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GOLD & BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4 51 BY ALAN KARPICK AKarpick@GoldandBlack.com W hen former Indiana coach Bob Knight used to walk on to the floor of Mackey Arena, it was the social highlight of year around Purdue University. You just had to be there. There was nothing that got Pur- due fans' blood boiling more than when the IU coach made his way down the tunnel, almost always just moments before tipoff. Mackey Are- na may have erupted in thunderous applause moments earlier as the Boilermakers took the court, but the moment Knight came through the tunnel, the mood would turn on a dime with a chorus of boos equally deafening. And when Gene Keady arrived at Purdue in 1981, the fever pitch in- tensified. But so did the mutual re- spect between the coaches. Before then, maybe not as much. Knight's first game in Mackey Arena was in 1972 in George King's final season as Boilermaker head coach. While amicable at first, King and Knight built quite a disdain for one another. It all came to a head nine years later when King, then Purdue's athletic director, was de- picted on Knight's coaches show as a donkey, while Knight went on about the "Purdue mentality." Earlier in the week, King had turned game film into Big Ten offi- cials complaining about some dirty play by the Hoosiers in a game at As- sembly Hall. Knight didn't take too kindly to it, and it started a feud that lasted for the rest of King's tenure as Boilermaker boss (1992). Fred Schaus, who replaced King as head coach for the 1972-73 sea- son, also grew to loathe Knight. Schaus, a gentlemanly sort, simply couldn't stand Knight's antics on or off the court. Couple that with IU's rise to a national power during Schaus' tenure in West Lafayette (1973-78 seasons) and one could understand why. Lee Rose lasted just two years in West Lafayette as the Boilermaker boss and never could understand the state's obsession with Knight. The duo had some classic battles, each having the opportunity to end the other's season with victories by Indiana in the 1979 NIT Final and Purdue in the 1980 NCAA Sweet 16. When Keady took the Purdue job in 1980, he was asked at his intro- ductory press conference how he felt about competing against Knight. To the surprise of some, Keady said he was friendly with Knight and "had a P R E S E N T S : P U R D U E ' S G R E A T E S T S T O R I E S A N D T R A D I T I O N S One Reason He Is Beloved Keady's battles with Knight were legendary Tom Campbell Gene Keady is the lone Big Ten coach to have a winning record vs. Bob Knight.