By
The Associated Press
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Indiana headed off a possible player revolt over Bob Knight's dismissal by hiring assistant Mike Davis on yesterday as interim basketball coach.
"There was no way I could turn this job down," said Davis, surrounded by the team at a news conference. "I'm sad by the way it happened. ... Everyone knows coach Knight is the reason I'm here and why the players are here."
But, he added, "Indiana basketball is bigger than anyone."
John Treloar, another Knight assistant backed by the players, was appointed interim associate coach.
"We're so pleased they're willing to go forward with us," athletic director Clarence Doninger said. "We are presenting a unified front today. We're looking forward to the future. We know this team has great potential."
The announcement came two days after Indiana fired Knight for repeated misconduct and a day after players told Doninger that Davis or Treloar had to be hired as interim coach or players would defect en masse.
Davis will be the head coach through at least this season, but the school has said it will also look at other candidates for the following year.
"We have a wonderful group of young men over here. We know this has been a very difficult time for them," Doninger said.
Pat Knight, the son of the Hall of Fame coach and an assistant, considers himself fired as well.
"I'm out of here," he said Monday. "I wouldn't stay in this place after the way they treated my father."
The storied basketball program has been in disarray since the firing of the coach who brought three NCAA titles to the school.
Dane Fife said Monday he had decided to transfer, but when told Davis had been hired, the junior guard said he was reconsidering his plans.
"I've spoken with my teammates, and I was at a club last night and somebody came on stage and said, 'Dane, you've got to stay.' And the place just erupted in loud cheers," Fife said. "It really made me appreciate what Indiana basketball is all about."
Highly recruited freshman swingman A.J. Moye, who also threatened to leave, said he also would stay if Davis and Treloar remained.
"The first couple of days, I was reacting with emotion. I was frustrated, I felt cheated and I felt totally undermined," he said. "I said some things out of frustration."
Despite Knight's rigid discipline, uncompromising demand for perfection and infamous temper, he was the main reason players have come to Indiana to play basketball the past 29 years.
"There's no question they came to Indiana University to play for coach Bob Knight," Doninger said in an earlier interview. "We'd like to think they came
to Indiana University because of Indiana University, too. But I know the facts of life here, and they came to play for coach Knight."
Knight was fired by university president Myles Brand for violating a "zero-tolerance" behavior policy imposed in May.
It's not known what Knight's next move will be, but Indiana Pacers coach Isiah Thomas, who led Knight's 1981 team to a national title, said he would welcome Knight as an assistant.
"I would love for him to sit on the bench with me and more or less mentor me," Thomas told Detroit radio station WDFN. "I don't think there's a basketball player in the world who wouldn't crave his insight. That's what, hopefully, he'll be able to give me."
The Mavericks' owner, Indiana graduate Mark Cuban, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he'd be happy to have Knight work for him.
"As a huge fan, Bobby has a standing offer to join the Mavs as a consultant," Cuban was quoted as saying in yesterday's newspaper. "I would offer him a job in a heartbeat."
