He was brilliant and tempestuous, his best and worst qualities both writ larger than life.

So maybe it’s fitting that Bob Knight’s most notable stop in Toledo was a paradox, too.

Here, the legendary coach known for his mountain of wins and volcanic temper is also remembered for a loss, along with the grace with which he handled it.

Yep, you read that right.

Knight — who died last week at age 83 — was nothing if not complex.

Go back to the first night of December, 1976, and the first game at Centennial Hall, now Savage Arena. You couldn’t have scripted a grander opening.

Not only were the Rockets breaking in a sparkling new gym — an unimaginable upgrade over the old Field House — but their housewarming guest was Indiana, the defending national champions.

The year before, IU famously went 32-0, and while the Hoosiers lost four starters from that team — the authors of what remains the last perfect season in Division I men’s basketball — they still had center Kent Benson, perhaps the finest player in the country.

And, of course, they still had Knight.

A visit from the No. 4 Hoosiers was the hottest ticket in town.

Jim Mollenkopf, whose father, Fred, was UT’s director of public information, was among the 9,662 fans who sardined into the new building.

“I was sitting at that end on a row of benches that had been placed in the walkways behind the north end bleachers to accommodate the overflow crowd,” he said. “Later my father … told me that an upset fire marshal said of those benches, ‘never again.’”

On that night, though, it made the setting all the more electric.

“We couldn’t hear anything,” UT guard Jeff Seemann said. “I remember being on the bench and the coaches were talking to us. We had no idea what they were saying. I’m just shaking my head, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll do it!’ We just went out and played.”

Besides, they already knew the game plan: pressure IU point guard Jim Wisman and collapse in on the 6-11 Benson, who in a few months would be the top pick in the NBA draft.

Toledo did both. While few gave the Rockets a chance, the game went exactly to script. They were deliberate and efficient on offense — Stan Joplin poured in a game-high 21 points while Ted Williams and Dick Miller added 15 and 14, respectively — and hell in sneakers on defense. Seemann’s in-your-face D on Wisman kept IU out of its offense and Toledo held Benson to 17 points on 5-of-22 shooting. (Coach Bob Nichols later presented the game ball to Seemann. “I didn’t score a point, so when coach Nichols gave me the ball, I thought he wanted me to practice shooting,” Seemann cracked.)

The Rockets opened double-digit leads in both halves, and even as Indiana kept swinging, they always had an answer. When the Hoosiers tied the game at 49 with 6:13 left, the home team countered with a 6-0 burst that all but iced a 59-57 win.

Down went Indiana and its 33-game winning streak, and down nearly came Toledo’s house.

Truly, it was a night for the ages, with the first game at Centennial Hall enduring all these years later as the biggest.

But that’s only the half of this story.

Worth noting, too, is how Knight handled the disappointment.

You know his reputation. A coach as competitive as he was combustible might have been expected afterward to moan about the officiating, conjure excuses, or question why he agreed to play at Toledo at all.

Knight did none of that, heaping nothing but praise on Nichols and the Rockets.

“Toledo just outplayed and outhustled us,” he said. “They played the boards well and they played better on defense than we did on offense. Hell, I’m not surprised at anything that happened. They’ve always played good defense. Bobby Nichols is a hell of a basketball coach.”

More than that, Knight even stopped in the Rockets’ jubilant locker room.

“He came in and said, ‘You guys deserved it. You played harder,’” Seemann said. “Here’s a guy who had [won] 64 or 65 games the previous two years and he was classy enough to come in and congratulate us. I thought that was pretty cool.”

Knight was a lot of things, good and bad.

For one magical night, he was also a gracious part of Toledo history.

First Published November 5, 2023, 11:36 p.m.