BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Bob Hammel, who covered 23 NCAA Final Fours and 29 Indiana high school basketball tournament championships during a 52-year sports writing career that included a close friendship with late Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight, has died. He was 88.

Hammel died Sunday at Bell Trace, a senior living community in Bloomington, according to an obituary in The Herald-Times, his longtime employer. No cause of death was given.

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The lifelong Indiana resident spent 40 years with the Bloomington Herald-Telephone and later Herald-Times, including 30 as sports editor.

Hammel was a member of several halls of fame, including the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, Football Writers Association of America, Indiana Journalism and Indiana University Athletics. He served terms as president of the Basketball and Football Writers associations. He received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Bert McGrane Award from the Football Writers Association.

Hammel won the Indiana Sportswriter of the Year award 21 times.

He authored or co-authored 14 books, including the 2002 autobiography of Knight, the fiery IU basketball coach who died in 2023. They also teamed in 2012 for a book titled “The Power of Negative Thinking.”

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Upon retiring as Big Ten Conference commissioner in 2020, Jim Delany said, “Bob Hammel is simply the most important Big Ten writer in the last 50 years.”

Hammel, a native of Huntington, Indiana, attended Indiana University for a year. He took a summer job as sports editor of his hometown paper and instead of returning to school that fall, he stayed on at the paper for eight years. He worked at papers in Peru, Fort Wayne, Kokomo and Indianapolis before being hired as sports editor of the Herald-Telephone in 1966.

His career included covering five Olympics before he retired from sports writing in 1996.

He is survived by Julie, his wife of 67 years, son Richard Hammel and daughter Jane Priest.

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AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll