No Wonder That Guy Threw A Chair At You

It was 40 years ago Sunday that Bobby Knight hurled a chair across the court at Indiana's Assembly Hall.

It was his way of gently suggesting that he was displeased with a call from an official that day. 

If you're too young to remember Bobby Knight, he was certainly a complex figure. There are some who consider him to be the very best college basketball coach ever; there are others who can't believe he was ever allowed to coach 18- to 22-year-old college athletes. 

Anyway, it was the night of Feb. 23, 1985, when Indiana was home against Purdue. It was a little more than five minutes into the game, and Indiana had already been called for six fouls. 

The infamous moment began with a foul call against Indiana in the post. Knight began to berate referee Fred Jaspers, who told him to sit down. Knight did — but he was still saying his piece, which resulted in a technical. 

When Purdue's Steve Reid went to shoot the technicals, Knight picked up a red plastic chair from his bench and hurled it in Reid's general direction, though the chair veered away and headed straight to the photographers. 

Knight was T'd up again and ejected. The Indiana fans wildly supported him as he left. 

That's the famous part of the story.

The less famous part involved none other than Pete Carril. 

It was 11 years later that one of the refs from the Indiana-Purdue game was officiating a Princeton game. TigerBlog was sitting on press row, right next to Carril. When a call went against the Tigers, Carril's response was this: "No wonder that guy threw a chair at you."

How's that? 

In other national college basketball news from the weekend that touches Princeton, UCLA honored the late Bill Walton by naming his widow Lori as an honorary captain and by dressing pretty much anyone in Pauley Pavilion in tye-dye. 

The family of Bill Walton gather on the court to honor No. 32 💙💛 pic.twitter.com/1CUKKYyjHe

— CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 (@CBSSportsCBB) February 23, 2025

One of those family members who can be seen in the video is former Princeton great Nate Walton, one of Bill's sons. 

TigerBlog remembers back to when Nate Walton was being recruited at Princeton. It's one of TB's favorite moments in all his time in Jadwin Gym.

Bill Carmody excitedly walked into TB's office and said "the greatest college basketball player of all-time is in the men's room." That certainly got TB's attention. 

Of course TB got up and walked down the balcony and into the men's room. The entire 20 seconds or so it took to get there had TB wonder who the greatest college basketball player of all time could be.

He had it narrowed down to four choices — Pete Maravich, Lew Alcindor (who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), David Thompson and Walton. 

As it turned out, Walton was the correct answer. 

Walton, as you might have guessed, was the same personable, larger-than-life figure in the Jadwin bathroom as he was on the court and television. Maybe it's because he was tired of talking to people about how he went 21 for 22 in the 1973 NCAA championship game win over Memphis State, but he took the initiative in the conversation.

In the 45 seconds or so they were standing there, Walton asked TB about 20 questions about himself, what he did at Princeton, what he thought of the men's basketball program and so on. 

TB would get a call from Walton a few days after one of Nate's games at Princeton, asking if he had left his gloves on TB's desk. The answer was that he in fact had, and so the next time he was in Jadwin he came and picked them up. 

Nate, by the way, was gifted with his father's personality. Nate Walton was a first-team All-Ivy League selection as a senior in 2001, when he led the Tigers to an unlikely Ivy League championship and an NCAA tournament appearance. 

The 2001-02 men's basketball media guide (those were books that were printed in the preseason and became obsolete almost immediately) referred to that Ivy title in then-head coach John Thompson III's bio, where it said that Thompson had "taken a team without a star and won a championship in his first season."

A few days after it came out, TB's phone rang. It was Nate Walton. And what did he say?

Nate: "There's a mistake in the media guide in Coach Thompson's bio."
TB: "What's that?"
Nate: "I was a star."

Ah yes. Those were the days.