Don’t Beat Around the Bush, Bobby, Give Us Your Opinion

Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight is always obliging with an opinion, and here are a few he expressed in an interview in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

--On Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls: “He’s head and shoulders above anyone else who ever played the game.”

--On Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps: “He’s a good friend of mine, and I’m his only friend.”

--On TV analyst Dick Vitale: “He’s got a heart like an elephant and a mouth to match.”

--On TV analyst Al McGuire: “He was an outstanding coach because he had a way of getting people to do things. But he knows nothing about basketball.”

Ouch: Announcer Barry Tompkins was quoted in the Atlanta Journal as saying of Nevada Las Vegas: “They play like thugs. They have a lot of guys you wouldn’t want to bring home unless everything is bolted down.”

Trivia time: With Bo Kimble succeeding Hank Gathers as the NCAA scoring champion, Loyola Marymount becomes the second school to have two different winners in successive seasons. Which was the first?

Longest inning: The subject was old-timers’ games, and former pitching star Jim Bunning told the St. Petersburg Times: “The first time I played, I got two quick outs in the inning and couldn’t get the third one. There were 11 straight people up. Nine runs and I still didn’t get them out. They finally had to come and get me.

“Somebody asked our catcher, Joe Garagiola, how hard I was throwing. He said, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t caught one yet.’ ”

20 years ago today: On March 21, 1970, Curtis Rowe scored 18 points, and Sidney Wicks and Steve Patterson had 17 each, with Wicks getting 18 rebounds, as UCLA defeated Jacksonville, 80-69, in the NCAA basketball championship game.

Boo-som buddies: When the Detroit Pistons last visited Atlanta, Jerry Glanville, new coach of the Falcons, went to the game with the hope of meeting Detroit center Bill Laimbeer.

Glanville: “I wanted to meet him, because he’s the only guy I know who gets booed more than me.”

Conditional surrender: Chicago Cub Manager Don Zimmer on spring training: “Pitchers will tell you that first day, ‘I’m ready to go.’ Then you throw them for 10 minutes, run them around the field a few times, and half of them will be on their knees, throwing up.”

Grave question: From Phil Jackman of the Baltimore Evening Sun: “If promoters Don King and Bob Arum disappeared from the fight scene, would anybody even bother dragging the river?”

Trivia answer: Furman. Frank Selvy won it in 1953-54, Darrell Floyd in 1954-55. Actually, Selvy and Floyd each won two titles, giving Furman four in a row.

Quotebook: Paul Westhead, Loyola Marymount basketball coach, on keeping Bo Kimble in the game after he picked up his fourth foul with 25 minutes left against New Mexico State: “That’s my style. Besides, Bo’s a very good talker. If he’d gotten his fifth, he would have talked his way back into the game.”