The first time I saw Tom Crean, I didn’t recognize him.
I was walking to Assembly Hall with my parents during my first visit to IU. Strolling through the parking lot, a figure appeared out of Cook Hall. My dad identified him immediately. I, on the other hand, thought he was joking. A quick Google search told me I was in the wrong. The man just ahead of us was Tom Crean. I was 0-for-1 on recognizing perhaps the most famous person in Bloomington.
The reason I bring this story up is twofold. First, it’s a funny story and I would like you to have a chuckle while reading my columns. Second, over the four years that I have been at IU, I have been through a lot with Tom Crean. I respected his recruiting, I critiqued his play calling and I made fun of his odd sideline glances.
Tom Crean is a conundrum. With Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller at the helm, the Hoosiers couldn’t get past a 2-3 zone in the Sweet Sixteen. Last year, with a bunch of freshmen and unknowns in the rotation, the Hoosiers won the Big Ten and upset Kentucky in the tournament. Both teams lost in the Sweet Sixteen, but one was a “failure” and the other was a “success.”
Judging coaches is difficult. As you know and my high school basketball coach liked to remind me, coaches don’t play, they coach. Usually, the blame goes to the man in charge, while the glory goes to the players. This is fine, but it’s also outdated.
Let’s move away from the message boards and social media for a second. Perhaps the best people to ask about Tom Crean are the players playing under him.
“I’m faced with the same adversities he’s faced with,” Victor Oladipo said in a video with USA Today regarding Crean after off-court troubles plagued IU in 2014. “But he’s going to be fine. It’s all about winning basketball games, and he’s a great coach and he’s going to get them to do that.”
“He never gave up on us,” Yogi Ferrell said about Crean after clinching the Big Ten last season. “He kept believing.”
This past week, Crean, the Hoosiers and quite a few journalists who complained about the airfare and types of pretzels in economy made their way to Washington D.C. for Big Ten Basketball Media Day.
Crean talked, as he is wont to do, but never about himself. Listening through the recordings, Crean touched on the future of the team, how the preseason is going and his expectations for the season. He never once discussed legacy or his past and future.
At the last Crean presser I went to, the coach went on a soliloquy about Collin Hartman’s importance to the team and how his latest injury might sideline him for the foreseeable future.
At one point, he even teared up.
The journalists who were there weren’t surprised. He cares about the people who play for him and is doing his best to ensure that they’re at least a bit better at the end of the season than they are at the beginning.
That seems pretty good to me.
gigottfr@indiana.edu
@gott31
