00:02So I'd ask my high school coach I said who is this guy because nobody knew he
00:05was and all my coach would tell me was he really likes to play defense. I think
00:10pretty clearly they were looking for a culture change. Knight was a defensive
00:13guy and I think Indiana wanted that. I think Indiana wanted a more well-rounded
00:18approach. Say boys we're gonna play basketball my way as in gonna be very
00:23democratic. And I didn't really know anything about him other than you know
00:28I knew Army was very low scoring defensively oriented. Purdue was playing
00:33Army and that was the first time I saw coach Knight walk out there so they have
00:37to play a lot of defense and and really take care of the ball and I remember
00:41thinking that's pretty boring. That was it. Four of five kids in his first
00:49recruiting class were from Indiana. All small school. Stevie Offeld was a great
00:54scorer in high school. He said I'm really interested and he said so Steve what do
00:59you think? And I thought okay he wants a yes or no answer right now. John Kampstra was a
01:05heck of a player. When he offered a scholarship I jumped immediately. That's my
01:09dream that's where I wanted to play. Steve Green was our best player coming out of
01:14high school. He was an all-star. It was pretty apparent day one that this is a
01:18whole new ballgame here. There's one one sheriff. We're getting beat because we're
01:22just not tough enough in the way we're playing. That's a whole thing.
01:26John Laskowski was a guy that would have started on pretty much any team in the
01:30country. We all come from these Indiana high schools where we're the star and
01:34everybody loves us and you can't do anything wrong and you get to Indiana and
01:38it's like that's not your role anymore. I don't think there was anybody tougher than
01:43Doug. Doug was a physical player that didn't back down. He was recruiting
01:47talent with character. That's why his teams were so good.
01:54We could already see that this is a departure from what we've known but boy
02:00is it really impressive and gosh we're winning.
02:08He made every opponent sound like they were just gonna kick our tail. You're
02:12either going to play hard or you're not going to play. I think that was severe
02:16that you know we expected to be number one in the country. We know we wanted to win the Big
02:21Ten.
02:23And I remember looking at everybody and going look we've been around this SOB for three years.
02:30You know some of us have. And you know what? The only thing that's going to make them happy is
02:37winning every frickin game.
02:45And so we start beating these teams that are really good. He saw in us potential that we didn't see
02:51in ourselves.
02:52We grew up to Notre Dame and we beat them and we beat Kentucky by 24 here. We wouldn't even
02:58close.
02:59The 75 team had the largest average margin of win in the history of the Big Ten still does.
03:05And just was the most dominant team I've ever seen. They could have nine or ten players that play so
03:12the
03:12combination of guys that played made it extraordinarily hard for an opponent to defend them.
03:21We got to number one in the country and that was that was our goal. And I think our players
03:26played
03:26harder and tried to make fewer mistakes and that was the key to winning some of the games. We're the
03:31five guys that were here four straight years. The teams got better each year. We kept getting quality
03:37guys. We were part of that recruiting process. And they set the foundation for the way he wanted
03:43basketball to be played. The way it was expected to be played.
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