Matthew Glenesk

matthew.glenesk@indystar.com

So for those fans still holding out hope that Bob Knight will one day walk into Assembly Hall, give it up.

Friday night, Showtime will air a documentary on the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, college basketball's last undefeated team.

Friday morning, the man who coached that iconic '76 team went on "The Dan Patrick Show" to discuss that season. But what caught most people's attention were Knight's comments regarding why he won't return to Assembly Hall and what he thinks of the administration that fired him.

Late in the interview, Patrick asked Knight: "Why do we want you to go back to Assembly Hall so bad?"

“Well, I think I’ve always really enjoyed the fans, I always will," Knight said. "On my dying day, I will think about how great the fans at Indiana were. And as far as the hierarchy at Indiana University at that time, I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for those people. With that in mind, I have no interest in ever going back to that university.”

Patrick followed up: "Aren’t those people all out of there, coach?"

Knight: “I hope they’re all dead."

Patrick: "Some of them are …"

Knight: “Well, I hope the rest of them go.”

Ray Richardson, one of the trustees during Knight's firing, contacted IndyStar, saying the former coach's comment Friday "makes me even more certain that we did the right thing. Too bad he has had that anger burning inside all of these years."

Richardson, 79 of Greenfield, said his son called him Friday morning to tell him about Knight's comments. "He said, 'Bob Knight wants you dead, dad.'"

Myles Brand, IU's president when Knight was fired, died of cancer in 2009. Richardson says seven of the nine trustees are still living.

“Now I’m determined to live longer, so that I outlive Bob," Richardson said. "He’s inspired me to hang in there.”

Earlier in the interview, when Knight and Patrick were talking about the '76 team, Knight said he told the team before the first day of practice that they shouldn't be satisfied with anything less than an undefeated season.

"You’ve seen enough things in sports that are special, and this is something very, very special," Knight told Patrick. "And the key to it was, that the year before we had not gone undefeated. I kind of screwed things up. Scott May had broken his wrist, and I had to move things around a little bit. We ended up losing a game, and part of it was because I split (Quinn) Buckner and (Bobby) Wilkerson up, they were the best pair of guards that ever played the game in college, and I’ve always said if I had one thing to do over again I wouldn’t have split that up.

"But anyhow, we came to the next year then. And I told those kids, practice started on a Saturday like it always did, the day before practice started that there was only one thing that would be the thing that they could always be proud of and that was to go undefeated for the entire season. Not winning the Big Ten or winning the national championship or anything, but to go completely undefeated for the season. I told them that the day before practice started. On Friday afternoon, we met in the locker room and I said this is the goal that you people should get to because there may be no better group that ever does it. But you are capable of doing it. And they wound up doing it.”

Doyel: Will we ever get over Bob Knight?

Former IU coach Bob Knight to speak in Bloomington on March 30