KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Claretta Evans had just returned to her motel room to clean up before Texas Tech's first game in the Big 12 Tournament. Her son, guard Jamal Brown, was playing in a few hours.
As she was jumping into the shower, her husband Samuel told her about a rumor he'd heard.
"Honey, did you know Bob Knight may be able to coach Texas Tech?"
|  | | Jamal Brown and his mother are willing to give Bob Knight a chance in Lubbock. |
"Uh-oh," Claretta said as she reflected back to last September and Knight's most-public firing as Indiana's head coach. "If he did (choke former Indiana player Neil Reed), he doesn't need to coach anybody."
Now that "anybody" could be her Jamal. Claretta wasn't sure what she thought about the coach whose chair throwing was as much a part of his legacy as three national championships and 763 victories (661 at Indiana). Finally, she decided to give Knight a chance, if it should come to that.
"We want our kids to be treated with respect because that what's Jamal is expected to give -- respect," she said Thursday while watching the Red Raiders fall to Oklahoma State, 71-59, in a section of Kemper Arena with other Texas Tech players' families. "He's expected to produce; the coach is expected to produce. I don't expect the coach to do anything I don't expect Jamal to do.
"Really and truly, the bad things I've heard about the coach, I pray those things are behind him, if in fact they were even true. This is going to be the future, and I'm looking for highlights."
The Knight rumors have surfaced in that last few days amid speculation that current Texas Tech coach James Dickey, coming off yet another disappointing season, would be fired.
"I haven't coached very well the last four years," Dickey said Thursday.
Sources close to Knight told ESPN.com on Thursday that Dickey would be fired and Knight would be offered the job. Knight, who has spoken to close friends in Texas recently about the position, is believed to have reservations because of the school's remoteness location in Lubbock, Texas. He met with a Texas Tech alum and queried him on the school three weeks ago, the sources said.
Knight's possible return to coaching -- in Lubbock, no less -- is the buzz of the Big 12 Tournament. From the media shuttle driver to a Kemper Arena employee making chair jokes.
In section 135, a group of Red Raider athletic department employees and boosters got ready for Thursday's game against Oklahoma State. The topic of conversation wasn't that day -- it was Knight.
Texas Tech fan Terry Fuller, who wants the wins but wouldn't have to deal with the coach, is all for the hire. He said a name like Knight would give the program "instant credibility."
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Really and truly, the bad things I've heard about the coach, I pray those things are behind him, if in fact they were even true. This is going to be the future, and I'm looking for highlights. ” |
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— Claretta Evans, mother of Texas Tech guard Jamal Brown |
"If you get somebody with the negatives a Billy Tubbs would have," he said, "you might as well get the positives a Knight would have."
After the game, Dickey said he hadn't heard any decision yet.
Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton, a former boss and long-time friend of Dickey's, said Thursday was "tough."
"If I'd have known we were a cinch to make the NCAA, I wouldn't have minded losing today if that would have helped him save his job -- if he is going to lose his job," Sutton said. "I hope and say prayers that (Texas Tech) comes to their senses and keep him on as the coach."
In the Red Raiders locker room after the game, Brown and teammates Andre Emmett and Brannon Hayes were still in shock -- at the loss, at the end of the season and at their potential new coach.
"That does sound kind of wild -- playing for Bob Knight," Brown said. "It's going to be wild anytime you hear that name. It's crazy. We got to bow up and be men."
To his right, Emmett said he thought Dickey should have been treated with more class.
"I felt they went about it all wrong," he said.
Then, Emmett also weighed in on the hot topic -- what would Knight really be like? What would happen in a first team meeting?
"I seen stories, heard stories," he said. "I can't explain. They're some wild things that happened."
All the players said that no decision was final, and that they respected their current coach. But they were also thinking about the future -- it has been hard to escape. Some players heard about the news in their hotel rooms Wednesday night; some in the locker room just prior to the game.
At least one player heard about it on the court. Emmett said Oklahoma State sophomore Melvin Sanders, a friend, couldn't resist talking a little trash.
"Good luck with your new coach," Sanders said during the game. "Y'all in trouble."
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