INDIANAPOLIS – Outbursts from the Indiana bench were more expected that not during the Bob Knight era. On February 23, 1985, Coach Knight delivered a signature performance, flinging a chair across the Assembly Hall court during a Purdue free throw attempt.

Current Hoosiers’ head coach Mike Woodson was playing in the NBA at the time. In fact, on the same night, he came off the bench to score 27 points for the Kansas City Kings in a matchup with the Dallas Mavericks. Still, Woodson remembers the incident in Bloomington with a chuckle.

“That chair throwing was something I saw from afar,” Woodson smiles. “As coaches, we’re crazy, man. We do a lot of crazy s*** on the practice floor and during the game. Sometimes it’s not warranted and sometimes it is based on the officiating and things that go on through the course of a ball game.”

Woodson’s on-court demeanor is for the most part stoic, far from that of his former coach at IU, but he remembers one time he just couldn’t hold it all in.

“In New York (while coaching the Knicks), I got kicked out of a game against Chicago,” Woodson recalls. “Melo (Carmelo Anthony) got kicked out, Tyson Chandler got kicked out, so h***, I thought I needed to get kicked out. I lost my cool and lit into the officials and got kicked out of the game.”

Woodson says Coach Knight has made regular appearances at Hoosiers’ practice over the past month and a half, calling their recent time together “a beautiful thing”. Even so, he’ll hope to avoid similar eruptions to that of his mentor when IU visits Purdue on Saturday evening.

“For the most part, I’ve tried to keep my composure, but sometimes it’s just hard,” Woodson laughs. “It really is, so I understand Coach Knight’s frustrations that day.”