‘Like Being Alive Again:’ Pat Knight Motivated To Coach Marian, Wants To Honor Father’s Legacy

It’s been 10 years since Pat Knight’s last head coaching job. But he feels reinvigorated after landing the job at Marian University, where he has implemented the motion offense, man-to-man defense and player-coach relationship ideals he learned from his father, Bob Knight.

Jack Ankony | Oct 31, 2024

Marian coach Pat Knight talks to his team during practice. / Marian Athletics

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Indiana Hoosiers

INDIANAPOLIS – Pat Knight is right where he wants to be.

After 10 years as a scout for the Indiana Pacers, Knight has returned to the sidelines as the head coach of Marian University, an NAIA program in Indianapolis. His last head coaching stint at Lamar University has provided motivation to prove he can build a program.

Though it’s an exhibition, Pat’s first game as Marian’s coach is Friday, the one-year anniversary of Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight’s death, against Indiana at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Pat plans to emulate his father on the court through motion offense and man-to-man defense, and off the court by focusing on the personal development of his players.

Friday will be a special night for Pat, who’s excited for another opportunity to coach.

“It feels great. It’s like being alive again, just being around campus, all the energy around the campus,” Knight said in an exclusive interview with Indiana Hoosiers On SI. “And don’t get me wrong, I loved scouting, worked for the Pacers, but it’s just a different energy. Scouting is kind of lonely. You’re on the road a lot by yourself. I missed being, one, with my staff, and then just around the players and working kids out and being around the team atmosphere. So yeah, it really feels like just being born again, really, just all the energy and excitement getting ready for the season.”

Knight played at Indiana from 1990-95, a stretch with two Big Ten titles and a Final Four run. He joined his father’s staff as an assistant at Indiana from 1999-2000 and at Texas Tech from 2001-08. Bob resigned as Texas Tech’s head coach midway through the 2007-08 season, leading to Pat’s first college head coaching position. Across three and a half seasons with the Red Raiders, Knight went 50-61 and was fired in March 2011.

Lamar University quickly hired Knight, and he had initial success with the Southland Conference program in Beaumont, Texas. Knight led Lamar to the 2012 NCAA Tournament in his first season, but lost to Vermont in the First Four as a No. 16 seed. He was fired after a 6-50 run over the next two seasons.

Knight wanted to coach again to honor his father’s legacy and erase the bad taste of how things ended at Lamar.

“I was pissed, to be honest, but you can’t talk about it when you get fired. One, you want to make sure you get your money in your contract. That’s one thing your agents always tell you – don’t say anything dumb, you know, get paid. And then you don’t want to look like sour grapes,” Knight said. “But 10 years have gone by, and that really galled me how things ended, really at both places. I never was able to build a program.”

“Then I could never really get back in it because my dad was dealing with Alzheimer’s the last 10 years of his life. Then I loved the scouting and the competitive juices started flowing, but then I had to be careful. I wanted to get back to a small school, and I wanted to get back to the state of Indiana. But yeah, that played about 110% how things ended, and then just sitting there watching – not to get dark – but watching my dad die, I was like, you know, and if I’m gonna get back in it, I need to do it now.”

Pat Knight, Steve Downing Marian Basketball

Pat Knight introduced as Marian University's basketball coach alongside athletic director Steve Downing on May 10, 2024. / Joe Timmerman/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK

That opportunity came from Marian, a small school in Indiana, fitting two of Knight’s criteria. During his 10 years as an NBA scout, Knight took time to figure out what would be important for his next coaching job.

He wanted to be at a school that would provide players with a good education and a valuable degree. He also evaluated the people he’d work for, like the school’s president, athletic director and others.

Marian checked all of those boxes. Although it’s not a Big Ten school with a lot of national exposure, for example, Knight likes what a school like Marian affords him as a coach. It doesn’t change his approach to program building, either.

“To me, it’s a lot less bullshit. I’ve been at the highest level, so I know what it’s about,” Knight said. “It cracks me up when I talk to young guys who have good jobs, maybe at a D-II or D-III, they don’t know how good they have it. There’s a lot less politics. But I get it, I was young and dumb once, and your ego gets in the way. … So as you get older, I guess you get wiser. But to me, you still have to approach everything the same. I approach this like we're high Division I and the school does, too.”

“If you look at our facilities, our budgets, there’s nothing you can complain about. We’re in Indianapolis, that’s another thing. We’re not in a college town, this is a major city and one of the best cities in the country. So all those things really appealed to me. But I still approach it like I was at Texas Tech, or an assistant at Indiana. I still approach it like we’re a big five conference type of team.”

Marian coach Pat Knight watches his team practice from the bleachers. / Marian Athletics

Marian’s athletic director is Steve Downing, the leading scorer on Indiana’s 1972-73 team that won the Big Ten and reached the Final Four in Bob Knight’s second season.

Downing’s relationship with current Indiana coach Mike Woodson made way for Indiana hosting Marian for exhibition games the last two seasons. Knight’s ties to the university made continuing that tradition important, too, along with giving his student-athletes a chance to play at Assembly Hall.

Pat was born in September 1970, just before Downing’s sophomore season at Indiana. He was six years old when Woodson began his freshman year in Bloomington, and growing up around the program – later playing and coaching for Indiana, too – brought him close to many Hoosiers over the years.

“I’m tight with all the generations because half those guys raised me, they had to babysit me. My playpen was the locker room at Assembly Hall,” Knight said. “So for me, being an alumni is different. I have affection toward all my dad’s teams, from the 70s, 80s, 90s.”

One way Knight hopes to honor his father’s legacy is by helping his players become men. He recently noticed the long-standing impact that had on players like Woodson, Scott May and Quinn Buckner.

They were all in Springfield, Mass., at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for a bench dedication in Bob Knight’s name as part of the Naismith Coaches Circle Program, which pays tribute to the core values taught by Dr. James Naismith: teamwork, cooperation, leadership, perseverance, and integrity.

An honor to celebrate the legacy of legendary #IUBB head coach Bob Knight at the 2024 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Weekend. pic.twitter.com/LO4tT7TGkV
— Indiana Basketball (@IndianaMBB) October 17, 2024

Knight said he, Woodson, May and Bucker talked about how his father prepared them for life and made things easier for them after graduating from Indiana. He hopes to make a similar impression on his players at Marian.

“I just want to pass on the discipline, the work ethic, everything he taught us, to these kids,” Knight said. “You saw that as the end came near, all of [Bob Knight’s] former players – and it wasn’t just former players, but friends, other coaches that he affected – coming by, paying their last wishes or making a phone call. Really, in life, it’s hard to make that much of an impression on people if you think about all the different jobs, because a lot of jobs, like scouting, you’re kind of on your own.”

“But coaching or teaching, you have a chance to affect a lot of lives. So that really appealed to me to get back in it, because I just feel like everything got cut short for me, and to honor him and hopefully end on my own accord were the two main things.”

From an X’s and O’s standpoint, Knight’s Marian teams will look like his father’s Hoosiers. He has implemented the motion offense at Marian, along with putting a strong emphasis on fundamentals and man-to-man defense.

His team has seven returning players and seven newcomers, which has presented Knight with the challenge of getting players formerly unfamiliar with each other to gel. Knight said he often mixes up lineups and rotations during practice, and he takes the team to sporting events or other off-court activities to foster cohesion among the roster.

Knight has taken some player-coach relationship strategies from his father.

“I try to work with them outside of practice, take an interest in the academics,” Knight said. “That was always big, I mean, [my father] knew all the – every day what we had in class, if we were missing class, and trust me, you did not want to do that. So just taking an interest in their lives. Now, you can’t be a buddy, but really you’re an extension of a parent and you gotta be that way. He always told them, ‘I’ll be your best friend when you graduate,’ and it was great growing up, I’d see the change in how he treated, you know Quinn Buckner, Scott May and those guys, the first guys, Steve Downing, when they were playing, and then all of a sudden when they graduate, totally different guy.

“So I kind of [use] the same mold when I recruit the kids. I’m gonna tell them stuff they don’t like. I’m gonna be hard on them. But when they graduate, I’ll always be there for them and I’ll be their buddy then, but you just can’t do that now. So I took that from him, then just being loyal to the school, loyal to your staff, loyal to your team, and sometimes you can be too loyal to a fault, but I’d rather be that way than some other way.”

So far, he’s been more impressed by the team’s offense than its defense. He thinks they picked up the motion offense quickly and that he has a roster with a good variety of shooters, players who can drive to the basket and score in the mid-range. Knight invited a few Pacers scouts to preseason practice, and they compared Marian to last year’s Pacers – a team that had no problem scoring but struggled to string together defensive stops.

Defense is one of Knight’s biggest points of emphasis going into the season, because of his roster and playing in the traditionally high-scoring Crossroads League. Marian was picked to finish sixth in the preseason coaches poll. Guard Gus Etchison, who averaged 22.8 points per game last season, was Marian’s lone representative on the Crossroads League preseason All-League team.

“The whole thing is we gotta learn how to play defense, have an urgency and just learn how to play hard all the time at a pace that’s uncomfortable,” Knight said. “But offensively, I was really impressed. These kids picked up the motion offense, smart kids. These are student-athletes, not guns for hire, so that’s something great. This is how basketball used to be.”

“So these kids picked up everything really quickly, and that was nice for me just from an offensive standpoint. Even the defensive standpoint, they pick it up, but it’s the urgency part. Honestly, I told them the other day I couldn’t be more pleased or prouder of a group of guys. We still gotta improve, but it’s been a little easier from a standpoint of them picking up what we want than I thought.”

Marian coach Pat Knight talks to his team during practice. / Marian Athletics

Going into Friday’s exhibition game, Knight is familiar with a few of the new Hoosiers. Woodson added six transfers and one freshman to the 2024-25 roster, including Washington State transfer Myles Rice, Stanford transfer Kanaan Carlyle and Arizona transfer Oumar Ballo. Knight was the Pacers’ west coast college scout and said he’s seen the trio of Pac-12 transfers in-person five or six times, in addition to watching their film.

Knight thinks Woodson and Indiana fans will be pleased with these additions.

“They did a very good job in the portal, not just from a talent standpoint, but I know the intel on these kids,” Knight said. “Really good kids, work ethic, so I think the fans are going to like those kids. Now, I may not like playing against them because I know how good they are, but I was really impressed. I told Woody that when they signed them. The intel on them is really good, not just from a basketball standpoint, but from a work ethic and human being standpoint.”

At the time of the interview, Knight said he hadn’t thought about what it will feel like to return to Assembly Hall, where he played and coached, and where three national championship banners commemorate his father’s accomplishments.

He’s focused on making Marian competitive so that Indiana finds value in the exhibition game, because he knows his team will. Indiana won the last two exhibition games against Marian 94-61 and 78-42.

But beyond the final outcome, Knight hopes to learn what his team is really made of against a Big Ten opponent.

“I don’t want guys to back down,” Knight said. “I’m looking to see who has grit, who doesn’t back down, who takes the challenge. Because obviously they’re gonna be bigger than us, quicker than us in a lot of areas, but that doesn’t mean they can be tougher than us or play harder than us. We can control those things. So I just want to see how tough my kids are and how hard they play.”

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