Candy Stripes

Painful

Hoping volume of email carries weight, even if most of the content is not read

Yep, I do. Still felt like I needed to say it.

I rarely post, but am so upset at the prospect of our retaining Coach Crean as our head coach that I just fired off a respectful, yet very honest email to Fred Glass. I would encourage all of you to do the Mr. Glass, I felt compelled to write now that the season is over and decisions need to be made with regards to the future of the Men's basketball program, more specifically Coach Crean's future as our head coach. I have been a fan since the glory years of the mid-70s and graduated from the university in '92. Hard to say this as I consider myself a true fan, but was unable to watch a good number of games this year due to a growing apathy that I truly believe is running rampant in our fan base. The inability to sustain success coupled with the repeated issues of poor defense and way too many turnovers have me very concerned with the direction of our program. Coach Crean seems like a really good person who graduates players and has their genuine best interests at heart. With that said, he is paid over $3M per year to do all of this and yet provide a winning brand of basketball, one that the fans can take great pride in. This is not happening in my opinion. At this point in time, you are the steward in terms of the future direction of this program. I'm not sure you can feel it from your vantage point, but this fan base is ready to implode. I live in Fort Wayne and have never seen such indifference to the Hoosiers in my life. There is zero confidence that Coach Crean will ever be anything more than what he has shown during his 9 years here. He will have a few good years mixed with very average to poor years. This new generation of IU fans will know nothing but mediocrity. Unfortunately, we can no longer be viewed as a blue blood program and that is a shame based on our history, facilities, and once proud fan base. It is sad for me to see schools such as NC State and Illinois take lack of sustained success more serious than we do. How is that possible? The school will not suffer dramatically from the loss of my support moving forward, i.e a few games a year, merchandise, and lots of cable viewership, but I still wanted to be heard. This is unfortunately it for me barring a change in leadership. Thanks for reading.

In my opinion, the keys to yesterday's loss were as follows: - Defensive mistakes galore, enough said - Unusual lineups. Sometimes you get a little lucky and get away with something once, maybe twice, but if you get too cute and push your luck, it comes back to bite you. Tournament time, stick with what you know typically works. This is not a good time to experiment. - TOs. So many silly TOs again, and we generally commit more in the first half. Does anyone else notice that we start nearly every game in a hole? Why aren't we ready to play at the beginning of these games? - Yogi has to have the ball on our last offensive possession. Just has to. He's our first team Big Ten player and team MVP. If he misses or turns it over I'll live with it, but now I just wonder "what if...". I doubt that if it were Duke instead of us yesterday that Grayson Allen doesn't have the ball in his hands. - Poor shooting, it happens and it wasn't for lack of effort, hence the reason to eliminate the other things on this list. Looking ahead, the glass is half empty for me for two main reasons: First, this team's record away from Assembly Hall. Mediocre at best (8-7 I believe) with really only three quality wins: UM, ND, and Iowa. Like all teams, we play better at home, but the really good teams have the focus and toughness to have solid road records, whether those are true road games or games on neutral courts. Unfortunately for us, the NCAA games won't be in Bloomington. Second, and as previously mentioned on this site, it's Tom Crean's tournament record. I really don't think you can even debate that it's less than impressive. This includes Big Ten, NCAA, and even pre-conference tournaments like Maui this year. Some coaches, like Coach K and Coach Izzo, routinely know what levers to pull this time of year. Others don't. I wish I knew the secret recipe, and I'm sure Coach Crean would as well, but that's what makes those guys special. I will be rooting like hell for the team next weekend, but I am skeptical that we survive through next Sunday. Hope I'm wrong.