James Dickey has been a class act at Texas Tech, but he'd likely want to give school officials a tongue lashing.(AP)

It was the Texas Tech administration that embarrassed itself by sneaking behind Dickey's back to talk to Knight. The reports that Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers and president David Schmidly had already met with Knight this week in Naples, Fla., provided an admirable life lesson to those Red Raiders watching their hotel televisions on Thursday.

"I was shocked just the way it happened," junior guard Jamal Brown said following a 71-59 first-round loss to Oklahoma State that ended Texas Tech's season. "I think they could have waited until after the season to discuss anything about his job. He didn't quit on them in the middle of the season, why should they do him like that?"

"I didn't handle it very well," senior forward Cliff Owens said. "I'm kind of shook up today. I didn't really know what to think. I was angry for coach and his family. I don't know how you're supposed to handle that. I don't know what a couple of weeks would have hurt."

Dickey, a classy loyalist at the dusty West Texas outpost for a decade, seemed resigned to his fate. After going 166-124 in 10 seasons, he had gotten a peek of his non-future earlier this week.

"I just asked a question, 'Are you looking for a coach?'" Dickey said of a Tuesday meeting with Myers. "He said he'd talk to me later."

While Knight might have made a recent habit of leaving March like a lamb, Texas Tech's administration might leave it lyin' -- or something close to that.

Four years ago, almost to the day, Dickey and his bosses made the decision at halftime of a Big 12 Tournament game here to pull the program out of consideration for the NCAA Tournament. A massive academic fraud scandal had been discovered at Texas Tech. More than 90 Texas Tech student-athletes were affected. Some had been competing while ineligible because of academic certification errors.

Shortly thereafter, LSU came calling with a job offer to bail Dickey out of the mess. Predictably, NCAA penalties were about to cut off Dickey's program at the ankles. Amazingly, Dickey stayed through the mounting mess. It amounted to little more than he and his family being comfortable in folksy Lubbock.

"I believe strongly in loyalty and that loyalty needs to be reciprocal," Dickey said quietly when reminded Thursday why he stayed.

Since going 19-9 in 1996-97, the program got progressively worse finishing 9-19 after Thursday's loss. Even though a clause in his contract reportedly says Dickey cannot be fired for losing or lack of attendance, that is the exact reason he is being sacked.

Texas Tech apparently is willing to eat a $700,000 bonus due to Dickey if he stays through his contract, which has three years left.

"The thing that's unfair is that they haven't kept him abreast," Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton said. "If you're going to release someone, if you're going to talk to other coaches ... they haven't shown him much loyalty if it's true they've actually gone out and talked to Bobby Knight or anyone else."

At the end of the game, Sutton sensed the end was near for his old friend. He reached out and hugged Dickey for a good 10 seconds. If there was ever a victory that could hurt, this was it. Dickey was Sutton's assistant for eight years at Arkansas and Kentucky from 1981 through 1989. An NCAA recruiting scandal knocked them both out of Lexington at the same time.

Sutton has said that someday he will write a book about his career, setting the record straight about those Kentucky days. Dickey, no doubt, will have a significant place in it.

"I gave him a hug and told him I loved the guy like a brother," Sutton said. "I told him I'd say prayers that they come to their senses and keep him as coach ... If I had known we were a cinch to get in the NCAA, I wouldn't mind getting beat today if it was going to help him keep his job."

It's a cruel world. Until Thursday, Oklahoma State wasn't a cinch to get in so Sutton had to beat his coaching brother. But it's not such a cruel enough world that excused Myers and Schmidly of their accountability.

As the Knight story unfolded -- a story they created -- both bosses were backpedaling quicker than Deion Sanders in his prime. Myers was issuing no comments right and left. When he saw television cameras heading his way outside the locker room after the game, Myers simply walked away, according to one witness. Schmidly had a curt reply for a reporter who asked for comment.

Dickey stood erect in the same hallway and answered every last question asked of him.

"The one thing you must never forget is how much class he brings to the Texas Tech basketball program," Sutton said.

Earlier, Baylor coach Dave Bliss was understandably torn. He is a former Knight assistant at Army and Indiana but added that "James Dickey is one of my best friends."

"There's no doubt that with the preeminence of college basketball all the rules have changed, not all for the better," Bliss said after a first-round victory over Colorado.

" ... When the rules change sometimes people get hurt."

The connection is that Myers is an old buddy of Knight's. Knight did Myers the favor of bringing Indiana down to Lubbock to open the new United Spirit Arena in 1999. Knight is even quoted in the Red Raider press guide as saying, "There's no better place in our league."

Make that former league. Almost three decades of stomping Big Ten sidelines at Indiana might be replaced by the Dark Knight ruling the scrub brush in West Texas.

If it happens it will not be an easy transition. The players love Dickey. In the back of their minds, they've got to wonder about having to prove themselves for the new sheriff in town whose philosophy can be gleaned from the pages of Playboy.

Maybe Lubbock is ready for the controversy, the madness, the sweater. All that is guaranteed. Winning isn't considering how the talent pool drained at Indiana in Knight's final years. He left kicking and screaming having not been to the Sweet 16 since 1994.

The enduring image of Knight at the tournament is his embarrassing 22-minute filibuster in Buffalo, N.Y., last March defending his program. His possible arrival at Texas Tech begged the pressroom question, who will be Knight's sports information director? Tech has an opening for what could become some poor young sap who is looking forward to an early ulcer.

Myers and Schmidly conveniently don't remember the past when it serves their purpose. The should remember that it was only five years ago Dickey had Texas Tech basketball on the cover of Sports Illustrated after a tournament upset of North Carolina.

"It seems years ago," Dickey said. "It seems like a long time."

When word of a change started leaking out, former Red Raider greats like Jason Sasser and Rayford Young called their former coach. They all wanted to know what was going on. All they had to do was look out on the Kemper floor Thursday at another futile attempt at victory by Dickey and his depleted program.

An attempt made, though, with honor because Dickey had stuck it out.

"The thing I remember thinking to myself in the huddle in the second half was that he's coaching as hard right now as he ever has," Owens said. "I told him I've always thought of him as hokey and old-fashioned. If having morals and ethics is old-fashioned then I wouldn't mind being just as old-fashioned."