Pat Knight, the son of Indiana University coaching legend Pat Knight, quit his job as the college basketball coach at Marian University after approximately 21 months on the job. Although the Knights are terrible this year, they still have seven games left in the regular season.
Their head coach will not be with them during that stretch.
The son of the college basketball icon went out in a blaze of glory. He was ejected from his final game.
Who is Pat Knight?
The son of Bob Knight played for his father at Indiana in the early-to-mid 1990s. He got his start as a college basketball coach as an assistant on his dad’s staff in 1999 and spent time at Akron.
Bob hired Pat Knight to his staff at Texas Tech in 2001. His son replaced him as head coach halfway through the 2007-2008 season. It did not go well. The Red Raiders made only one postseason appearance in four(ish) years, in the NIT.
Pat Knight was fired in 2011 with a record of 50-61. He took over at Lamar University that next season.
His first year in the Southland Conference was a great success. The Cardinals went 23-12 en route to the NCAA Tournament. And then it all came crashing down. Knight won only six games, combined, in each of the next two seasons. He was fired in 2014.
Despite his poor record as a head coach, Pat Knight received another opportunity at Marian University because of his last name. He became the 10th head coach in program history on May 8, 2024.
Marian small, private catholic school in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Knights compete on the NAIA level of competition as members of the Crossroads Conference. They went 11-17 last season. They currently sit at 5-17 with six games left to play this season, including No. 1 Grace, No. 24 Taylor and No. 5 Indiana Wesleyan. A .500 record is not within reach. 10 wins will be difficult.
Marian University’s college basketball coach quit.
The Knights fell short of expectations with Pat Knight as head coach but that is no longer an issue. Marian will need to hire a new head coach during the offseason.
Knight just quit. Literally. He quit. Effective immediately.
The 55-year-old told the IndyStar it had to do with some alleged internal extortion. The athletic administration wanted Knight to fire one of his staffers. He wouldn’t do it.
“When administration starts messing around with your staff and talking about x’s and o’s and stuff like that, it’s a red flag,” Knight told WTHR. “They got rid of one of my assistants without asking me. They wanted me to fire my other assistant, and I just don’t do that, so I quit.”
Even though Marian was not winning, its head coach would not fire someone who was not the problem.
“I know it all comes down to winning,” Knight said. “You know, you’re having a tough year, and it wasn’t the year we thought because of injuries. I know if you’re winning, none of this happens, but I’m not going to terminate somebody who does a great job.”
Pat Knight is glad to go out on his own terms and glad to be back home in Indianapolis. He plans to stay in the coaching space, with hopes to return to the NBA as a scout.
“Life’s too short to put up with that bulls—,” he said of how things went down at his now-former job.
In something of a poetic sendoff, Knight was ejected from his final game as head coach.
That appears to be the final moment of Pat Knight’s college basketball coaching career. He quit his job just a few days later with no plans to return.