really serious, but was `Hey, what if I did, what if you took over tomorrow?’,” the younger Knight said.
Things were different when Bob Knight called his two sons into his office Monday. There would be no changing his mind this time.
“He shuts the door, `Boys, I’m done, I can’t do it any more. It’s not in me,”’ Pat Knight said. “That was it. He had already gone to see (athletic director Gerald) Myers and resigned. So it wasn’t like I could pull the Jedi mind trick and convince him to come back. Not this time.”
Texas Tech tabbed Pat Knight as the coach designate before the 2005-06 season, but it seemed the wait would be longer when in September his father signed a three-year extension through the 2011-12 season. Now Pat Knight has a five-year deal as coach.
Bob Knight, the winningest coach in NCAA men’s Division I history, didn’t travel to Waco for his son’s debut. He instead stayed home in Lubbock.
“He told me it’s your team,” Pat Knight said.
That means there will be some tweaks since the younger Knight prefers a faster pace and likes a zone defense. Those are changes he had already spoken to his father about making.
“But the base of course is going to be the motion offense and man to man,” he said. “It will be just little tweaks, but it will always have the blanket of a Bob Knight basketball team just because I believe in that philosophy.”
With Bob Knight stepping aside now, instead of waiting until after the season as his son expected, Pat Knight got an early start in establishing himself as head coach.
“I’m not talking to these kids about the postseason, the NCAA and the NIT,” he said. “I just want to have a team that after these 10 games, we’re going in the right direction.”
The seemingly subdued personality of Pat Knight is a direct contrast to the volatile temperament of his father.
But Pat Knight said he does “have the temperament” and that his father has talked to him about using it at times to motivate players, but also to be himself. There was also some fatherly advice about when and how to use certain profane words.
His father also spoke to him about dealing with the media, but the message was different from what most people would expect.
“He told me keep dealing with the media like you do. He told me one time he wishes it was different for him and the media, but if he changed now, it’d look phony,” Pat said. “He really talked to me about don’t make that same mistake: You enjoy people, being around them, keep doing it.”
Pat Knight spent a decade as a college assistant. The only season he wasn’t with his father was 2000-01, when Bob Knight didn’t coach between his departure from Indiana and his hiring at Tech.
But now Pat is in charge.
“A lot of kids dream of playing in the NBA, and I’ve always dreamed of being a coach,” he said. “I’d wake up in the morning, Al McGuire or coach Krzyzewski at the breakfast table, Billy Packer, guys like that. So my idols have always been coaches. … I’ve finally reached my dream.”
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