Bob Knight's Texas Tech chapter a time well spent | Williams

In the days to come, you'll read and hear many recollections about Bob Knight, and I expect most will center around his time at Indiana. As they should, given all the coach accomplished in his three decades with the Hoosiers.

But six months after Indiana fired the man with the famously volatile personality for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, Texas Tech plucked him out of the unemployment line in April 2001. The unexpected marriage stemmed from Knight's friendship with Tech athletics director Gerald Myers and his desire not to let his last chapter with the Hoosiers be his last chapter.

To the delight of Red Raiders fans, Knight's time here made for more than a footnote. Texas Tech had just the place for him to haul out his dry-erase board.

The coach from Indiana went to work on Indiana Avenue in Lubbock, location of the then two-year-old United Spirit Arena. It was one thing to see Knight there for the arena's opening night, bringing the Hoosiers to town to play Texas Tech in mid-November 1999.

Former Texas Tech coach looks back: Catching up with Bob Knight

Star of the Sweet 16 run: Ross credits Knight for paving his Tech Hall of Fame way

What a spectacle. The arena, all shiny and new and more than 15,000 seats, was jaw-slackening grand compared to its predecessor. Municipal Coliseum, the Red Raiders' old home since the 1950s, was about half the size. And here came Bob Knight, leading a team out of the visitors' tunnel. It had never occurred to me the man was 6-foot-4 or thereabouts.

I can't imagine Knight had any inclination to take it easy on Tech, which had gone 13-17 the season before, but the Red Raiders stayed within 68-60 against the Hoosiers. In a crowded press room afterward, given the beauty of the new arena and the mood of the evening, Mike Jones of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asked Knight if he'd maybe like to come back to Lubbock someday.

To which Knight, well-behaved to that point, snapped off surly words to the effect of, "Why in the heck would I want to do that?"

Ironic, then, that Knight would make his way back, less than two years later, to coach the home team. Age 60 at the time, he quickly dispelled any thought he might be over the hill or give middling effort coaching far from his Midwest roots at a place with a fraction the tradition. In his six full seasons as coach of the Red Raiders, Knight's teams won 23 games twice, won 22 games two other times and won 21 in his last full season.

Tech failed to reach the NCAA Tournament in the five years before Knight arrived. The Red Raiders made it to March Madness four times in his first six seasons, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2005.

You can fault him for resigning before the end of his seventh season and turning the program over to his son. Far less memorable, the Pat Knight era. There also was the public dust-up in 2004 with Tech Chancellor David Smith and the time, after a Tech loss to Texas in Austin, Knight directed the bus driver to start for the airport, even if not everyone was aboard. Kindly broadcaster Jack Dale happened not to be aboard.

So, no, not all was good with the Knight era.

But much of it was.

Perhaps to our pleasant surprise, Bob Knight, to the degree a curmudgeon can, embraced Lubbock with what seemed to be a genuine affection. He spoke well of the city and its surroundings. The outdoorsman in him found some hunting spots he liked. He donated a substantial amount to the Tech library.

He'd join the lunch-time dining crowd at Market Street (site of the dust-up with the Chancellor) and, from time to time, banter on Saturday morning sports talk radio with Thetford and Ashby.

Knight cut his own hair for the longest, going far back in his Indiana days. In not going to the barbershop, he need not be irritated by folks grilling him non-stop about the Hoosiers.

Here, people left him alone for the most part, and he warmed to West Texas. He spent a lot of his post-basketball life here. A few months after he'd quit coaching, before the biggest of Texas Tech football games in the fall of 2008, Knight went on the ESPN College GameDay show, set up on the Tech campus, and gave them the lowdown on the Red Raiders.

Knight, age 83, died Wednesday, 15 years to the day after the Red Raiders' memorable takedown of top-ranked Texas. He did his part that day. He did his part in the years before and the years after to tell people Texas Tech and Lubbock was a place he'd come to appreciate and they could, too.

That wasn't the main reason he came here. It was an added benefit, though, in a chapter of the Bob Knight story that deserves its own place when he's remembered.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Bob Knight's Texas Tech basketball chapter a time well spent | Williams