Indiana basketball was built on defense. If you watch the Perfect in ’76 film on Showtime, it’s a reminder of the elements that made IU successful. Yes, Knight was known for his motion offense, but defense is what he preached to his players. If you didn’t play defense, you didn’t play at all. And I don’t want to hear people say “it’s a different era.” There are plenty of college coaches who teach defense and make defense a priority in their programs.

Crean has failed to create culture at IU. There’s no clear system, and there are no clear priorities to his approach. The only thing he ever says after a loss is “Shots didn’t fall tonight.” Well, great coaches teach their players to find other ways to win.

Another note: Remember when we thought CTC had come to Indiana and locked down the state? Take a look at next year’s recruiting class. Whatever happened to Indiana high school players wanting to play at Indiana?

Time for change. Crean isn’t good enough for Indiana.

ssob

You named 2 sophmores on an underperforming team with less than 30 games each as “success stories”. Sheehey was a solid role player on a team where his being the 4th-5th option allowed him to capitalize to the tune of 10-12 points a game. Oladipo was a once in a generation find and development. These are nice stories and would be front page for a cincinnati or Northwestern, but you need some 5 stars around those 3-4 year core guys in order to compete for a championship every year. IU has the facilities, money, tradition, campus, fanbase, location, state affiliation to present absolutely no excuse to have 2 straight years of no top 100 Indiana bred talent on campus much less the surrounding states. Not that it matters, because the in game coaching tends to put a lower ceiling (sweet 16) than the actual talent he is recruiting, but a Malik Monk can overcome coaches bad x’s and o’s to an extent if he can score 30-40 on his own. I’d rather watch the perennial powerhouse that IU deserves and had become accustomed to than a few 3 or 4 stars become a double-double guy after 4 years of hit and miss. If Crean could actually mold each year’s team into a squad that could win by playing good team basketball and good team defense (a la Brad Stevens) then your argument for relaxing about the talent ratings would hold a lot more water. But instead we end up wasting 2 of 4 years on a once in a decade PG like Yogi, waiting for the talent around him to mature. It plays out over and over, 2 wasted seasons for one fun run at a sweet 16. Don’t get me wrong, the couple of BIG championships are nice, but as mentioned, the resources available to a coach at IU should be setting that standard a lot higher for competitiveness year in and year out.

Nova with Jay Wright

Then why are you on this site

“Name a coach who has a better reputation for developing players than Crean – not talking about rosters full of one and done 5 star players.”

One who comes to mind is the coach of the defending national champs, Villanova’s Jay Wright.

Tom Izzo comes into my mind even though lately he kind of likes to recruit one and dones too

Text him and see Kelvin!

Is Bamba looking at us now?

That said, as frustrating as it is to see programs like Miami and Xavier plucking Indiana kids, it speaks very well of Crean and IU that we were in the top five for Preston and the top three for Wilkes. Gotta think a lot of good four-star recruits will look at that and say, “Hey, if it’s good enough for those guys…”

I agree to a certain extent, but the top kids know they are going to get PT regardless of who is already on the roster. Also, I don’t think CTC wants to turn IU into One & Done U (aka UK). He realizes that to build a true winning program you need most of your recruits to stay 3-4 years, because those kids form the backbone of Championship teams. This philosophy allows him to recruit an OG and Victor and let them develop properly. In both cases they are smart hard working kids and freakish athletes. All they needed was good coaching.

That said, you still need an elite player or two to win Championships. It drives me crazy that we seem to get close with so many top kids and then lose them. As we saw against Kansas we are one back to being one of the elite programs. With our history, facilities and CTC’s (and his staff) ability to help kids improve their games, you would figure kids would be beating down the door to go to IU, but they aren’t. We continue to be the bridesmaid and Wilkes is the classic example.

I had the same thought. He said he is announcing on the 13th but I dont see any articles where he has actually officially chosen UCLA.