By NICK PETR
IU Diversity Sports Media Institute
Tom Crean is not a man that lives in the past, but whether he likes it or not he’s got a lot a past to contend with. Five National championship banners hanging from the rafters of Assembly Hall. The General. NCAA violations. Firings. Losing records.
It’s no secret that Crean was given no favors coming into his job at Indiana University. The recruiting incident involving former coach Kelvin Sampson left the team decimated with a star player in Eric Gordon packing his bags early for the NBA along with two other players who were leaving for a more stable situation, and three players being kicked off the team for various reasons. This left Crean with a bruised and bloody team consisting of only one senior, five true freshmen and six walk-ons. But that didn’t distract or discourage Crean for a single second.
“If anybody asks me why: ‘It’s Indiana.’ What I feel is the pinnacle, the absolute pinnacle of college basketball.”
In an organization like Indiana Basketball winning is everything, but by the time Crean got there, fielding a team was about as far as his resources would let him go. In his first season the team finished the season with a 6-25 record. It was the team’s worst record in history. His next year ended with some improvement, but not much, ending with a 10-21 record. The fan base at IU has been more than patient with this team, but Crean can’t expect much more tolerance from fans so accustomed to winning. With the pressure slowly but surely mounting it would have been very easy to put the blame on somebody else, but that wasn’t what Crean was there to do.
He was there to win.
“I had no idea what the shape of the team was when I came in, but we can’t live in the past," Crean said. "If we live in the past it can obstruct what we’re trying to do now.”
The fact of the matter is that regardless of what happened with former IU coach Kelvin Sampson or any other distraction put on this team, Crean is expected to win. Not because he necessarily has a better team than anybody else, but because there are five banners hanging in the roof of Assembly Hall and those banners have set the standard for Indiana basketball. In spite of walking into a situation where many coaches would fail, Crean is focusing on the fact that he’s in a program that accepts nothing less than absolute success.
So now Crean will enter his third season trying his hardest to not to let the mistakes or the triumphs of the past define him, with a strong recruiting class including newly signed big-time recruit Austin Etherington and two years of experience under his belt. And at this point there’s really nowhere to go but up. With any luck he’ll be able to restore the glory at Indiana and maybe even put up banner number six for the Hoosiers.
As far as job offers, Crean plans to stay with the Cream and Crimson until he rides off into the sunset.
“My contract with the university runs up in eight years. I don’t know if I would want to coach much longer than that," Crean said. "But I wouldn’t want to coach anywhere else but Indiana.”