March 23, 2000 4:42 AM AP

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) The odds that the latest Bob Knight controversy will disappear anytime soon have grown slim.

Indiana University's sports advisory committee met Wednesday night to review accusations that the Hall of Fame coach choked former player Neil Reed during a 1997 practice.

The committee school president Myles Brand to take "appropriate action."

"We are urging the president to use good judgment in this," said Bruce Jaffee, a business professor and chairman of the Indiana University Bloomington Athletics Committee, which advises Brand.

"The press has thought that there is some basis for a review, and we're urging the president to take care of that."

Brand was at a private dinner late Wednesday night and couldn't be reached for comment.

The 13-member panel composed of faculty, students and alumni voted unanimously to ask for the investigation during its regular monthly meeting Wednesday night at Assembly Hall. Knight, on a hunting trip, did not attend.

Jaffee said Wednesday's recommendation was the first-ever the committee has made concerning Knight. He would not answer direct questions about the allegations against Knight or say what action committee members thought Brand should take. The group has no power to discipline Knight.

"We believe (Knight) ought to be treated fairly. If it's found there's no substance to it, so be it," Jaffee said.

Indiana athletic director Clarence Doninger briefed the committee. The group did not view a videotape or review the transcript of a CNN/Sports Illustrated report in which Reed said Knight choked him during a 1997 practice.

In that report, Reed and two other players also said Knight, pants around his ankles, used a crude bathroom gesture while upbraiding his team. They also said Knight once ordered Brand to leave a team practice.

Knight said that while he sometimes uses colorful means to motivate players, he denied the bathroom episode occurred. Knight also said he did not kick Brand out of practice.

After Reed left the team in 1997, he said he was physically and mentally abused by Knight, although he offered no specifics publicly.

Following Reed's departure from the team, the athletics committee heard from Doninger, according to panel member David Towell, an associate professor of geology.

Towell said that in a report to the committee, Doninger said Reed spoke to him but revealed little. He said Doninger told the committee only that Reed said he was unhappy and was leaving.

"Clarence had encouraged him to finish the semester," Towell said.

The alleged bathroom display, meanwhile, and the charge that Knight once grabbed Reed by the throat are "totally news to me," Towell told The Indianapolis Star.

Aside from an investigation by Brand, the allegations against Knight could be taken up by the five-member IU Bloomington Faculty Council.

But faculty members would have to ask that the Knight matter be put on the council's agenda, said council secretary Julieann Nilson, a librarian for Latin American and Iberian studies.

"They may care individually, very much, but the council by itself wouldn't necessarily go looking for things" in Knight's conduct to discuss, Nilson told The Star.

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