Days of Knight: Tennessee Knight Game
4/27/2020 1:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball, History
Note: IU Athletics is partnering with IU Press to share chapters from some of their recently-published books on IU Sports. The following is a chapter from Kirk Haston's book, Days of Knight, published by IU Press in 2017. The second-half of this chapter will appear tomorrow on IUHoosiers.com. Additional details about this book can be found here.
Looking back at what the recruiting process was like for me in high school, it's amazing how close I came to not going to Indiana University to play basketball. To start with, I was about as close as you can get to never even being recruited by IU.
Halfway through my junior year at Perry County High School in Tennessee, I was 6'9" and 220 pounds. I was being recruited by Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Purdue (all of whom would eventually offer scholarships by my senior year). Everyone knew Coach Knight's recruiting focus at IU was usually on players from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, so I felt far off IU's radar during the bulk of my high school playing days. My first encounter with Coach Knight really wasn't one at all. The summer before my senior year, we were both at a team camp in Memphis called the Steamboat Shootout. Our "encounter" lasted about ten seconds; he walked right past me in the doorway of the gym where my high school team was getting ready to play—not past me going into the gym to watch our game, but going out of the gym after he had evaluated another player.
I wasn't offended. At the time I had absolutely no interest and no intention of leaving my home state to play basketball. I guess it would be fair to say that I really wasn't too big a fan of leaving home for much of anything in those days. Two main towns make up Perry County, which has a total population of about 8,000. My hometown of Lobelville (3,000) is the smaller of the two towns. The other, Linden, is the county seat and site of the county's only high school, Perry County High. There has always been a friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) small-town vs.
smaller-town rivalry between Linden and Lobelville. However, since students from both towns' middle schools feed into the same high school to play for the Vikings, it can make you feel like you're less from a hometown and more from a home county. As a junior in high school, I loved being close to home so much that it affected my approach to the recruiting process. If I deemed a school too far from home, I automatically crossed that school off my list. Looking back now, I was incredibly short-sighted and weak-minded in limiting my options so drastically for fear of feeling a little homesick.
Like me, my mom was an only child, which meant our immediate family was a pretty small group. My father left when I was four because of some personal problems he was struggling to overcome. Because of this, most of my childhood family moments included three people: my mom, Patti Kirk Haston, and her parents, Hoyt and Bettye Kirk. We did have a good-size extended family in Perry County, thanks to the close connections we had through Lobelville Elementary, the school where my mom was a fifth-grade teacher, and through the Linden Church of Christ, where my granddad preached. But by far the most influential people in my life were Mom, my granny, and my granddad. It's great to feel comfort and support from your family, but that feeling can be so comforting to a kid that it makes the unknowns and unfamiliarity of distance seem an intimidating obstacle to overcome. Unsurprisingly, the two teams at the top of my college basketball wish list were two in-state schools, Vanderbilt and Tennessee.
By the start of my senior year I had been offered basketball scholarships from both. At the time I thought that this whole recruiting process was a piece of cake. I wanted to stay close to home, and I wanted to sign early. So in the fall of my senior year, with the early signing date quickly approaching, everything seemed perfectly in place. Vanderbilt was less than two hours away, so signing with Vanderbilt seemed a no-brainer to me. I was less certain of my backup plan involving Tennessee, mainly because of the distance from home to Knoxville, but since I wanted to stay in-state, UT was still solidly my second choice.
One slight problem developed. Vanderbilt and Tennessee both reneged on their scholarship offers to me.
Vanderbilt's head basketball coach at that time was Jan van Breda Kolff (whom I'll shortcut to JVBK from here on out). JVBK had been actively recruiting me during my junior year, but by the time the early signing period had arrived, his interest in me inexplicably dried up. I really don't know why, but he 26 Days of Knight stopped recruiting me altogether. Then, after a phone call from my high school coach, Bruce Slatten, to the Volunteer coaching staff, I found out I wouldn't be heading to Knoxville, either. Kevin O'Neill, the UT head coach, called me later to explain that they still wanted me there, but that they no longer had a scholarship available to offer since they had a rush of recruits commit early.
Very suddenly, I was now officially being un-recruited. After a year of going through the recruiting process I suddenly found myself back to square one. I had some other scholarship offers on the table but none really intrigued me, so I chose to wait for the late signing period in April. I hoped my team and I would have a strong season and this might draw some new recruiting interest. Reality had forced me to realize that my two in-state safety nets were gone. It was time to focus solely on finding a coach who would push me to reach my potential as a basketball player, wherever he and his school were.
The first half of my senior season went smoothly. We were 16–0 and ranked no. 1 in Class A (the smallest of Tennessee's three divisions, though Coach Slatten filled most of our schedule with teams from the two larger divisions, Class AA and AAA).
I was averaging 20 points, 12 rebounds, and 4 blocks per game.
And this was when I got the chance to meet the Indiana Hoosiers' head basketball coach—well, actually, their future coach, Tom Crean. Michigan State's head coach, Tom Izzo, dispatched Coach Crean, his assistant, to watch one of our practices. He was the first coach from the Big Ten to come to Tennessee to watch me play or practice. By the midway point of our season, Purdue, Ohio State, and Michigan State made up my short list of schools. Surprisingly, another coach jumped back into the recruiting mix around this time: Vanderbilt's JVBK. Coach Slatten told me JVBK called him, saying that he was again interested in signing me to play for the Commodores and that one of the reasons for this renewed recruiting interest was because some Vanderbilt backers wanted him to bring more in-state talent to Vandy's campus. I didn't find that the most convincing recruiting sales pitch of all-time. I passed on playing for Mr. Jan.
As our Christmas/New Year's Day holiday break came and went, my potential college options seemed locked in, and I thought it best to make a choice and commit to a school before we got into tournament play in February. In mid-January, however, Coach Slatten got a call from Bloomington, Indiana, which changed everything. He called me to his office in between classes to give me the news: Coach Bob Knight was interested in taking a look at me. In all honesty, I thought he was joking. As he related the details about how Coach Knight wanted to look at some game tapes and how an assistant coach from Indiana University was going to come down to one of our practices, it hit me that this was not a joke at all. It was a stretch to say at that point that the Indiana Hoosiers were recruiting me. They were more or less just doing their due diligence to determine whether or not they wanted to begin the recruiting process with me. I found out later that it was actually a tip from another college's head coach that had precipitated this interest from the Hoosiers—a friend-to-friend call to Coach Knight from Tennessee's Kevin O'Neill. He told Coach Knight he might want to take a look at a Tennessee kid they had wanted to sign but couldn't for lack of available scholarships.
I couldn't wait to tell my granddad. On hearing the news that Coach Knight had called about me, my granddad (the minister) simply replied, "He sure does cuss a lot."
Tomorrow we will have the conclusion of this chapter, including the local reaction to Knight attending Haston's upcoming game.
Looking back at what the recruiting process was like for me in high school, it's amazing how close I came to not going to Indiana University to play basketball. To start with, I was about as close as you can get to never even being recruited by IU.
Halfway through my junior year at Perry County High School in Tennessee, I was 6'9" and 220 pounds. I was being recruited by Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Purdue (all of whom would eventually offer scholarships by my senior year). Everyone knew Coach Knight's recruiting focus at IU was usually on players from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, so I felt far off IU's radar during the bulk of my high school playing days. My first encounter with Coach Knight really wasn't one at all. The summer before my senior year, we were both at a team camp in Memphis called the Steamboat Shootout. Our "encounter" lasted about ten seconds; he walked right past me in the doorway of the gym where my high school team was getting ready to play—not past me going into the gym to watch our game, but going out of the gym after he had evaluated another player.
I wasn't offended. At the time I had absolutely no interest and no intention of leaving my home state to play basketball. I guess it would be fair to say that I really wasn't too big a fan of leaving home for much of anything in those days. Two main towns make up Perry County, which has a total population of about 8,000. My hometown of Lobelville (3,000) is the smaller of the two towns. The other, Linden, is the county seat and site of the county's only high school, Perry County High. There has always been a friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) small-town vs.smaller-town rivalry between Linden and Lobelville. However, since students from both towns' middle schools feed into the same high school to play for the Vikings, it can make you feel like you're less from a hometown and more from a home county. As a junior in high school, I loved being close to home so much that it affected my approach to the recruiting process. If I deemed a school too far from home, I automatically crossed that school off my list. Looking back now, I was incredibly short-sighted and weak-minded in limiting my options so drastically for fear of feeling a little homesick.
Like me, my mom was an only child, which meant our immediate family was a pretty small group. My father left when I was four because of some personal problems he was struggling to overcome. Because of this, most of my childhood family moments included three people: my mom, Patti Kirk Haston, and her parents, Hoyt and Bettye Kirk. We did have a good-size extended family in Perry County, thanks to the close connections we had through Lobelville Elementary, the school where my mom was a fifth-grade teacher, and through the Linden Church of Christ, where my granddad preached. But by far the most influential people in my life were Mom, my granny, and my granddad. It's great to feel comfort and support from your family, but that feeling can be so comforting to a kid that it makes the unknowns and unfamiliarity of distance seem an intimidating obstacle to overcome. Unsurprisingly, the two teams at the top of my college basketball wish list were two in-state schools, Vanderbilt and Tennessee.
By the start of my senior year I had been offered basketball scholarships from both. At the time I thought that this whole recruiting process was a piece of cake. I wanted to stay close to home, and I wanted to sign early. So in the fall of my senior year, with the early signing date quickly approaching, everything seemed perfectly in place. Vanderbilt was less than two hours away, so signing with Vanderbilt seemed a no-brainer to me. I was less certain of my backup plan involving Tennessee, mainly because of the distance from home to Knoxville, but since I wanted to stay in-state, UT was still solidly my second choice.
One slight problem developed. Vanderbilt and Tennessee both reneged on their scholarship offers to me.
Vanderbilt's head basketball coach at that time was Jan van Breda Kolff (whom I'll shortcut to JVBK from here on out). JVBK had been actively recruiting me during my junior year, but by the time the early signing period had arrived, his interest in me inexplicably dried up. I really don't know why, but he 26 Days of Knight stopped recruiting me altogether. Then, after a phone call from my high school coach, Bruce Slatten, to the Volunteer coaching staff, I found out I wouldn't be heading to Knoxville, either. Kevin O'Neill, the UT head coach, called me later to explain that they still wanted me there, but that they no longer had a scholarship available to offer since they had a rush of recruits commit early.
Very suddenly, I was now officially being un-recruited. After a year of going through the recruiting process I suddenly found myself back to square one. I had some other scholarship offers on the table but none really intrigued me, so I chose to wait for the late signing period in April. I hoped my team and I would have a strong season and this might draw some new recruiting interest. Reality had forced me to realize that my two in-state safety nets were gone. It was time to focus solely on finding a coach who would push me to reach my potential as a basketball player, wherever he and his school were.
The first half of my senior season went smoothly. We were 16–0 and ranked no. 1 in Class A (the smallest of Tennessee's three divisions, though Coach Slatten filled most of our schedule with teams from the two larger divisions, Class AA and AAA).
I was averaging 20 points, 12 rebounds, and 4 blocks per game.
And this was when I got the chance to meet the Indiana Hoosiers' head basketball coach—well, actually, their future coach, Tom Crean. Michigan State's head coach, Tom Izzo, dispatched Coach Crean, his assistant, to watch one of our practices. He was the first coach from the Big Ten to come to Tennessee to watch me play or practice. By the midway point of our season, Purdue, Ohio State, and Michigan State made up my short list of schools. Surprisingly, another coach jumped back into the recruiting mix around this time: Vanderbilt's JVBK. Coach Slatten told me JVBK called him, saying that he was again interested in signing me to play for the Commodores and that one of the reasons for this renewed recruiting interest was because some Vanderbilt backers wanted him to bring more in-state talent to Vandy's campus. I didn't find that the most convincing recruiting sales pitch of all-time. I passed on playing for Mr. Jan.
As our Christmas/New Year's Day holiday break came and went, my potential college options seemed locked in, and I thought it best to make a choice and commit to a school before we got into tournament play in February. In mid-January, however, Coach Slatten got a call from Bloomington, Indiana, which changed everything. He called me to his office in between classes to give me the news: Coach Bob Knight was interested in taking a look at me. In all honesty, I thought he was joking. As he related the details about how Coach Knight wanted to look at some game tapes and how an assistant coach from Indiana University was going to come down to one of our practices, it hit me that this was not a joke at all. It was a stretch to say at that point that the Indiana Hoosiers were recruiting me. They were more or less just doing their due diligence to determine whether or not they wanted to begin the recruiting process with me. I found out later that it was actually a tip from another college's head coach that had precipitated this interest from the Hoosiers—a friend-to-friend call to Coach Knight from Tennessee's Kevin O'Neill. He told Coach Knight he might want to take a look at a Tennessee kid they had wanted to sign but couldn't for lack of available scholarships.
I couldn't wait to tell my granddad. On hearing the news that Coach Knight had called about me, my granddad (the minister) simply replied, "He sure does cuss a lot."
Tomorrow we will have the conclusion of this chapter, including the local reaction to Knight attending Haston's upcoming game.
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