As noted by Ben and TMadison in the previous comments section, reports indicate Tom Crean is the choice to become the new Indiana head coach. There are three obvious questions:
Is this a good move by Crean? Paging Jim S isn’t sure this is a vertical move, as Crean is leaving an established program in the deepest basketball conference in the country. On the other hand:
- Milwaukee is a solid, but not a fantastic, recruiting base, with Madison just down the road. Crean has gotten more recruits from Illinois than from Wisconsin in recent years.
- Crean appears to have plateaued at Marquette, with 10-12 losses per season in the five years since the 2003 Final Four appearance.
- IU is IU–one of the most storied programs in the land and the default landing spot for the best talent out of the state of Indiana (although Matt Painter will have something to say about that going forward).
Crean will have a rebuilding job to undertake for a few years–with the possibility of NCAA sanctions looming–but he’s probably better positioned to make a run at a national championship at some point in his career from Bloomington than he is from Milwaukee.
Is this a good move for Indiana? I’d say this is a great move for the Hoosiers. You’re getting a proven, relatively young (42) coach from a major conference who’s already been to a Final Four and knows the Midwest recruiting base. My guess is it’s going to cost them some serious dime, but at this point they don’t have any margin for error with the fan and alumni bases. There’s no Hoosier connection, but the list of candidates who meet that criterion is not an impressive one.
Does this hurt MSU? Crean was, of course, Izzo’s right-hand man for the first four years of Izzo’s head coaching tenure. He departed for Marquette after the first Final Four run in 1999. He’s instilled an Izzo-like philosophy to the Marquette program, with an emphasis on rebounding, man-to-man defense, and scoring on the fast break.
The big concern is whether Izzo and Crean end up battling for the same types of players once they’re in the same conference. I don’t follow recruiting that closely, but my impression is that Crean has picked up a few guys at Marquette who were just on the edge of getting offers from MSU. With Crean at a historically elite Big Ten program, head-to-head recruiting battles may now be unavoidable. Maybe the two of them can make a pact on recruiting territories: Izzo gets Michigan and Ohio; Crean gets Indiana and Illinois. (What, you don’t think Matta and Weber will go along with this plan?)
I do think this makes Izzo’s job a little harder, if only because Crean is a very good coach. The Big Ten will now have five head coaches who have been to a Final Four.* Plus Bo Ryan. Plus two guys who have been to two Sweet Sixteens (Beilein/Lickliter). Plus a guy who’s made two second round NCAA appearances after just four years as a head coach. (Plus two other guys.)
*This was technically true with Sampson at IU, too, but there weren’t a lot of likely options out there for IU to fill the position with now who had Final Four experience.
On a positive note, having a guy whose team plays a more up-tempo style could be good for MSU. If nothing else, the meetings between the two teams once Crean restocks should be fierce and entertaining battles.
Lastly, I think many MSU fans (including this one) hoped Crean would stay at Marquette indefinitely to be our in-case-of-emergency-break-glass back-up plan if Izzo decided to take an early retirement in the next few years for some reason. This move probably takes that option off the table.
Unrelated notes:
Ohio State takes on Ole Miss at Madison Square Garden in the NIT semifinals tonight. 9:20 on ESPN2.
Drew Neitzel will be participating in the annual college three-point shooting championship for seniors in San Antonio. It’s on ESPN at 9:00 pm, Thursday night. Jamar Butler and Chris Lofton are also in the field of competitors. Nice chance for Neitzel to get one more shot at the national stage during his college career.
one positive from this, you have to believe Crean talked to Izzo before taking the job, can we conclude that Izzo gave him reason to believe that Izzo’s not leaving anytime soon, thus taking the IU job was Crean’s best choice??
though, we need to prepare ourselves for ESPN to use the same overhyped storyline everytime we play IU for the next decade. . . coach vs mentor
Good point. When I heard this on this news tonight, I was puzzled and irritated. Puzzled because Tom Crean is far above the fiasco that has defined IU for the last several years. Irritated because he was our presumptive ace in the hole for down the road, and he’s a darn good coach. Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe we’ll have Izzo on board for longer than we think. He’s made comments in the past that he doesn’t want to be coaching into his 60s. He’s 54, I believe, but many had predicted that he would only be around for just a few more seasons (before this season). This puts a new twist on the games w/IU. Crean’s a great guy who runs a model program, but Indiana is mere inches away Michigan on the despise-o-meter for this Spartan fan.
Hmm…time for a new mantra: Crean’s nothing without Dwyane Wade, right? RIGHT?!? (Blech.)
Spartalytical, why the mega-hate on IU? Not that I love any other B10 program, but they haven’t beaten us in EL in…forever. We haven’t played great against them down there lately, and now that they’ve hired Crean, they’re definitely going to be a long-term rival of ours, but I can’t summon too much hate for them…yet.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, can die. Slowly and painfully.
Eh, it’s just one of those things. I hated Knight and the way he just bulldogged through everything and everyone. The school tolerated him much longer than it should have, in my opinion. Mike Davis was inept and would have been completely harmless if it wasn’t for his incessant crying about everything under the sun. Even throughout his accidental trip to the Championship game in 2002 he cried and made it all about himself. Kelvin Sampson was a boneheaded hire from the start and I don’t care for the golden parachute they gave him instead of manning up and firing him for the just cause that the school irrefutably had. I’ve known many IU fans who were insufferable with regard to their storied tradition and its apparent ability to transcend the last 15 or so years of mediocrity. Throw in a peppering of kids over the years like Gordon, Jefferies, Guyton, Chaney, whom I never liked and thought were overhyped, and it just culminates to one of those things.
I suspect there’s hope, however. I used to throw Purdue in the same category (almost) as IU as I never liked Keady and his seemingly perpetual arsenal of 11-year players (see Cardinal, Martin, etc.), but now I’m behind them all the way with what Matt Painter’s doing there. If anyone’s going to start the process of changing my views toward IU, Crean might be the guy to do it. Until then, I’ll simply be conflicted.
Next to Michigan and Indiana, Wisconsin’s third — not to worry.
Well, there you go. I always thought that this was the biggest downside for MSU whenever a big caoching vacancy came up: losing Crean as emergency back-up for an Izzo burn-out. This couldn’t last, at some point somebody was going to offer the guy who returned Marquette to 20+ win seasons. This is all good, though, as we should want Big Ten competition to improve. I’m not so sure Crean would’ve been happy waiting for Izzo to step down anyway — moving out to head coach on his own at 33 speaks to an independence and ambition, much like Izzo’s when he took over MSU bball, to build his own program into prominence. With IU suddenly going through turmoil again, Crean gets his chance.
I am a much bigger fan of Big10 teams when they suck, and I was really looking forward to 3-4 seasons of Steve Alford running IU into the ground. Sadly, they went out and hired a good coach who will probably have them competitive in a season or two, depending on what the sanctions are.
I guess this means exciting, competitive games down the road, but I would hate to see us in another death spiral like we are with Wisconsin (who I cannot stand right now). As it is, we get blown out at Assembly Hall nearly every year anyway.
I have to admit, it’s a terrific hire for IU, they got a good coach who runs a clean program, can recruit, and will fit into the Big10 “style”. One knock on Crean was his holier-than-thou demeanor at Marquette, so it should be interesting to see how that plays out at IU.
I hadn’t heard of the ‘holier-than-thou’ness, Mark, could you elaborate a little more?
Witless Chum,
Chris West has a post up giving his take on Crean. Bascially paints him as Izzo without the softer public side to take the edge off his hard-nosed on-court demeanor.
http://chriswesthoops.blogspot.com/2008/04/tom-creans-leaving-huh.html
Thanks, KJ. West sounds like he’s trying hard to be fair despite disliking Crean. He must not have been happy back in December when Marquette beat the Badgers and it looked like they were headed for a down year.
His criticisms of Crean’s in-game coaching are interesting and hopefully that’s something that can be exploited in the coming years.
(Although his Wisconsin schedule bot on the right of the page was threatening to make me angry. Ampersand asterisk percentage sign Wisconsin!)
Of course, Crean’s reliance on set plays in late-game situations is something he picked up from Izzo. Arguably, Big Ten teams having been exploiting MSU’s set-play tendencies in the last couple years, as the plays don’t seem to be as effective as they used to be.