Doyel: Only Purdue's Gene Keady, Hall of Famer, could tame IU's Bob Knight on, off court
The message was on the chalkboard, big and angry letters waiting for Gene Keady on his first trip to Assembly Hall as Purdue’s basketball coach.
Keady we’re going to kick your ass.
This was Jan. 31, 1981. This is a true story.
Bob Knight had written the message. He was the boogeyman in those days, Knight, and as much as anyone, he was the reason Keady was at Purdue. You probably know the broad strokes of the IU-Purdue rivalry, probably some of the finer points as well, but try to get into the moment more than 40 years ago. Go back to that game, to that chalkboard – and then go back another 10 months.
Go back to, let’s say, April 1980.
Purdue needed a coach. Lee Rose had left West Lafayette after two seasons, riding All-American center Joe Barry Carroll to the 1980 Final Four and then getting out while the getting was good, with Carroll headed to Golden State as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1980 NBA Draft and another player, Arnette Hallman, going in Round 2 to Boston. Purdue was starting over and Knight was 120 miles down the road, rampaging on the court and the recruiting trail and anywhere else he saw fit.
Purdue needed a basketball coach, and nobody wanted the job.
This was April 1980. This is a true story.
Rose, an itinerant sort, had left Purdue, a basketball program with tradition and roots, for South Florida, which had neither. That’s how badly he wanted to get away from Knight, and from Indiana. A week later, with national signing day approaching and undecided blue-chip recruit Russell Cross in Chicago watching, Purdue athletic director George King was in a hurry to hire a coach.
And nobody wanted it. Not Rose, who left for a fledgling USF program coming off a 6-21 season. Not Neil McCarthy, who withdrew from the search to remain at Weber State. Not Terry Holland at Virginia.
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As the IndyStar suggested April 8, 1980: “The list of candidates at Purdue appears to be dwindling.”
By then Purdue was eyeballing Northwestern’s Rich Falk (career record: 16-38) and Murray State’s Ron Greene (27-30 in two seasons there), and even interviewing Broad Ripple High School’s Bill Smith.
King found a taker on April 11, the coach at Western Kentucky, a 43-year-old who’d gotten a late start in Division I after spending his first 15 years as a coach at the high school or junior college level. King found a coach with a barrel chest and growling voice and no fear, and so little name recognition that the IndyStar helpfully included a pronunciation:
Keady (pronounced Kay-dee) replaces Lee Rose.
That’s what we wrote on April 11, 1980. This is a true story.
Gene Keady and his 'hokey rules'
Lloyd Eugene Keady, a rules follower to the end, will be enshrined Saturday into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He is 105th in Division I with 531 career victories. He doesn’t have a Final Four appearance. He will be an anomaly in the Hall of Fame in more ways than one.
Doyel in 2014: Gene Keady comes clean on that combover
His integrity, for one. In a sport that became so dirty the FBI got involved in 2017, Keady didn’t work the gray areas. He recruited his eventual replacement, Matt Painter, of Delta High in 1989 with a recruiting pitch straight out of Mayberry:
“Coach Keady had three rules I thought were so hokey when I was 18 or 19, but it still resonates,” Painter says. “His three rules were: Be on time. Try your best. And act right.
“Sounds like you’re putting your 5-year-old on the bus for the first time, right? If you think about it, everything in today’s world is so different than 40 or 50 years ago – but that’s not. That’s not.”
Painter played for Keady from 1989-93 and returned after one season at Southern Illinois to serve as coach-in-waiting for the 2004-05 season. Painter still calls him “Coach Keady,” and still does a decent impression.
“He had a great program,” Painter says. “It was about going to class. It was about getting your degree. It was about treating people the right way.
“He’d always say,” Painter continues and pausing, about to transform into growling Gene Keady: “’We don’t need a bunch of ruuuuules! That’s all you need right there.’”
Keady’s such a straight arrow, this happened when Painter learned of his mentor’s Hall of Fame selection in late March:
“I called to congratulate him,” Painter says, “and he put his wife back on the phone with me because he’d been told, ‘Hey, don’t say anything.’
“Kathleen (his wife) came on, and then she gave the phone back to him. I said, ‘Coach, it’s all right, I’m not going to say anything. I found out a different way.’”
This is a true story.
Keady about Knight: 'I was going to beat the (bleep) out of him'
Two minutes into his first game at Assembly Hall, Gene Keady had been whistled for two technical fouls. This was Jan. 31, 1981, and at the risk of repeating myself: This is a true story.
Bob Knight started it. Well, he did. Knight, his view of the court obstructed by a referee, had grabbed the ref and shoved him aside. Keady saw it and went berserk. He picked up one technical and kept going. He picked up a second technical and kept going. Know who had to calm him down?
Bob Knight had to calm him down.
This is a true, well, you know.
“Bobby got concerned because I was really ticked,” Keady told the IndyStar after the game. “I was going to beat the (bleep) out of him, the refs and everyone else. He came over to settle me down and said he was sorry that he touched the ref.
“The reason I got irate is that Bobby grabbed one of ‘em. Any time a coach grabs an official, well, that just isn’t right. I’ve got the highest respect in the world for Bobby Knight, and at halftime he told me he couldn’t see so he threw the guy out of the way. Well, I just don’t know about that.
“I’m not gonna let anybody intimidate me. I don’t care if I’m fighting 100,000 people. I’ll fight their ass until the world falls in.”
Keady a Hall of Fame person too
To understand why Gene Keady is in the Hall of Fame, to understand why he’s a Hall of Fame person as well, you have to understand the time and place, the program he inherited in 1980, the giant down the road. Purdue basketball has never had a damn thing to apologize for, but let’s be honest: IU has those five banners. By the time Keady got there in 1980 the Hoosiers had three, most recently that perfect season of 1976, and Knight was just getting started. Keady’s first year, in fact, the Hoosiers had Isiah Thomas and were bound for the 1981 national title.
A lesser coach would’ve cracked. What am I saying? A lesser coach would’ve left. A lesser coach would’ve turned down the vacancy. Here’s the way Painter puts it today:
“Purdue had a strong brand, but it was a totally different brand with what Coach Knight was able to accomplish at Indiana,” Painter says. “With the success Indiana had with Coach Knight, the following (at IU) was so strong. It took a fierce competitor like (Keady) to stand up to that.”
Doyel in 2016: Only Gene Keady could make Bob Knight a Boilermaker for a day
Here’s what Keady (pronounced Kay-dee) said on April 11, 1980, when a reporter asked him why he was taking a job nobody else seemed to want:
“The opportunity there at Purdue is unbelievably (harder) than most places,” he said, “but I’ve always been one to look for challenges. Maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but I’m looking forward to it.”
And he said:
“People warned me what it would be like to go up against (Knight), but that didn’t bother me because I had always liked Bob.”
That’s the other part of this story, and yes, Keady and Knight are intertwined in all ways. If you’re a Purdue fan, wondering why a story about Keady’s overdue Hall of Fame induction – he’d been a finalist in 2004 and ’06 – revolves so much around Knight, I’d suggest you’re not paying attention:
Keady’s success against Knight, against IU, put him in the Hall of Fame. Knight won the national titles, and that’s the winning card to play, but Keady came into his state and beat him head-to-head, going 21-20 against Knight. Keady matched him with six Big Ten titles in their 20 shared seasons in the league, and Keady was named conference coach of the year seven times to Knight’s five.
“For him to end up with a winning record (against Knight), even slight, is really, really impressive,” says Painter, who grew up wanting to play for Knight at IU. “It’s what you were up against. That was very, very hard. Purdue was rarely going head-up on a kid from Indiana and beating Indiana. I don’t know the percentage (of IU recruiting wins head to head) – 70-80-90% – but you should lose the games, right?
“Coach Keady’s a fighter, man. He’s not going to give into (bleep). Whatsoever. He’s never been that way. And he’s the opposite as a person. Very, very down to earth. About the nicest person you can meet.”
Doyel in 2019: Gene Keady is here to watch Matt Painter lead Purdue where he didn't — the Final Four
This is another part of the Keady legacy, not just that he could hold his own against Knight on the court, but win him over off it. After their first game – the note on the chalkboard, the chaos on the court – they became close. When Keady’s wife, Pat, was in the hospital a few years later, Knight sent her a dozen red carnations with one painted black-and-gold. Pat would bake Knight fudge.
After Knight was fired in 2000, he refused to step foot in the state for years. It was Keady that brought him back, getting Knight to attend a Purdue fundraiser, of all things, a fish fry at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in 2016. That was a pivot point in Knight’s eventual reconciliation with IU and return to live in Bloomington, where his health has been failing. Keady visited his friend’s home in 2021, and again last year.
Now Keady, 86, is moving into Knight’s longtime neighborhood in Springfield, Mass. Keady will be the 116th coach in the Naismith Hall of Fame and – true story, etc. – and just about the only one in the building with a winning record against him.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue basketball's Gene Keady bested Bob Knight to reach Hall of Fame
