IU’s basketball culture is dead (and the case for why our next coach should be given 6+ seasons)

[Home Jersey]

Crean's issue is not that he lost the state lol. It's that he was disorganized and at times seemingly manic.

He's a good guy - always grateful he came here when we were in a bad spot. Like him in the media. Put together some really talented teams, made a really good run here. He simultaneously overachieved his abilities and underachieved with the talent he had. Just was never gonna win a title. And he stunk at UGA after. Why ignore that but not his first 3 years here? Lol. It was time.

[WayneFleekHoosier]

8 minutes ago, Home Jersey said:

Crean's issue is not that he lost the state lol. It's that he was disorganized and at times seemingly manic.

He's a good guy - always grateful he came here when we were in a bad spot. Like him in the media. Put together some really talented teams, made a really good run here. He simultaneously overachieved his abilities and underachieved with the talent he had. Just was never gonna win a title. And he stunk at UGA after. Why ignore that but not his first 3 years here? Lol. It was time.

Crean was the best of the last 3.  Maybe better than DeVries too, we’ll see. DeVries has advantages Crean didn’t have.  If Creans lows were not so low and recruiting momentum could have been maintained his tenure would have been longer. He also suffered through a terrible AD and became paranoid.  I respect and love the guy really.  Whitten and Dolson have positioned Indiana in a better spot.  Crean would have befitted from a “team”

Edited 11 hours ago by WayneFleekHoosier

[str8baller]

42 minutes ago, JF87 said:

The rumor was Crean had hurt his relationships with in-state recruiting. 

I know several coaches who thought he was a ******. One of who had an IU target recruit.  
 

Crean was a tireless recruiter and merciless when it came to cutting slackers. But he was an awful coach. Cmon now…

[JSHoosier]

5 hours ago, AH1971 said:

I could have told you. Who in their right mind is taking just another job with delusional expectations?

You could've predicted that Indiana would eventually hire a guy no other program would've considered simply because he played here over 40 years ago. Yeah, sure thing.

[newcastle12]

Quote

 

The program has to be rebuilt from scratch now, and we keep pretending it doesn't.  We just don't have a direction.

We either need to primarily recruit like Purdue (a mix heavy on local kids and 3-4 year players and occasional portal spots filled by upper clansmen) with a coach who's got a proven record of success at a lower level building that way or we need to spend top 3 in NIL and pay a lot to an experienced coach who's disgruntled but clearly still can go (Like Arkansas did with Calipari)  

We haven't had a plan since Sampson on what our direction needed to be and some boomers in the alumni base just thought they were too good for that and sabotaged it because of the sanctity of IU not "cheating" in college sports (can you imagine how dumb you sound pretending teams haven't been clearly cheating for decades)

[newcastle12]

2 hours ago, AH1971 said:

All talk lol. You keep saying “just making the tournament” is the minimal expectation, but you don’t actually mean that. Tom Crean, once he got settled in, made the tournament “more times than not”, and not just made the tournament…but actually advanced in the tournament. And won conference championships to boot.

Tom Crean got fired because he lost the fan base in 2013 when he failed to win a national title with two top 5 draft picks. It’s as simple as that. All this talk about just wanting a coach who consistently makes the tournament is window dressing at its finest, we had that in Crean. We fired him. 

Tom Crean burned in state and midwest recruiting when he forced out Mo Creek after his injury trouble.  No decent AAU coach around here wanted to work with him again, and recruiting without the Midwest wasn't going to work and his rosters showed that.  

He also was a very average in game coach.  So less talent, and mediocre coaching means he wasn't going to rise up again.

The problem was hiring Archie instead of somebody higher up on the coaching ladder.  You basically hoped to get lucky with a mid major coach twice in a row, effectively firing Crean for a less successful Crean, when the move would have been to bring in one of the interested big name coaches who yes, probably would have cheated, but who in the **** cares, it's college sports, there's always been cheating.  

[Alford Bailey]

What happened to Old Friend? 

[AH1971]

1 hour ago, newcastle12 said:

Tom Crean burned in state and midwest recruiting when he forced out Mo Creek after his injury trouble.  No decent AAU coach around here wanted to work with him again, and recruiting without the Midwest wasn't going to work and his rosters showed that.  

He also was a very average in game coach.  So less talent, and mediocre coaching means he wasn't going to rise up again.

The problem was hiring Archie instead of somebody higher up on the coaching ladder.  You basically hoped to get lucky with a mid major coach twice in a row, effectively firing Crean for a less successful Crean, when the move would have been to bring in one of the interested big name coaches who yes, probably would have cheated, but who in the **** cares, it's college sports, there's always been cheating.  

Nonsense. Mo Creek was from the DMV area, not the Midwest, so have zero idea why that would have any bearing on Midwest area kids or AAU coaches? Crean landed high profile DMV area players like Troy Williams and Robert Johnson after Creek and fellow east coast 5* Noah Vonleh and Thomas Bryant long after Creek’s departure. Had no trouble bringing in James Blackmon or Hanner Perea who were both highly rated as well. Recruiting was the least of Crean’s problems. 
 

Was Crean’s in-game coaching the best? No. Did he still win multiple B10 titles and advance to the second weekend multiple times? Yes. This idea that Crean was tailing off at the end is pure lunacy. He literally won the B10 the year before he was fired and had a team ranked as high a #3 in the country the year he was fired with wins over Kansas and North Carolina, the latter who would go on to win the title that year. Hell Crean had a ranked team the week prior to OG blowing out his knee. The wheels fell off after that and the end of the year slide was disappointing, but let’s not act like Crean fell into some deep abyss at the end of his tenure. He had a ranked team who lost its best player to a freak injury.

[Shooter]

A bit confused about why we are debating Tom Crean's tenure 10 years later...

I liked Crean, he was a decent coach and a good guy. But just because we made two bad hires after him, doesn't mean Crean deserved another decade here.

[AH1971]

9 minutes ago, Shooter said:

A bit confused about why we are debating Tom Crean's tenure 10 years later...

I liked Crean, he was a decent coach and a good guy. But just because we made two bad hires after him, doesn't mean Crean deserved another decade here.

Because this program has been utter dog doo since we decided that winning B10 titles and reaching the S16 wasn’t good enough.

[Shooter]

5 minutes ago, AH1971 said:

Because this program has been utter dog doo since we decided that winning B10 titles and reaching the S16 wasn’t good enough.

Crean didn't get fired because 2016 wasn't good enough. He got fired because that was the only season out of his last 4 where he had a winning conference record.