Honest mistake? Reports of Crean's Indiana demise may be premature
If I’m being honest, and I plan to be, I expected to come into Assembly Hall on Tuesday night and see a mediocre-at-best Indiana Hoosiers team drudge along against an undermanned Pittsburgh team.
Sure, I still expected the Hoosiers would win, but I didn’t think it would be pretty. It was a home game, and a home game Indiana desperately needed after last week’s embarrassing home loss to Eastern Washington. Before tipoff, I heard one fan say, “Crean needs this win. Bad.”
But I expected the win to be a byproduct not of Indiana’s dominance, but rather Pittsburgh’s deficiencies — Cameron Wright, the Panthers’ leading returning scorer, has been out with an injury since the preseason, and Durand Johnson, whom some projected to lead this Pitt team in scoring, is suspended for the season. I thought this would be a clunky, uneven performance from a clunky, uneven Indiana team, one more step toward a second straight season without an NCAA tournament berth, one more step toward another black mark on Tom Crean’s recent résumé.
Back in February, in the midst of a season of too many turnovers and too few wins, a piece of metal fell from the ceiling of Assembly Hall, and a Big Ten game had to be postponed. It was perhaps the most heavy-handed metaphor in sports history: The ceiling was literally caving in on Indiana basketball, and on Crean.
And here I am, nine months after the ceiling fell in. Since then, there’s been plenty more bad news for the Hoosiers: a missed postseason, players arrested, a player injured in an alcohol-related incident. I came here expecting to write a story on the sun setting on the Crean era in Bloomington.
But if I’m being honest, I’m instead sitting here in the media room at Assembly Hall after watching the Hoosiers control Pitt from start to finish, a dominating 81-69 win that showed a much more complete team than I expected. And I’m completely rethinking my presumptions about this Indiana team, not to mention my presumptions about Crean’s future at Indiana.
So what is that future? A week ago, after the Eastern Washington loss was piled on top of a bevy of recent controversy surrounding the Indiana basketball program, most people would have said there would be another missed NCAA tournament this season, and that would lead to an empty office where Crean once sat.
A columnist for the Indianapolis Star recently called for Crean’s job, citing an “epidemic” of behavioral problems in the Hoosiers program, with six players implicated in drug or alcohol violations since the end of last season, including Emmitt Holt, who had been drinking — but was not legally intoxicated — when he accidentally struck teammate Devin Davis (also drinking) with a car a month ago, severely injuring Davis.
Was it Crean’s fault these college kids acted like idiots? I don’t think so. College kids act like idiots all the time. I know I did. Did it matter whether it was Crean’s fault? No. Crean is the head of the program. Fair or not, he’ll always be held responsible for the program’s shortcomings.
If you’re ranked No. 1 in the country, like Crean’s team was two seasons ago, these things are more easily forgotten, especially by a giddy fan base. But when Indiana basketball, one of the nation’s most historic programs, misses the postseason last season and appears headed in the same direction the next season, these things are not so easily forgotten. Everything piles up. Fingers are pointed. Jobs are lost.
If I’m being honest, I came here expecting Crean’s future here to be short — as much from a lack of winning as a lack of control over his players’ behavior. This was an Indiana team with little frontcourt depth and a completely different lineup than last season. Four scholarship players had transferred out of the program, and Noah Vonleh had left for the NBA. Losing to Eastern Washington seemed like a harbinger of doom.
But like this Indiana team — and like Crean future here — it is a lot more complicated than that.
First, on the Hoosiers team itself. I was impressed with them on Tuesday night — like, genuinely impressed. So impressed that I came out of the game thinking this team would be in the top half of a deep Big Ten and make the NCAA tournament. This team’s weakness was supposed to be its frontcourt, but on Tuesday night Indiana hung in there with a Pitt team that’s traditionally among the nation’s best rebounding teams. This is a perimeter-oriented team, but Indiana scored 60 percent of its 81 points in the paint.
I knew that James Blackmon Jr., a ridiculously good shooter who leads all freshmen in scoring nationally, was a stud. Ditto for junior Yogi Ferrell, one of the most tantalizing guards to watch in all of college basketball. But plenty of other players jumped out at me Tuesday, specifically in the supposedly struggling frontcourt. Hanner Mosquera-Perea was a great finisher. Troy Williams was energetic and all over the court. And Holt, the player who was involved in the accident that hurt his teammate, was simply great, scoring a team- and career-high 15 points (on 6-of-6 shooting) to go with five rebounds and two blocks.
But secondly, and more importantly, Crean. Most people in the college basketball world I’ve spoken with about Crean don’t have very nice things to say. To put it nicely, he can be kind of a jerk. He has the same intensity as his two brothers-in-law, Jim and John Harbaugh, and that intensity doesn’t seem to have an off switch.
But there’s another, more complicated side to Crean, a side he ought to show more often. For example: A friend of mine who is a college basketball reporter recently had his grandmother pass away. Out of nowhere, he received a touching, personal message from Crean — a guy he knows in passing — offering his condolences.
And on Tuesday night, after Holt had the best game of his Indiana career, Crean sat at the podium talking about these young men and all they have been through. And the coach kept pausing, choking up, nearly crying on several occasions.
A reporter asked if Holt had forgiven himself for his role in Davis’ injury.
“I don’t know,” Crean said. “We tried to make sure he understood right away that he was forgiven, because that could have happened to anybody. You could say, well, you know, you shouldn’t have been there. There’s no question he shouldn’t have been there. There’s no question, OK? But he was. He has to recover from it.”
In a basketball sense, Holt seemed recovered on Tuesday. And the Hoosiers seemed recovered from their bumbling loss to Eastern Washington. They had only nine turnovers, meaning Indiana now ranks in the top 50 in the nation in fewest turnovers. (A season ago the Hoosiers ranked 329th.) This team is rolling, but the big tests loom in the future: neutral-site nonconference games against Louisville, Butler and Georgetown. Then a Big Ten slate that opens at Nebraska and doesn’t get any easier.
Making such sweeping conclusions about any team on Dec. 2 is silly. I know that. It’s especially silly for a team like Indiana that’s potent offensively, not so potent defensively. But still, this Hoosier team might be more than we thought. The chemistry last season was so much better. The scoring was dynamic. So was the ball movement. Louisville probably will run over this team, but wins against the other two tough nonconference opponents would be a huge boost leading into Big Ten play.
“The one thing we haven’t been doing the last couple games is running the ball back at people when they score, almost like we got deflated,” Crean said after the game. “Young people — understanding disappointment is inevitable, but — they get discouraged. Tonight, we didn’t let that be a factor.”
He was talking about basketball. But he might as well have been talking about much bigger things.
Follow Reid Forgrave on Twitter @reidforgrave or email him at ReidForgrave@gmail.com.
