BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

October 19, 2005

Darryl Dora

Bob Knight

Martin Zeno

COACH BOB KNIGHT: I think the beginning of the basketball season is always, I think, the beginning of an interesting series of days for a coach. If you really like coaching, then you really like the first day of practice. And if you really like winning, you might not like the second day of practice. Then it goes on from there. I think that practice, to me, is always the most interesting part of the season because right now you get a look at new players and players coming back, trying to determine if the kids you have recruited can ever play. And hoping that the kids that are coming back are better and what can you do to put these two groups of kids together. And then you kind of go back and forth with that throughout the course of the whole year. So the early part is -- sometimes I'd like to have tape-recorded my comments during early practices, like, Boy that was a helluva play. Or, Damn, is he ever going to learn? I mean, it's -- I think a coach's comments would really be interesting about his players, or a coach's thoughts, maybe even more than his comments, during the first few practices of the season because I don't think I have ever been accused of being overly optimistic. But sometimes you think, Can we ever win? And then there's a ray of hope and you leave practice thinking that, Boy, there might be a chance. That's what is so great bit. That's what is so neat about basketball, I think. I think I'd rather coach basketball than anything because you can see it all in practice. It isn't like you have got something going on here and here and you have to be -- it's played in such a confined area that I think that you have an opportunity to look at it better; see more of it each night than anybody that coaches anything else, particularly football or baseball because the whole thing is right there for you. That's sometimes good and sometimes bad. So I think that's wherever the coach is at the beginning of the season. How is that for opening remarks?

COACH BOB KNIGHT: I don't know where we have been or where we have played. I think that how our team has played and what it's been able to do and the fact that our coaches have really worked hard in this area have helped us a lot with recruiting.

COACH BOB KNIGHT: I was alluding to that a little bit when I said that you say to yourself, Damn, that was a pretty good play, or, Geez, I just talked to him about that yesterday, or whatever. I think that all kids, when they go to college from high school, all of a sudden find two things: That they are an awful lot of good players playing and hopefully they understand that they are not as good as they thought they were in comparison. I can remember the first time I played in a pick-up game when I was in school. And I played against Larry Sigfried and I said, I can't believe anybody is that good. And I had never played against anybody like that before. I think that kids have that a little bit and the kids that learn very quickly, that this is a much different game than I played in high school. This is a much different level of competition than I was involved with in high school. Those kids have the best chance of becoming players. Some kids never learn that. I think the first thing a kid has to learn about playing basketball is what he doesn't do very well, instead of, Well, I am a really good player, I was recruited by 30 schools and I must be really good. Sometimes those guys never develop.

COACH BOB KNIGHT: I think that's probably a rule that somebody else made other than the N.C.A.A. because I have never seen a rule that they have made that made as much sense as that one does. I think somehow that must have come from the United Auto Workers, or the United Mine Workers or the Teamsters or somebody, because the N.C.A.A. is not capable have coming up with something that's actually that beneficial to the game of basketball. So, I mean, I didn't believe it. I just happened -- I don't read a lot of stuff from the N.C.A.A., but I happened to glance at that and I said, Somebody snuck this in here just to as a joke, is this April Fool's or what the hell is the date on this correspondence? But I think, you know, all that aside, I think it is a very -- it is a good thing. I mean, we have -- but even -- even with that, though, (laughter) even in those rare moments when they do something that's good, like baseball, we have actually 13 scholarships but we have a total of 15 kids on the roster, although Damir is hurt. So we're dealing with 14 kids. Let's say baseball is dealing with 30, and they still have to practice with four at a time, you know, it takes our baseball coaches about five hours to go through their whole team in 30-minute workouts. Now it would seem to me that -- I mean, I'd like to picture an N.C.A.A. meeting with, you know, these people sitting around the table, and this thing comes up about basketball, and you'd like to think that somebody there would be smart enough to say, Well, if we're going to do this for basketball, why don't we do it for baseball? I told Larry Hayes the other day that I checked in Las Vegas and it was, I think -- I think the spread was -- or the odds were 7 to 2 that baseball will not get this ruling before the year 2010. By 2010 there will be somebody that will say, This would be a good idea for baseball; goddam, why didn't we think of that?

COACH BOB KNIGHT: Yeah I have had teams that had leadership from underclassmen, good teams on occasion. Ronald was not a born leader. Ronald became a good leader after he and I had a conversation early in the last season and became good. And I would like to think that in what he did, in that role, our other players looked at and saw and understood that it was important and those kids came forth a little bit this year using Ronald as an example. We have had three kids that do that in practice, Jackson and Dora and Zeno have all done that in practice. I think that Zeno has spent so much time concentrating on leadership that it's hurt his passing. So I have told him to let me lead and he pass. And he's a very intelligent kid and he said, Coach, I'd really like to do both. I said, I'd like to have you do both, but I think right now we're going to concentrate on your passing. In fact, your existence may determine how well you concentrate on your passing. So while I think he has really good leadership qualities, we put them on ice for a moment.

COACH BOB KNIGHT: Me. (Laughter).

COACH BOB KNIGHT: Well, I don't really know what all went all went behind that. There is a really good guy in the N.C.A.A. named Greg Shaheen. Some of you may know Greg and he was the person I think is most intricately involved with the changeover of the NIT from the MIBA, the Metropolitan Basketball Association to the N.C.A.A. And he has, you know -- I suggested to him that they really retain Jack Powers in the position that he's been in and to make sure that there's a good -- it continues. And I think he was all for that, at least in the communication that I had with him. And I think that he, left in charge of the NIT, hopefully that will be the case, will do a really good job with it because the NIT -- long, long time ago the N.C.A.A. should have gotten over the NIT and they should have just said, Hey, this is great, the N.C.A.A. tournament, after the basketball scandals in 1950 and 1951 became the more important of the two and then as time passed it just simply became dominant. Like comparing the Rose Bowl to a minor bowl almost, but yet that smaller bowl was very significant to the two teams that played in it. That's how I have always compared the NIT and the N.C.A.A. One time when we won the N.C.A.A. the team that won the NIT wanted to have a Playoff for the National Championship and I simply told them, Well, if you had been in the National Championship Playoff in the first place you wouldn't have had to do it now. Well, yet, when I have had teams play it -- I think there are times when -- like when I coached at West Point, I really felt that the NIT was our objective. Only 25 teams in the N.C.A.A. at that time yet we actually turned down the bid once to play in the NIT. It was a brilliant choice on my part because Notre Dame beat us in the first game. But be that as it may, I think there are schools that that can be -- that can be their objective. Also a school like ours that if we played in the N.C.A.A. I think three of the last four years, we came up with a really young team this year that was struggling and then the NIT would be a great situation or if we were in a league where only one team went to the N.C.A.A. and yet here -- here's this team that has had a really good record, they were 23-and-5 or something, and yet they didn't win their league tournament, the NIT is a great venue for a team -- I think it has been great for college basketball over the years. And I would hope that the N.C.A.A., if they keep it out of the hands of those people who make some of these rules, and just let Greg Shaheen handle it, I think it will be good, I think it will continue to be a very good thing for college basketball.

COACH BOB KNIGHT: We have got two kids that for the most part I really enjoyed coaching. It would be unfair of me to say that they don't piss me off on occasion. But these are two kids that just from the standpoint of what you want to coach and how you want to coach and the fact that, you know, I tell them, I say, This isn't practice -- practice is not for you to enjoy. It's for me to enjoy. If I enjoy it, you are going to enjoy it. But let's all make damn sure that I enjoy practice today. And these two guys work to see that that happens. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to coach both of them. If you were to ask me after practice tomorrow I may not feel that that opportunity is as great as I think it is today, but by and large these are two kids that I have really enjoyed and I won't trade them for anybody, Martin Zeno and Darryl Dora. Martin is a sophomore, and Darryl is a junior. Come on up here, boys. I think that the thinking of -- I feel that the thinking of a coach is that if you could coach in all the time that you coach kids like these two, then you could look back on things, times, that are much more enjoyable than just simply winning games because of what you have seen kids like this do. Now, remember, I have shown you pictures of everybody here, you know how we went over this. Don't answer questions from those people whose pictures I crossed out and from all of those people who, you know, you studied you have got all the names and everything, so just make sure that you only answer questions from those two people I told you to answer questions from. (Laughter).

MARTIN ZENO: My uncle was in Katrina. He lost everything. And then in Rita, like a couple of people in my family had trees go through the roof and stuff like that. And in my house like the roof was blown off and rain was inside and mildew and all that stuff. But other than that my family is all right.

MARTIN ZENO: If that's what our team needs is a leader to step up, I will step up and try to be that leader that we need.

DARRYL DORA: Like Coach said, we have myself and Jay and Zeno, I mean we're working hard to get these young guys -- I mean, to get going. We really don't have one particular leader right now we're just going with the flow and Coach is our captain.

MARTIN ZENO: We learned that it doesn't matter the size of the player, that they can play anywhere in this league and you have got to be ready to play every single night and just step up when our team needs somebody to step up and to guard people and to do all the little things.

DARRYL DORA: The times that we didn't have it together was because we weren't focused or listening to the exact things that Coach was telling us. We would slip on defense and won't be in the right position and stuff like that. Our coaches focus all week on preparing us on a certain team and if we don't go out and do what they tell us to do, we're not going to win and by getting to the Sweet 16, we just prepared well. And, I mean, we focused all during the tournament, Big 12 tournament last part of the Big 12, that's why we ended up in the Sweet 16.

MARTIN ZENO: My expectation was when I found out that that's where I was going to go and to come here and just come off a good start try to give me a good spot to play in and just find out what type of coach he was really going to be, and how he wanted each and every player to step up and play.

DARRYL DORA: My first expression was like he came in and just was honest with me about everything. That's what I was looking for and it was the honesty and everything about the playing situation, how much time you are going to get, he never guaranteed you any time, if you are going to come here, he just said if you come here and work hard, you are going to be able to play for me.

MARTIN ZENO: Right now, like we got pretty much all of them are looking like good as we would want them to look, but as we practice an practice of course every team is going to gel together and if we keep on everything will be going just as planned and how coach will want it to go.

DARRYL DORA: I think some players stand out. I think John Plefka stands out a little bit more. He's a junior college transfer though. He's been playing in big games before and stuff like that. That he has the college experience but the freshmen they are coming along. They just got to listen to what Coach is telling them and they will be just like Zeno said, every team is going to gel together as the season goes along.