By Mark Alesia
SportsLine Senior Writer

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Fight Night at Northwestern!

Actually, it was Fight Knight, loosely speaking, for Wildcats coach Kevin O'Neill on Saturday afternoon when Indiana defeated Northwestern 69-62 in overtime.

O'Neill and big bad Bob, who are (or were) friends, had a confrontation in front of the scorer's table after the game resulting from the Northwestern band's incessant chanting of "Who's your daddy?" The band was seated close to the Hoosiers' bench during the game.

Knight didn't like it when O'Neill grabbed him, trying to emphasize a point. A brief scuffle ensued between the teams.

"I'm going to fight Knight at noon tomorrow in Bloomington," quipped O'Neill after he and the Indiana coach hashed things out under the basket following their postgame news conferences.

The game, and the drama afterward, prompted a debate about crowd etiquette in college basketball. It also said a few things about the program O'Neill has in his second season at Northwestern, a potential Cinderella entry in the NCAA tournament.

"You step on the floor, you see it in other players' eyes," Northwestern center Evan Eschmeyer said. "Teams aren't looking past us anymore. They're coming out and they're prepared for us now. People used to think of us as a doormat."

O'NEILL'S PUBLIC CONFRONTATION WITH KNIGHT reinforced the point. But on the floor, the Wildcats are a one-man show, that being center Eschmeyer, who fouled out during overtime. Not coincidentally, the Wildcats didn't score in overtime. When Indiana played a zone in the second half, packing it in on Eschmeyer, he had two points in the half. His young supporting cast couldn't hit the shots to make the Hoosiers pay.

This was the kind of game an aspiring NCAA Tournament team wins. And the Wildcats didn't win it. They're 14-8 overall and 6-6 in the Big Ten, with a weak non-conference schedule.

But while they might not be an NCAA Tournament team yet -- Northwestern has never been to the tournament -- it's a different program under O'Neill.

"Why shouldn't you stand up to Bob Knight?" Eschmeyer said. "Bob Knight's not God. He's a helluva freaking coach, probably the best in the country. But it's the same mentality we're trying to change. People think Northwestern players will roll over, because they see 'Indiana' on your jersey. And we're not doing it. We got beat, but we put up a helluva fight. We're going to keep doing it every time we go out. And our coach isn't going to roll over, either."

It is perhaps a measure of how far Northwestern has come that it can get under Indiana's skin like that.

When the band came marching -- yes, marching -- onto the floor, two members mocked Knight by wearing red shirts with pillows underneath. One of the guys held a chair in the air.

BUT THE CHANT THAT UPSET KNIGHT was nothing like some notorious crowd behavior in the past in college basketball. It was nothing like, say, Arizona State's crowd taunting Steve Kerr after his father's murder or Duke's mascot wearing a headband that said "Buckwheat" when the Blue Devils played David Rivers and Notre Dame.

Bobby Knight and Kevin O'Neill patched up their differences after the game. (AP)

Knight, however, was mad. After the game, he pointed to the band, and said, "Who's your daddy now?"

"I don't think we have to put up with that," Knight said in the postgame news conference. "Let the crowd get on my (butt). They've got all kinds of things to get on my (butt) for. They'll never run out of them if they think a little bit. But that's not the kind of thing that should be a part of college basketball. That crowd down there needs to have the same class the team has."

O'Neill isn't about to scold enthusiastic fans. He needs all the support he can get, competing with DePaul in this city.

"I don't control the crowd," O'Neill said. "He's been (at Indiana) 20 years. He may control the crowd at his place. If I'm here 20 years, I'll probably be dead. It was nothing, really, kind of a heat of the battle thing. There's no bigger supporter of coach Knight than me."

TO ESCHMEYER, THE RULES are simple: Just don't throw anything.

"Kids are kids," said Eschmeyer, a sixth-year senior playing under a medical hardship exception. "They're going to do stuff. I've had some of the rudest comments made to me all over the Big Ten. As long as you don't throw anything at me, I'm an adult and I'm going to handle it. I'm not going to say anything back. I'm not going to turn my head. As long as they weren't throwing stuff at him, he should be able to handle it."

After the game, as the victor, Knight was effusive in his praise of Northwestern's program, of Eschmeyer as a player and, in a way, of O'Neill as a coach.

"I remember one time Kevin talked to Danny Dakich when Danny was one of my assistants," Knight said. "In Kevin's own way, he said, 'I wish I could coach.' He said, 'I can recruit.' Well, he's learned a helluva lot since then, because this is a very well-coached basketball team."