The head men’s basketball coach at Indiana University is, to put it mildly, unpredictable on the sidelines.
He stomps his feet. He shakes his fists. He berates officials. He screams. He teaches.
He’s not wearing a red sweater.
No, Tom Crean isn’t Bob Knight – but he’s closer than you think. In fact, that much was evident following Indiana’s intense-laden, 72-71 victory over Michigan in Ann Arbor on Sunday.
Moments after a hold-your-breath final 20 seconds, moments after Jordan Morgan’s tip bounced around and around – but not in, moments after IU captured their first outright B1G regular season championship since 1993, there was another moment: Crean confronting current Michigan assistant – and former Indiana assistant – Jeff Meyer.
And Crean couldn’t stop himself from saying something.
“You know what you did!” Crean shouted. “You helped wreck the program! You helped wreck our program!”
He ran away with a grin that can only be described as half Cheshire cat, half Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
It was rebellious, it wasn’t entirely classy, yet given the circumstances, it wasn’t entirely unforgivable.
As a member of Sampson’s Indiana staff, Meyer had made impermissible phone calls to recruits, calls that along with Sampson and fellow assistant Kevin Senderoff, would put the storied program on sanctions that would nearly break the Hoosiers. Crean was hired, as has been documented, not knowing the full content of the allegations and sanctions and went to work with what might resemble a JV roster in the B1G. There were two walk-ons who’d scored a combined 36 career points.
Crean’s first season, 2008-09, the Hoosiers were 6-25. Six and twenty-five. Worst in school history. The following season, 2009-10, IU went 10-21. In 2010-11, 12-20.
Forget last year’s 27-9 Sweet 16 team. Those three seasons in basketball purgatory don’t ever leave you. They stick and stay – a funk that’s not easily removed. And it’s the anger behind those 66 beatings in three seasons that built up and came up Sunday on the court at Crisler.
It didn’t just boil over – it was directed at a person who played a large part in helping facilitate those 66 losses in three seasons. Following the game, Michigan coach John Beilein commented on how Michigan would always conduct themselves with class and how Meyer helped build Michigan basketball “brick by brick” since arriving in 2008 – just months after leaving IU and being a part of a staff that destroyed it brick by brick.
Coaches can sometimes act like the kids they coach. Tom Crean is no different. This may surprise many outside of Hoosier Nation, but Tom Crean has become somewhat unpopular. He cut down the nets last week after a loss. He’s getting into people’s faces, smirking and possibly enjoying some of these wins a bit too much. He’s brash.
He’s also not changing a thing. And in the process, he’s prepping his team for the NCAA Tournament. Indiana won that game with three timeouts just sitting on the table. They played through the missed free throw, the Zeller lay-up and the frantic final seconds without calling for a huddle. Crean’s players know what to do – which is an unbelievably good quality come tournament time. You never know when you’ll be out of timeouts with 30 seconds to play and trailing by four.
Indiana won ugly Sunday, trailing most of the game. The Hoosiers looked poor in losing, at home, to Ohio State on Senior Night. As I said last week, these are college-age kids and you can’t predict how they will play. But Tom Crean is coaching really well. And Hoosier fans are hoping these last couple seasons are the rebirth of another era.
It’s not. It’s the start of a new one.
Crean is not Bob Knight. He’s not throwing chairs or attacking his players. You know who Tom Crean really is? He’s Rick Pitino circa 1992-96 at Kentucky.
After the nightmare Kentucky went through in the late 1980s, Pitino had to rebuild that storied program, same as Crean, from the ground up, without star recruits. The Wildcats went 14-14 in 1989-90. And when Kentucky started winning again, Pitino enjoyed it, relished in it and made sure you knew it.
He started dressing his players in crazy uniforms, they responded with crazy games – like the legendary 31-point second half comeback against LSU in 1994. The roster began to fill with NBA-quality players who wanted to play for a fiery, intense guy like that. After that Duke loss in the 1992 regionals, Kentucky went on to play in the Final Four in 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998 (without Pitino, but with his players), winning national championships in 1996 and 1998.
Indiana could be primed for a run like that, and the Hoosiers could become insufferable to the rest of the nation. With another stellar recruiting class coming up, Indiana is back and isn’t going away again anytime soon.
And neither is Tom Crean.
Do we wish these coaches wouldn’t do embarrassing things? Certainly. Then again, coaches like Pitino and Crean are the only ones bold enough to take on challenges like Kentucky and Indiana have faced and deal with the humbling losses.
Crean defending the program, unleashing a mocking tirade on a former assistant who, in a way, put him and the school through hell for three seasons of beatings, is more defensible that so many other coaches actions – most notably the actions of the man who Crean will be measured against, Knight.
Knight and so many coaches get caught up in discussing and taking controversial stances on things outside of what they know, which is little besides college basketball.
This was different – and it’s not something Crean should apologize to Meyer for.
We’ve become a little overly PC on the apologies. We apologize – and demand apologies for – nearly everything. We’re offended by the action, but we can also become offended if the apology doesn’t suit our ridiculously high standards. Was it sincere? Did they mean it?
Why don’t we just stop and examine what exactly demands an apology? Why can’t we deal with letting conflict exist? So Crean doesn’t think much of Meyer and his recruiting practices. Who cares? It’s overshadowing so many other stories from this game, this weekend. Last Wednesday, people wanted Crean and IU to apologize for cutting down the nets in their own building.
Why do we care? And why do we care to the point that we need to hear “I’m sorry.”
All these apologies. Ugh. I like a stern handshake, a vigorous pat on the back, a deep, lingering look directly into someone’s soul through their eyes. It’s the Michael Corleone “Fredo, I knew it was you!” moment. And it’s OK. People are allowed to not like one another – it’s what makes something a rivalry, which is now sorely lacking in sports because, well, everyone likes everyone so dang much.
If Crean wants to apologize for representing Indiana University poorly in a public setting then fine. If Crean feels like he should set a better example for his players, then fine. Apologize all over yourself, Tom. But Crean shouldn’t apologize to Jeff Meyer. Jeff Meyer should be apologizing to Tom Crean, to Indiana University and it’s fans.
If Crean continues on this path, no doubt he’ll have other things to apologize for.
Like winning. A lot of winning.
I guess, in a way, he could be a lot like Bob Knight.
And it’s the one thing he won’t ever need to apologize for.
NOTE: The blog has been updated to accurately reflect that Meyer was never found guilty of major violations, but was part of the coaching staff that did. Meyer was cleared by the NCAA having committed minor infractions relating to phone calls and the NCAA found at the time that they paled in comparison to Sampson and Senderoff.
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