A Season on the Brink: A year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers

by John Feinstein

Paper Book, 1986

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A Season on the Brink chronicles the basketball season that John Feinstein spent following the Indiana Hoosiers and their fiery coach, Bob Knight. Knight granted Feinstein an unprecedented inside look at college basketball -- with complete access to every moment of the season. Feinstein saw and heard it all -- practices, team meetings, strategy sessions, and mid-game huddles -- during Knight's struggle to avoid a losing season. A Season on the Brink not only captures the drama and pressure of big-time college basketball but paints a vivid portrait of a complex, brilliant coach walking a fine line between genius and madness.

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Grantland

There are stretches of A Season on the Brink that remain so vivid in my mind that I recall them without even trying, which might be less a validation of the work and more a product of what happens when you read the same book four times in one year (I once finished the last page and immediately

started rereading the book from chapter 7, almost as if this were a normal way to consume anything). It now feels odd that I have such intimate knowledge about a team that went 21-8 and lost to Cleveland State in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but Feinstein’s details remain so rich and evocative and timeless: The fact that Bob Knight put tampons in power forward Daryl Thomas’ locker (and the fact that this somehow motivated Thomas to play harder) tells you everything you need to know about that relationship (and about the psychology of the two men involved).

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