CHICAGO — Sun staff writer Don Markus continues the March Madness Tour that will take him to eight conference tournaments in eight days.
CHICAGO -- Timing in college basketball isn't merely about blocking shots or taking charges or tipping in offensive rebounds. It has to do with marketing and public relations, with perception and reality.
In the case of the inaugural Big Ten tournament, the timing couldn't be worse.
Forget the lack of highly ranked teams and marquee players.
Or even the lack of teams on the NCAA tournament bubble.
The talk here at the United Center going into yesterday's opening-round games focused on the impending NCAA investigation into one of the league's traditional powers, Purdue, and the league's ongoing controversy involving its most successful coach, Bob Knight.
Gene Keady can thank his bitter in-state rival for the Boilermakers' potential problems being an afterthought among the 750 members of the media credentialed for the tournament. What are a few alleged infractions by a member of Keady's coaching staff compared with another Knight tirade?
Wayne Duke, who for 18 years served as commissioner of the Big Ten, knows how difficult a position his successor, Jim Delany, finds himself. Duke was the guy who suspended Knight for tossing a chair out on the court in 1985.
"Not knowing all the details, it appears to me that Jim is following all the correct procedures," said Duke, here for the games. "But as you sift it down, it could appear that Jim or somebody else might be dragging their feet. I don't think so, but that could be the public perception."
The perception is that Knight has again flexed his considerable muscle and intimidated Delany as he couldn't Ted Valentine, the official who tossed the Indiana coach from a Feb. 24 game at Illinois after assessing him a pair of technicals, the second coming after Knight went on the court to check on injured Hoosier Luke Recker.
"This and that guy are the greatest travesty I've seen in 33 years," Knight said in a news conference that was shown on ESPN.
Since then, the rumors about if, when and how Delany and the Big Ten would punish Knight have flown like so many expletives from the volatile coach's mouth.
A Bloomington newspaper reported that Knight would get a game's suspension or a $10,000 fine, and that Valentine would not work Big Ten games for the first two months next season.
