“This isn’t how I was brought up to handle a situation.” He blew his whistle and, Bang! His hands came together in a familiar “T.” It was Indiana University men’s basketball coach Bob Knight’s second technical foul of the night — but it wouldn’t be his last.
___When the smoke cleared after Indiana’s 82-72 loss to Illinois, Valentine had assessed three technical fouls against the coach and his celebrated mouth.
___How did Knight end up with a rare third technical? He received his first technical in the first half, but the chain of events that led to technicals number two and three started with an Indiana player hitting the floor with a cracked rib after missing a shot during which an Illinois player grabbed the rim. The Illinois player was charged with a technical by rule, but Knight thought — incorrectly — there should also be a goaltending call on the play.
___Knight vigorously protested the call and Valentine assessed a second technical — an automatic ejection — on the coach. According to news accounts of the time, Knight was most concerned about his fallen player. Valentine, some reporters suggested, was too quick with the second “T.”
___Valentine assessed a third technical after Knight raged at him about the second technical. “This (game) and that guy (Valentine) are the greatest travesty that I’ve seen in 33 years as a college head coach,” Knight said after the game. “That goes beyond anything that’s even ridiculous.”
___Knight, who was fined $10,000 by the Big 10 for the incident, had much to say at the time but Valentine remained silent. His partners on the game, Tom O’Neill and Ed Hightower, remained silent. Valentine declined all requests for interviews on the subject. Even when the Big 10 handed down a censure for what it determined was an improperly called technical, Valentine remained mum. “The game comes first,” thought Valentine and he went about his business, ending the season working in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.
‘I Grew Up Loving Bob Knight.’
___Although neither man will admit it, it’s been widely reported that Knight and Valentine have a dislike for each other. That animosity stems from a technical foul Valentine called on Knight at the 1992 Final Four. Indiana lost that game to Duke, 81-78.
___The mood hadn’t improved with time. “It was very cold, like a freezer,” said O’Neill of the atmosphere between his partner and the coach. “It’s been that way since that Final Four when they had their differences. Bob doesn’t say much to Ted and Ted doesn’t say much to Bob. I don’t know if Ted dislikes Bob or not but I think Bob dislikes Ted. At any point in a game, Coach Knight is liable to explode anyway and in that game he had a person he doesn’t get along with. It wasn’t a good mix.”
___“I grew up loving Bob Knight,” said Valentine, who has worked six Final Fours this decade, including three championship games. “That was the way to be. I always admired him. I was a fan of his until the day I put the striped shirt on.
___“As far as people thinking there’s a problem between Coach Knight and myself, well, there’s not really a problem dealing with Coach Knight. At times I don’t like some of his tactics and antics that he uses to try to intimidate people. Where I’m from, we’re just not intimidated by anybody.”
___According to Valentine, who is from West Virginia, intimidation was the name of the game for Knight that day. “Tom O’Neill, Ed Hightower and I came out to start the game and I’m in front of the Indiana bench,” said Valentine. “Coach Knight comes out and says his pleasantries with (Illinois coach Lon Kruger). He goes by us and he hollers at Mr. Hightower, and his exact words were, ‘Do you know what a f——— walk is?’”
___Hightower did nothing. That didn’t set well with the 40-year-old Valentine, a man who started officiating basketball in 1978 and who by 1979 worked his first Division I game. It set the stage for the night’s events and the technicals to come.
‘That’s When I Make the Big Mistake…’
___The first technical came with 1:51 left in the first half. At the time, Knight claimed that he called Valentine a liar about “having it in” for the Indiana coach and then Knight said he tried to walk away but turned around when Valentine repeatedly asked him what he said. “I just looked at the guy and he called a technical foul,” said the coach.
___Valentine remembers it differently. After giving Knight repeated warnings for ranting, Valentine said Knight still wouldn’t let up. “All of a sudden I hear, ‘Hey Ted! Hey Ted! Hey Ted!’ I’m listening but I don’t want to listen,” said Valentine. “I know that if you get in certain dialogue with certain people, there are some dialogues that you’re not going to win. So I go to walk away and I hear, ‘Ted, I want to talk to you! Ted, I want to talk to you!’ I start thinking maybe I should go talk because I don’t want to show myself as being arrogant, like I’m unapproachable. That’s when I make the big mistake of going over there.
___“I said, ‘Coach Knight, I don’t want to call a technical foul on you but if I have to, I will.’ He says, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and call the technical?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to call the technical but if I have to, I will.’ So when I turn to walk away, he jumps up and says, ‘You f——— liar!’” Valentine immediately called the first technical.
___But it was the second technical and the events following it that made the game so memorable. Leading up to those incidents was a series of events that escalated the harsh feelings on the court and in the lockerroom.
___At the half, Valentine immediately went to midcourt and waited for his partners so they could leave the floor together. At Indiana, teams exit via center court. Hightower was speaking with Knight nearby and when they finished, the coach veered toward Valentine instead of going straight to the lockerroom. “I see him coming out of the corner of my eye,” said Valentine. “I made my mind up that if he says something, then it’s going to have to be a technical foul. He walks to me and he walks as close as he can to me without touching me. He starts walking around me and I can see from my peripheral vision that his eyes kept getting bigger as he’s walking around me. He’s not saying anything, but this whole show is to bring the crowd down on top of me. We’re always taught as a crew that if one person called a technical foul, the next guy has got to call the next one. Nobody on my crew called a technical foul. It disappointed me because I would look out for my crew.”
___O’Neill completely agrees that no single referee should ever have to call both technicals for the ejection but he doesn’t recall Knight circling Valentine, adding, “Nobody is going to come flying in with a rescue in that type of situation. If that happened, an official needs to take care of business himself.”
___Regardless of who should have stepped up, Knight’s parade around Valentine set off the crowd. “They had a good time, all 17,000 of them,” said Valentine. “I put a game face on and I walked right off. People are throwing things at us, at me. I’m ducking and trying to put my hand up. A lot of people thought it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny. I proceeded to the lockerroom and that’s the way the half ended.”
‘The Next Thing I Know,
Tom O’Neill was Separating Us.’
___The officials’ lockerroom at halftime should have been a place of sanctuary, a place where the crew could discuss the events of the first half and come out even better in the second. Instead it turned into chaos.
___“We were in the lockerroom and I’m very emotional,” said Valentine. “I felt one coach was trying to dominate the whole game. I said, ‘We have to quit talking to both coaches.’ Tom O’Neill said he agreed with me. I then said to the other official, Mr. Hightower, I said, ‘You were standing right next to me; how could you let Coach Knight walk around me and not do anything?’”
___Valentine declined to say what Hightower’s response was but added that he didn’t agree with it.
___“I said a few things I probably shouldn’t have said and the next thing I know, Tom O’Neill was separating us,” said Valentine. “Because of the situation, I felt that one person should have stepped up, should have done something about it.” Hightower had no comment when contacted for this story.
___This was no inexperienced, immature crew. Hightower has worked eight Final Fours, including three championship games since 1988. O’Neill has two Final Fours and one championship under his belt. All are among the most respected officials in college basketball.
___The three refs returned to the floor separately for the second half. Valentine stayed behind to gather his composure.
‘Too Late, Coach. You’re Gone.’
___The second half picked up right where the first half left off, with Knight trying to intimidate the officials. “I go right where I’m supposed to go (shortly before the half began) and coach Knight is across the court in his bench area,” said Valentine. “I’m kneeling down and I’m trying to stretch. I looked over and there are these size 13 shoes standing right in front of me. I look up and there he is (Coach Knight). He starts hollering and screaming at me: ‘Why in the f—- didn’t you do this and why in the f—- didn’t you do that, and f—- this and f—- that!’ I looked up at him and said, ‘Coach Knight, you need to go to the other side of the court.’ The referee of the game (Hightower) is standing nearby and next to him is O’Neill but nobody is doing anything to get Coach Knight away, which by right is a technical foul. I put my hand up and he goes to say something else. I say, ‘Coach Knight, you better go to the other side.’ He said something else and I said, ‘Bob, you better go to the other side because I’m going to put my whistle in my mouth.’ At that time, he turned and the referee on the game (Hightower) put his arm around him and walked him to the other side.”
___Valentine was still dissatisfied with what he perceived was his partners’ lack of willingness to step up and take care of business. “I felt we passed too many times,” he said. “I passed after the first technical. Then, when he walked around me, I passed again. Now, it’s the third pass.”
___It was becoming increasingly obvious that if Valentine expected a second technical called on Knight, he would have to call it himself. So why didn’t he take charge at that point? “Because it was a big game and everybody knows that I had a reputation that I will call technical fouls. Everybody knows that I will toss people,” said Valentine. “I was trying to do what was right for the game. The old Ted would have been, whack, whack (two technicals) and shotgun (ejection). But then people would have come out and said, ‘Well, look Ted, you didn’t give him any lead room, no rope.’ So I gave him all the rope he could chew.”
___It was a rope that Knight would end up choking on. With 9:37 to go in the game and Indiana down, 54-44, Indiana forward Luke Recker drove to the basket, was not fouled, fell clean to the floor and cracked a rib. Meanwhile his shot hit the backboard, missed and O’Neill called Illinois player Sergio McClain for a technical for hanging on the rim. No other foul was called. Knight went ballistic.
___“Coach Knight was yelling at me that I should count the basket,” said O’Neill. “I went to the table and he’s still yelling and I said, ‘Bob, that’s enough.’ I could have given him a technical right after the play because of the way he reacted. I didn’t because I really thought he was confused by the rule. Like a lot of coaches, he didn’t know the rule.”
___At the time of the incident, the rules didn’t allow for goaltending or basket interference on that play because the ball was not touched in its downward flight, nor was the rim grabbed while the ball was on or within the rim or the imaginary cylinder above the rim. The referees were right in calling the technical foul and not counting the basket. With impetus from the Knight-Valentine incident, the rule has since been changed to allow for a goaltending or basket interference call if, in the referee’s judgment, the ball has a chance to go in.
But it seemed clear to Knight that he and his team were being robbed. He pleaded his case with both O’Neill and Hightower before moving on to Valentine. In the meantime, his player, Recker, was down on the court. “(Knight) starts ranting and raving and using profanity and he’s going like a madman,” said Valentine. “The other official, Mr. Hightower, goes over and now he wants to talk to Coach Knight. But you can’t talk to a coach who’s that volatile; he’s not going to listen to reason. The best thing you can do is call a technical foul, get the ball in play and try to do what you can.
___“I got the ball and decided I was going to stay out of it. I moved to the endline and tried to distance myself from the injured kid by moving closer to the Indiana bench. But when Coach Knight is finished with what he wanted to say to the other guys, he comes down and starts screaming and using all kinds of gestures, using all kinds of words on me. I say to myself, ‘I’m not putting up with this; I’ve had enough of this. We’ve passed too many times.’ He sees me going for my whistle and that’s when he hollers and screams, ‘I’m going to my player! I’m going to my player!’ I decided enough intimidation was enough and I called a technical foul. But then he goes on by me screaming, ‘I’m going to my player!’ Too late, coach. You’re gone.”
___But Knight still had some fight left in him and he wasn’t going to go quietly. “I march over to the table and give a report of what’s going on,” said Valentine, “but then all of a sudden he’s behind me at the table. I go to the Illinois end and he’s coming at me. Fine; street fight. Let it be. I’m a big boy. I know he’s going to say what he wants to say and he’s going to try to get his parting shots in and he used all kinds of profanity so — technical foul number three.”
‘I’m Still Living with It.’
___The media picked up the story immediately. Knight had his say in newspapers across the country. Valentine stayed silent. “For three weeks I had to live with it. I’m still living with it,” said Valentine. “One of the worst feelings I ever had came when I walked into the NCAA tournament conference room and I pick up the newspaper and I see myself on the cover of USA Today. It’s the NCAA tournament! I don’t want to upstage the tournament and I’ve got reporters chasing and following me everywhere.”
___Valentine and Hightower didn’t talk to each other in the lockerroom after the game and Valentine says he’ll be fine if he never works with Hightower again.
On March 11, 1998, the Big 10 announced that it had censured Valentine for improperly calling the second technical foul on Knight. Valentine wasn’t allowed to work non-conference games involving the Big 10 during the 1998-99 season. Valentine said the number of games was minimal, four or five, and that he had no trouble filling his schedule with games from the other conferences he works — the Big East, Atlantic Coast, Mid-American, Conference USA and Big 12 conferences. Representatives from the Big 10 declined to comment when contacted for this story.
___O’Neill defers to the Big 10’s judgment on the censure, but thought the punishment was strange. “Blow a call — a crucial call — maybe you should be suspended,” he said. “Blow a rule, sure. But taking care of business … I’ve never been involved or known anyone who was involved in a situation where a referee taking care of business as Ted did that night with Coach Knight got suspended.”
___O’Neill said the second technical was called behind him and he didn’t hear what was said, but added, “If a coach is coming out to see an injured player, he should go directly to his player. If he was using the excuse that his player was hurt to come out to ridicule or embarrass my fellow official, then yes, he did deserve it.” O’Neill added that if Knight was on the floor to tend to his player, he took an unnecessarily circuitous route getting there.
For his antics following the second technical, Knight was offered a choice: either take a one-game suspension or pay a $10,000 fine. After an appeals process, the coach opted for the fine. “The whole circumstance of the situation probably bothered me more deeply than any single situation I’ve been involved with as a coach,” Knight said at the time.
___The mix of personalities and egos combined with lingering hard feelings from past games fed the fire of emotions already present in a game with national rankings and conference standings at stake. The clash of officiating styles between Valentine and Hightower exacerbated the burgeoning “feud” between Valentine and Knight that reached its apogee in that game.
___Valentine says he’s not bitter about the entire situation but added that there are some hard feelings about the Big 10’s decisions. He still works Big 10 games but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be assigned to an Indiana game again. “My relationship with Coach Knight is the same relationship I have with any other coach in the country. I know 90 percent of the other coaches across the country would want to have me working their games.
___“What I did was right for the game of basketball and right for the officials who are coming up behind me,” continued Valentine. “In my earlier days I might have tossed him a lot quicker. And if I had to do it all over again, I would have tossed him in the first half. But I’m young and when everybody is dead and gone, I’ll still be refereeing.”
Say Good Knight |
