Crean looks to follow Painter’s example

WEST LAFAYETTE – Hustle.

It’s been the preferred word of IU fans everywhere this year, the shiniest silver lining they can find in a season lacking luster.

Everywhere the Hoosiers have gone, and every time they’ve welcomed a better opponent, other coaches have heaped praise onto IU coach Tom Crean and his team for their competitive fire – which comes incredibly easily when your team just notched a double-digit win.

But after Saturday’s hard-fought, battering loss to Purdue, opposing coach Matt Painter had something a little bit better for the first-year Hoosier and his young crew: understanding.

Painter, who replaced Gene Keady in 2005, endured a 9-19 first season in West Lafayette, strapped with a team whose two best players – Carl Landry and David Teague – were sitting for the year.

The next year, Painter led the Boilermakers to a 22-12 record and put together a solid recruiting class that helped win 25 games the following season and now has Purdue in the top 20.

So he kind of gets what Tom Crean is trying to do.

“You get tired of being competitive,” Painter said. “You get tired of people saying, ‘Hey, you guys played hard.’ You want to win. You don’t want to go out there and play hard, you want to go out there and win the game.”

See if this anecdote, plucked from Painter’s rookie season at Purdue, doesn’t sound familiar:

“We had games within games,” Painter said. “We went to East Lansing one time, got beat by 25, but we’re up by one at half. And I simply told our guys, ‘We won that 20 minutes, but it’s not good enough.’”

That’s not to say playing hard doesn’t have value. The performance IU put on Saturday in the face of overwhelmingly deeper, better seasoned and more talented opposition should be cause for pride within the IU basketball family – and it certainly is.

But busting your butt to go 6-20 doesn’t really put you to sleep at night with a smile. So every once in awhile, it’s nice to hear someone who doesn’t only respect what the Hoosiers are doing, but also what they’re going through.

It should also be pointed out that Painter knows how the other side feels, something IU ought to get a share of in the next year or two.

“At times, he’s playing for another day. And there will be another day,” Painter said of Crean’s situation.

The thought of revenge has to have entered the minds of Hoosiers everywhere: revenge against teams that maybe rubbed it in a little too much this year, revenge against rivals who have used IU like a punching bag, revenge against Bruce Weber because he’s just so Internet-quotable.

It’s something Painter said drove his team after that 19-loss season, and it’s something he said Crean must and will use for motivation when the glass is no longer quite so empty.

“We told our guys in the locker room (that year), ‘They’re laughing at Purdue right now,’” Painter said. “‘But they’re not going to laugh in three or four years.’ ... and I know he’ll use that same logic to build up steam and to build up motivation.”

Painter and Crean aren’t likely to become hunting buddies any time soon, given their positions on opposite sides of this rivalry. But there was a point during Saturday’s action when the two coaches started bantering back and forth about Crean’s admiration of JaJuan Johnson, Purdue’s athletic inside man.

Two men, two program-builders, two young, charismatic coaches charged with nourishing two basketball legacies just two hours away from each other. One has gotten his team where they want to be; the other seems to be on his way.

Crean won’t look past this season or next season or any season. But when he does get there, he and Painter ought to have plenty to talk about.