"Taylor was an adept recruiter and stressed smart team play.
''My team is an extension of his team,'' Knight, the longtime Indiana coach now at Texas Tech, said Sunday.
Knight added that Taylor's teams were ''always a working model for me -- they played good defense, they ran the fast break when they had it and they were well disciplined.''
Taylor once recalled how his 1959-60 Buckeyes, No. 1 on offense nationally, ''weren't very sound defensively at the start of the season.'' But, he said, ''as they progressed, they could play pretty thorny defense.''
Taylor became disenchanted with coaching after a brawl in a January 1972 game at Minnesota, which left three Ohio State players hospitalized. One of them, center Luke Witte, was knocked to the floor and stomped by two Gophers players. Those Minnesota players were suspended for the rest of the season, but Taylor felt that the Ohio State administration should have pushed for more aggressive disciplinary action.
''I still kick myself for not quitting then because that's what I felt I should do when nobody really even acted as though they cared,'' Taylor said later.
He resigned after his team finished 6-20 in the 1975-76 season.