JagBytes

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Sports

"College basketball provides you the opportunity to tell stories and meet a lot of different people," said Todd Leary, a member of the 1992 Indiana Hoosiers Final Four team. Photo Courtesy of IU Archives (93-765.32A)

Former Indiana University basketball player Todd Leary had some up and down times while playing under Bob Knight, the former Hoosier coach who became famous for his wins but notorious for his behavior.

Those peaks and valleys started with being recruited by Coach Knight. Leary had no contact with IU, until the team lost a player, Jay Edwards, who had already been recruited.

Knight made a phone call to offer him a scholarship. At the end of the conversation, Leary asked if he should still go on his official visit to Purdue.

"Coach Knight replied, 'If you have to ask that question you are coming to the wrong place,'" Leary said. "It was a little different for me than most of the guys who had been recruited."

Coming from a family full of Hoosier supporters, Leary had his father call Purdue coach Gene Keady to cancel the visit and tell him the news.

Leary has been competitive throughout his life, especially in high school, where he played three sports. Building relationships with those whom he competed against while playing college basketball was a positive experience for him, he said.

Those affiliations with other people were easy to cultivate, since everyone wanted to hear about playing for Coach Knight.

"College basketball provides you the opportunity to tell stories and meet a lot of different people," Leary said. "Everybody wants to hear about Bob Knight. Playing for him gave me more of an opportunity and more chances to talk about things now."

While playing for the Hoosiers, Leary went to the Final Four in 1992 - an experience he called the single greatest point in his career.

"It was by far my most memorable experience," Leary said. "It was a blast. I've never been to the Super Bowl, but I believe the experiences are very similar."

Indiana beat a Shaquille O'Neal-led Louisiana State University team, and got by a University of California Los Angeles squad. Leary hit three 3-pointers in the last minute of that game, but it wasn't enough. His team fell 81-78 to the Duke Blue Devils.

Coach Knight kept his players on a tight leash, but during the Final Four he relaxed a bit. When Leary walked into his hotel room his bed was full of duffel bags filled with athletic gear from sponsors.

"It was like 10 Christmases," Leary said. "We had never been through that before, and that was a real memorable experience. Coach Knight let us enjoy that more than I thought he would."

Thinking back to some really low points in his collegiate career, one game sticks out.

In his senior year, Indiana lost to Butler 75-71 in the first game of the year at Hinkle Fieldhouse. The ride home on the bus to Bloomington was one he will never forget.

The game started around noon and ended around 3 p.m., and Knight was so angry that he ordered the managers to get the practice gear out from the bus for the players.

With the drive back to Bloomington out of the way, the players watched film with Knight for seven hours because they had to wait until the past midnight because of NCAA rules. Then the team practiced - they ran sprints, one-on-one full court and ran stairs - until 4 a.m.

"It was the most miserable time I had while being down there," Leary said. "He came out, got on the bus and just started going crazy. That week was the longest week ever. It was miserable."

Peaks and valleys aside, Leary would not trade anything for the experiences and relationships he built while playing under Coach Knight and for the Indiana Hoosiers.

"When you get a little older, you get to reflect back on it and see a lot of the opportunities it provided," Leary said. "Basketball gave me the opportunity to travel around to all these different places and made it all exciting."

Contact jaethomp@iupui.edu.

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