Knight loves finalists' resolve

Bob Knight leads all Division I men's basketball coaches with 902 victories. He has coached in five Final Fours and won three national championships at Indiana, appearing in 25 NCAA tournaments in his 29-year coaching career.

So when I am looking for an expert analysis of Monday's national title game between Butler and Connecticut, I call on my very close personal friend, and as usual, he gives a common-sense conclusion better than anyone else I know.

"I think that each team has a great story to it," Knight, now working as an analyst for ESPN, said Sunday.

"First of all, Butler getting back to the NCAA finals, and going to the final game is a remarkable coaching job and a remarkable playing job. I saw Butler play early in the year against Xavier and they looked like they were the furthest thing away from a team that would have a chance to win the NCAA tournament."

Butler lost at Xavier 51-49 to fall to 4-4 on the season. The Bulldogs were 14-9 after losing at Youngstown State on Feb. 3, but they haven't lost since, winning 14 games in a row. In doing so, they became the first team from the state of Indiana to make back-to-back Final Fours, a feat never achieved by Indiana, Purdue or Notre Dame.

"They worked over the course of the year," Knight said. "I think at one point they were 6-5 in the Horizon League [after losing to Youngstown State], and they've gotten things together and they got better and better and better, to the point now where they're every bit as good as they were a year ago, maybe even better. I think it's probably the best job that players and coaches have done during the course of the season that I may have ever seen."

As for the Huskies, they were unranked at the beginning of the season, then shot up the polls after winning the Maui Invitational in November. They struggled some in Big East play but then won the 16-team conference tournament in New York.

"They had to play five games in five days all against very good teams. Probably those five teams that they played through the Big East tournament [DePaul, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Louisville] were in total better than the five teams they have thus far played in the NCAA tournament [Bucknell, Cincinnati, San Diego State, Arizona and Kentucky]. For them to win five games in five days in that tournament is one of the most remarkable winning achievements I've ever seen in college basketball.

"So both teams come into this [where] at some point in the year, neither would have even been thought of as an entrant to the NCAA tournament, let alone playing for the championship."

Quality not as good Knight doesn't believe college basketball teams are as good as they used to be.

"There are still good teams, but obviously, a lot of teams have lost juniors or seniors along the way that would have been able to contribute a great deal to the team's performance, because of the idea of being able to leave college any time you want to," said Knight, who retired from coaching at Texas Tech in 2008. "Until the NCAA gets this thing set up where they are at least the equivalent of baseball, where a kid either signs out of high school or he commits to three years of college, it will always be a black eye, I think, on the integrity of college basketball.

"A kid could play in the NCAA tournament without having attended a class in the second semester, and I think that's disgraceful. It's just another of the inadequacies that the NCAA perpetrates on college athletics."

Looks for settlement Tony Dungy, who will make an appearance for Target Corp. this week, said that he is disappointed that the NFL lockout has lasted this long.

"I think they'll get it settled," the former Buccaneers and Colts coach and Gophers quarterback said. "What's happened in the past has always been, people from both sides who have kind of been moderate and looked at the other point of view. Unfortunately, some of those guys aren't around anymore; the Dan Rooneys and Wellington Maras and Gene Upshaws, but that's what it's going to take. Both sides are kind of saying, 'We've got some points, but we've got to look at the other side's points too and get this worked out.' And I think they will. There's way, way too much at stake for it to continue on into the season."

Dungy said he made $20,000 with the Steelers in 1977, adding, "I can remember after our third Super Bowl, Mr. [Art] Rooney saying they wanted to take tickets up to $10, and he was concerned that people may not come if he raised the tickets to $10. There's a lot more money involved now then there used to be."

Jottings • Gophers baseball coach John Anderson said his team had a great experience over the weekend at Target Field, when the Gophers won two out of three from Purdue.

"The Twins opened their doors to us, and the whole staff and the grounds crew and the people running the stadium were awesome," Anderson said. "It was a wonderful experience, and we had about 5,000 people out there on Saturday [for a doubleheader]." ... A local businessman and very good friend of the late Paul Giel has donated $500,000 to the Gophers baseball stadium drive but does not want his identity announced. The drive has reached some $5 million; it needs another $2.5 million to start construction.

• One of the outstanding athletes that new state High School Football Hall of Fame member Don Stueve coached at Fergus Falls is Kevin Pearson, who was a fourth-round draft pick of the Twins in 1992, spent four seasons in the minor leagues as a teammate of Torii Hunter and Corey Koskie and is now an assistant football coach at his old high school.

• Tony Mortensen, the former Hutchinson and Gophers quarterback now working in the U athletic department, will coach QBs at his high school alma mater this fall.

• Eric Musselman, the former Sacramento Kings coach and son of former Gophers and Timberwolves coach Bill Musselman, is coaching Reno of the NBA Development League. The Bighorns went 34-16 and are the Western Conference's top seed for the D-League playoffs.