Today marks the 20th anniversary of the firing of IU head coach Bob Knight. The day has lived with Indiana fans ever since, and will continue no matter how long after it is. The program has been nowhere near the same since he left and the way his tenure ended rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way.
On this 20th year, the voice of the Hoosiers Don Fischer as well as former Bob Knight player and current Michigan State assistant coach Dane Fife joined Indiana Sports Beat to reminisce on the Bob Knight tenure and his return to Assembly Hall this past season.
"I went down to Indiana to play for Coach Knight," Fife said. "20 years down the road and we are seeing a lot of emotion, even with young people, some good and some bad."
Fife, who played at Indiana from 1998-2002 and then coached under Mike Davis for two seasons, knows exactly what Coach Knight meant to the program and got to see it from multiple different angles. Being recruited by Knight to IU and then going through the emotional time following his departure is something not many people will experience in college sports.
Following the end of Bob Knight’s tenure, however, Fife knew that the players had to come together in order to carry on the legacy that Knight had built for the previous three decades.
"We felt a certain loyalty to each other and that's what kept us going. And one thing we were asking was to keep the staff together as much as we could and that's what was important to our group," Fife added. "That was a tight knit group because we went through a lot... the intensity and gravity of the situation and then it being indiana basketball... To sum it up, we thought it was important to learn to embrace each other and embrace the program."
Not only had it been 20 years since Bob Knight had returned to Assembly Hall, it was the first time that he stepped foot on the court since his departure, when he came back during Indiana's game this past year against Purdue.
"The players who returned to celebrate coach Knight, it was great closure, it was a special day," Don Fischer said. "He'd moved back to Bloomington and a lot of people were able to see him. It was a great moment.
"Coach Knight came back this year to Assembly Hall to tremendous crowd reaction to it. I think it brings a lot of closure to a lot of Indiana basketball players who played for coach Knight but also to a Hoosier Nation fanbase that revered coach Knight and what he did for Indiana University."
As one of those players, Fife knows exactly what they were feeling. Not only did it bring back great memories but it also put the final touch on a long emotional chapter.
"As I watched it, it just brought back a ton of great memories," Fife added. "I felt the same feeling, 'he's back this is where he belongs'. It mends a group... it really brought a lot of closure to a program that had fractured and was devastated for so long.
"I love The General, I love Indiana basketball."
To listen to the interview in its entirety, click on the link here.
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