BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Army is in the house to play Indiana. Really, what better team to watch on a Veterans Day weekend than the Black Knights from West Point, and honor the challenge of their task? This day, nearly every day.
They have come to play the Indiana Hoosiers, who dwell in something of a different galaxy. The Army team is warming up on the north end of Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, where the five national championship banners hang. Indiana has appeared in 41 NCAA tournaments in its history. That’s 41 more than Army.
These two programs had never faced one another before Sunday, but they were already connected for keeps. Matter of fact, this is a contender for the most ironically timed first-ever meeting of the season. Bob Knight won 102 games as the coach of Army, then moved to Indiana to become national champion and legend. Eleven days after his passing, here the Hoosiers and Black Knights are, together.
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There’s more. Army is always included on the short list of original Division I programs never to play in the NCAA tournament: The Citadel, St. Francis (NY) (dropped athletics after the 2022-23 academic year), William & Mary and the Black Knights. But Army should get its own asterisk. The Black Knights were 20-4 in 1968 and invited to the tournament, but the coach decided they had a better chance in the NIT, which then still carried considerable prestige. Who wanted to go to the NCAA tournament and maybe bang heads with UCLA and Lew Alcindor? Besides, the NIT in Madison Square Garden was a lot closer to West Point.
The coach who made that decision? Bob Knight. By the way, one of his starting guards, averaging 6.4 points a game, was named Mike Krzyzewski. Anyway, the strategy didn’t work out. As former Army sports information director Bob Kinney once told USA Today, “We drew Notre Dame on St. Patrick’s eve night, with two Irish officials, and lost by four in the opening round. All of that is factual.”
So is this: Army has appeared in the Associated Press rankings only one season and that was 53 years ago. Also, the Black Knights have never advanced to the Patriot League tournament championship game since joining the league in 1990.
Moral of the story: It has never been easy for Army basketball. Especially now. In a world of NIL contracts and a gushing transfer portal, the team warming up in black uniforms still must try to win the old-fashioned way, because neither is part of their universe. These guys are in formation every morning at 6:55. Then comes a day crammed with everything from military science to international relations, and maybe 20 minutes for lunch. After all that, practice.
None of this is news to the former senior class president at Notre Dame who graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mechanical engineer and later earned his Bronze Star serving in Iraq. Now he’s the head coach.
“I don’t look at it as a challenge, I look at it as an opportunity,” Kevin Kuwik is saying outside the locker room. He took the job this season after two decades on the staffs at places such as Butler, Ohio State, Davidson and Dayton. “These guys, they don’t have their hands out, they’re not worried about how many zeroes there are on the number. They’re playing for their brothers. They’re not going to go pro as basketball players. They’re going pro as officers. I think it is awesome to coach those guys. They can roll with me anytime.”
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His time in the service — the 113th Engineer Battalion of the Indiana National Guard, which was sent to Iraq to sweep for the deadly improvised explosive devices — prepared him for this mission, looking for a few good men. Wait a second, that’s the Marines. But same for Kuwik.
“The crazy thing is, because of the transfer portal, there’s good high school kids that are getting overlooked now because people are saving their scholarships for transfers,” he says. “Honestly, I think I have a better pool to fish out of. Now the key is I’ve got to find the right kids and the right families that value what West Point represents. When I do that, I think I’m going to have something pretty special.”
Army loses to Indiana 72-64 but puts up a terrific fight on a Big Ten court, leading for nearly 18 minutes and not giving way until the end. Had the Hoosiers not owned an 18-3 gap in free throws, a mighty upset could have been at hand. “A-R-M-Y the guys represented real well tonight,” Kuwik says.
Take freshman Ryan Curry, who scores 20 points against Indiana. Yeah, the college world out there has more challenges than ever for the Armys of the world (and Navy, and Air Force). But that doesn’t mean the Black Knights can’t win, right?
“Yes sir. We go every day with our guys. We know this is the group we’re going to have this year, we know this is the group we’re going to have next year,” Curry says. “We take pride it that. It’s a commitment not a lot of people take. this is what we do, and we’re ready to go.”
There’s a sense of responsibility the Black Knights feel, same as they do at Annapolis and Colorado Springs. A debt owed to those who passed through the academies before, whether they played basketball or rooted from the sidelines, sometimes before heading off to war.
“We’re not playing just five guys on the court, we’re playing for a lot more people, thousands of people beyond that,” Curry says. “The only way we can pay them for it is to be the toughest in the country.”
There will be more hard nights coming. As of Monday, Army was 339th in the nation in scoring and field goal percentage and 348th in free throw shooting and 327th on the KenPom power rankings. But if Kuwik wanted something easy, he wouldn’t be at West Point.
“I know what these guys are getting ready for, I know what they’re signing up for,” he said of his experience in the Army. “It was a life changer for me when I was 22 years old to be a platoon leader and lead 40 soldiers."
“I just remember being at Fort Bragg, I was 20 years old and we had to polish our boots a certain way, your laces had to be a certain way, your bed had to be made a certain way. You’re like, 'I’m a mechanical engineering student from Notre Dame, what does that have to do with kicking the Iraqis or Russians butts?' But when nothing’s on the line and you can be locked in on those little things, then when everything’s on the line that’s what’s going to pull you through. whether it’s in Iraq or it’s in the last two minutes of a basketball game.”
So on this Veterans Day weekend, here's to them, 0-3 record and all. There are many hard realities to overturn for the Black Knights to ever get close to another NCAA tournament invite. But if that ever happens, this time Army won’t say no.
