With Indiana and Purdue basketball both in the Top 20 and set for their only regular season matchup Tuesday night, the hype around the state is at a level we haven't seen since the 90s. A classic artifact from this rivalry is the covert audio tape of Bob Knight reaming motivating the Hoosiers before their upcoming game against the Boilermakers in 1991. Here's a link to the audio and if you haven't heard it, we're talking Bob Knight in his prime, so it is extremely NSFW.



So just where did that audio come from? Terry Hutchens asked around and it remains unknown but the players have their suspicions. Besides the players and Knight, only the managers were in the room. That leads us to current New Jersey Nets coach, Lawrence Frank. Frank was a manager at the time and according to current radio color man and '91 3-point bomber, Todd Leary, Frank had to be the source.

Lawrence Frank is a prime suspect. The New Jersey Nets coach couldn't be reached, but he was a basketball manager at IU then and was in the room.



"Lawrence Frank definitely could have done something like this," Leary said. "There was never a manager that was more full of (it) than he was. He would take us to fraternity parties on campus and just walk us all in -- and it wasn't even his fraternity. He was just as full of (it) as they came."



Players also were suspicious of the tape's premium sound quality. Too good. Almost as if the room was bugged.



"That wouldn't surprise me either," Pat Graham said. "We used to always sit around in the locker room and wonder how coach could have known exactly what some of us said in certain situations when it was said in the locker room and just among our teammates."

Sounds like the mystery is solved to me by combining both theories. Knight had the room bugged, Frank hit record to capture the "speech" and the rest is history.Another thing that is either funny or sad, depending on you perspective, is that the players couldn't remember the tirade because it was status quo. Not so funny, is the story of a naked Knight, screaming and swinging a golf club in the locker room. I don't know about you, but the mental image that story conjures up is ruining my day.So, unless Lawrence Frank provides some solid evidence to prove his innocence, we have to assume he's the source of the tape. Any denials that aren't under oath will be worthless. Actually, if Congress takes this up, a denial under oath would be worthless, too. Come on, Lawrence, what can Knight do to you at this point? Take pride in your successful, covert operation with staggering risk involved. This story needs to be told.