The Bob Knight Coaching Tree
- Thread starter Crusty The Baker
- Start date
Nobody that played for knight has turned out to be a good coach. Alford is probably the best of the bunch.
Fair point. Coach K is kind of an anomaly, though. RMK was 26 when they met and Coach K was only his assistant for one season at IU.
Yeah that’s kind of surprising. He was a master at teaching the game, so you’d think more great teachers of the game would have come after Coach K. I guess managers count.
Coach K--one of the best ever
Bill Parcells--Part-time assistant at Army for a year--one of the best ever in the NFL
Chris Beard--assistant at Tech--despite the arrest, very good coach
Alford--Solid if not spectacular, and has coached forever
Woody--OK it is what it is, a few decent NBA years, but just OK overall
Keith Smart--Currently an assistant at Arkansas, but some NBA and G League time
Dusty May--Obviously a great start to his career, we will see how it progresses
Lawrence Frank--A few HC jobs in the NBA--currently front office with the Clippers
Joe Pasternack--winning about 2/3 games at UCSB
Mike Schrange--Not a great record at Elon, but currently an assistant at Duke
Obviously Pat, Dave Bliss, and Mike Davis have not fared very well for various reasons. and Wittman was somewhere between decent and bad but did take the Wizards to the playoffs 2 times.
All that said, it is not bad--really good if you count K and Parcells!!! I do find it interesting, though, that some of the more successful ones have been managers for him with May, Frank, and Pasternack
Bob Knight's coaching tree spread far and wide
Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight left an indelible legacy with his coaching tree. The branches include a Super Bowl winner, a five-time national champion and one of college basketball’s top young coaches.
apnews.com
Another one was Murry Bartow who was a Grad Assistant on the '87 team and coached at UAB, and ETSU, was on Steve's staff at UCLA and actually succeeded him I believe as interim when Steve was let go mid-season.
I believe he is part of the answer to a unique and obscure trivia question: which father/son both coached at the same 2 D1 college programs? Gene Bartow followed John Wooden at UCLA before moving on to become AD and the first men's bball coach (I believe!) at UAB. That's how poorly D1 coaches were paid back then: it made more sense to move to Birmingham to be AD and Coach at UAB than just coach at UCLA. Think he also coached at Valpo, Memphis St and IL along the way, and was purportedly a terrific man. Coached against IU in the '76 Final Four and was a good friend of RMK, to the point that his son came to IU as a grad asst. UAB's bball arena is named for Gene Bartow.
I didn’t know Bill Parcells was included. Does it count if the coaching happens in a different sport? Is there another example of this sort of thing?
Including Coach K, who was only a graduate assistant for one year is awfully generous.
Dakich and Woodson both think they are really good coaches so can't we count that?
Well he was responding to this statement:
"Nobody that played for knight has turned out to be a good coach. Alford is probably the best of the bunch."
yeah, but played for Knight for 4 years at Army and may have assisted there? I'd say including Parcells is the generous one!
K played for Knight at Army and then assisted, so probably around RMK more than even Alford. And, I think it's hard to argue Steve, with over 600 wins hasn't been a good coach. Not stellar or elite, but he's won a lot of games, conference titles and NCAA tournament berths. That's pretty good.
Wittman was one of the most successful coaches the Wizards have ever had, reaching the second round of the playoffs back-to-back. I'd have taken him before Woodson (for what that's worth today).
Looks like 3 years playing at Army (no freshmen eligibility) and one year as a grad assistant at IU.
Based on the rest of his protégé’s it seems Coach K was as successful in spite of Coach RMK
Does Mike Davis count as an anomaly since Knight didn't want him to take the head coaching job?
Yeah, I'm sure back then you just showed up at the school you hoped to attend and then tried to join the bball team as a soph. Sheesh.
What does that have to do with anything? Even as a recruited freshman, he wasn’t around him as much as he was the three years he played.
No different than current HS players as freshmen. You’re around the varsity coach, you’re playing their system, you get some influence from them but you’re not PLAYING for them and around them like if you’re a varsity player.
Sheesh.
Certainly not around him as much as when he played, but around him and learning from him and his systems. They have a long history, well beyond the 3 years he played for him as a varsity player.
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