Tom Crean and the state of Indiana's basketball program.

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 11, 2011 12:32 PM EST in Indiana Hoosiers Basketball

It's no secret that 2010-11 has not panned out as IU fans had hoped. Most rational fans were not planning on the NCAA Tournament yet, but after improving from six wins in 2008-09 to 10 wins in 2009-10, most IU fans thought continued progress plus a fairly weak non-conference schedule made the NIT a realistic expectation. The NIT remains on the table, but the losses to Northern Iowa, Colorado, and Penn State dropped the likelihood to well below 50 percent.

There have been some rumblings about the progress, about regression, and so on. Many of those rumblings are over-the-top, particularly when they count the Crean era as a failure already. Some of those rumblings come from other fan bases, fan bases whose favored schools would benefit from a perception that Crean is failing and flailing. Still, many of the micro level criticisms hit the mark. I'm troubled by the lack of discernible progress from last year. While I don't have enough information to analyze each substitution decision, Crean's substitutions sometimes have the feel of grab-bagging. I wish the offense provided more looks for excellent shooters like Jordan Hulls and Matt Roth. Nothing I post here should be construed as unqualified support for Crean, as a suggestion that criticism of Crean is off-limits, or that there is any guarantee that IU will win Big Ten championships or advance to the Final Four under Crean's leadership. Still, from a big picture perspective, I think that the alarm is being sounded prematurely.

Any evaluation of Crean's record as Indiana's coach must begin with an evaluation of the roster. Here is a rundown of IU's current roster of scholarship players, arranged in class order :

Seniors:

Jeremiah Rivers. 2006 Rivals 150 ranking: unranked.

Juniors:

Verdell Jones III. 2008 Rivals 150 ranking: 126.

Tom Pritchard. 2008 Rivals 150 ranking: unranked.

Matt Roth. 2008 Rivals 150 ranking: unranked.

Sophomores:

Maurice Creek: 2009 Rivals 150 ranking: 56

Christian Watford: 2009 Rivals 150 ranking: 41

Derek Elston: 2009 Rivals 150 ranking: 103

Jordan Hulls: 2009 Rivals 150 ranking: 107

Bobby Capobianco: 2009 Rivals 150 ranking: not ranked.

Freshmen:

Victor Oladipo: 2010 Rivals 150 ranking: 141

Will Sheehey: 2010 Rivals 150 ranking: 144

Another thing. Nothing that I say in this post should be construed as any sort of insult to our players. I love our players. They all decided to enroll at IU when our program was in a bad spot with no guarantee of short-term success. Like most athletes who earn high Division I scholarships, they aren't used to losing, and unlike those of us who are fans, they can't escape it by going to work or taking a walk or by thinking about something else. Every single one of them is a legitimate Big Ten player. All that said, I don't think that our current roster, considering talent, experience, and composition, is anything approaching an average Big Ten roster.

Here's what I take from a look at the roster:

We are young. It's easy to forget, because so many of this year's contributors contributed last year, that this remains a really young team. Of IU's 11 scholarship players on the active roster, only four are juniors and seniors. According to Ken Pomeroy's experience rating, IU ranks #289 in Division I with an average of 1.33 years of experience. In the Big Ten, only Iowa and Michigan have worse ratings.
We aren't overwhelmingly talented. Of course, recruiting rankings aren't the final word, but they certainly are a rough measurement of talent. Of IU's eleven scholarship players, only two, Christian Watford (#41) and Maurice Creek (#56), were ranked in the top 100 by Rivals. As anyone who has watched IU knows, Creek currently is a shadow of his pre-kneecap fracture self, and may not be back to 100 percent until next year (and there's no guarantee that he ever will be the same, frankly). The current composition of the roster is of two top 100 recruits; 5 players who were ranked between 100 and 150; and four who weren't ranked at all. Also, the talent IU does have skews young. As noted above, IU's young roster has only four upperclassmen. Of those four, only one, Verdell Jones III, who was ranked #123, was ranked even in the top 150. Much is made of IU's 2009 recruiting class, ranked in the top 10 by most services. Comparing one school's recruiting class to another is tough business, because it requires a balance of quantity and quality. IU's 2009 recruiting class was a six man class, with only two top 100 players but with three players (Hulls, Elston, and Bawa Muniru) ranked between 100 and 150. It was a nice class, but certainly not a class with a bunch of impact players.
The roster is not well-constructed. We don't have a true point guard. Verdell Jones has some skills in that regard but does not take good care of the ball. Jordan Hulls is better in that regard, but isn't big or athletic enough to create his own shot very often. Our post men (Pritchard, Elston, and Capobianco) are a bit undersized for that role. Christian Watford is our best and most talented player, but he is forced to play out of position because of the team's frontcourt deficiencies. I couldgo on and on, and have before. I certainly don't blame Tom Crean for this. He has recruited reasonably well under the circumstances. Within a week or so after he took the job in 2008, Crean was left with two recruited scholarship players: Roth and Pritchard, guys who had signed with IU when Sampson was the coach (I don't count Kyle Taber because he was a walk-on, not a recruited scholarship player). Crean did what he had to do to field a team in 2008-09. The 2009 recruiting class, while not loaded, was a strong effort, particularly considering that Crean was able to land two top 100 prospects from other parts of the country. The 2010 recruiting class was panned, but both Oladipo and Sheehey appear to be outperforming their barely-top 150 ratings. Certainly, Crean was well aware of the deficiencies at the point and in the post. He went all out for elite point guard Kyrie Irving, who eventually landed at Duke. He brought in a seven footer, Guy Marc Michel, only to lose him because of an arcane and repealed NCAA rule that calls certain players professionals even if they haven't been paid to play basketball.

As I said, none of those things mean that Crean is above criticism. Even if everything that I said about talent is true, this team still should be better than the Creek-less squad that went 5-13 in the Big Ten last year. There are innocent explanations for this: the Big Ten is, according to the computer ratings, the best conference in the country, and nearly every Big Ten team is as good or better than last seasons. All of us have been hoping for years for the Big Ten renaissance, a return to the 1980s and early 1990s where every game (except Northwestern and Wisconsin and Penn State) was tough. We're there, but unfortunately, this came at exactly the wrong time for IU's program. Still, I'm a bit troubled by what I see on defense, especially. I understand that Crean doesn't want to abandon his offense because of what he views as a short-term talent deficiency. The defensive lapses are tougher to explain or excuse.

Finally, this isn't an original point. It's been kicking around the Internet for a couple of days. No IU fan should ever have been under the illusion that Tom Crean was a coach like Bo Ryan or Pete Carril. He's not a coach who is interested in a system that is expressly designed to allow undertalented teams to find a way to win more than their share. He runs an offense that requires talent, but the current crop of signed and committed recruits suggests that his system is attractive to elite talent. For 29 years, of course, IU fans had the best of both worlds in Bob Knight, a system coach who also attracted plenty of elite recruits. Had IU gone another direction in 2008, yet had the same exodus, where would we be? It's impossible to know. It's certainly possible, perhaps even likely, that a Bo Ryan-type coach could be getting more out of this current roster than Crean is getting. I think it's possible, if he were willing to abandon his offense and dramatically change things, that Crean himself could be getting more out of this team than he is. I don't think Crean is clueless. I think he has made a determination that eking into the NIT with this team is not this program's endgame. Accumulating the sort of talent that is needed to compete for Big Ten and NCAA championships is his endgame, and he wants the current roster immersed in that system once the top tier talent arrives.

Prior to coming to Indiana, Crean had never had a losing season as a head coach. He made it to the postseason 8 times in 9 years at Marquette. He took the Golden Eagles to their only Final Four appearance of the last three decades. He managed a seamless transition from Conference USA to the Big East. He won two thirds of his games at Marquette. He was Michigan State's recruiting coordinator in the mid 1990s when the Spartans seized control of Michigan recruiting from the Michigan Wolverines, just a couple of years after the Fab Five. This guy didn't suddenly get stupid when he came to Indiana. He's an accomplished coach, and there is no doubt in my mind that he can win big at Indiana.

Again,I certainly buy into lots of the micro-level criticisms, as noted above. But on a macro level, I think we're in good shape.

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Youth

Michigan is tied for the 12th youngest team in all of NCAA Basketball. While Indiana is 59th in the nation.

by Delaware Boiler on Jan 11, 2011 1:09 PM EST reply actions

Yeah, I noted in the article that both Iowa and Michigan are younger. Still, that puts IU in the youngest 17 percent of teams.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 11, 2011 1:19 PM EST reply actions

/slow clap

All well-stated, John. Your point comparing Crean to Bo Ryan, Pete Carril, (and unstated, to John Calipari) is especially right on point. Every IU fan has three expectations of the program: upper echelon of the Big Ten every year; regularly compete for Final Four and National Championships; and do all of this with student athletes whom you are proud of (and double bonus if they are from Indiana). It’s important to note that those are the expectations of the program — NOT of this year’s team. Ryan can win in the Big Ten and do so with good kids; he’s not regularly challenging for the Final Four. Calipari does not even need to be discussed.

Painter gets thrown out there, too, for comparison a lot. Painter is a great coach with a great system which is in the upper echelon of the Big Ten every year with good kids. He inherited a program that was down, but the transition was smooth and it was nowhere near the black hole that Sampson left. Painter has yet to prove that he can challenge for a Final Four. Three months from now, that may be a different story.

Also: I, for one, did not appreciate the enormity of the devastation wrought by the denim-shirted bastard.

/vomits

I agree that Crean is not above criticism. I, for one, do not want him to compromise the growth of the program for a couple of extra wins this season and a hollow visit to the NIT. I do, however, want to see better progress on defense. That’s his responsibility, and better defense will lead to transition offense, making strategy decisions somewhat easier. I want to see them play every game, for 40 minutes with the same fire they showed at Minnesota. But statements like “he’s the wrong guy” or “he’ll never hang a banner” are stupidly premature. There is no award or gold star for saying “I told you so”.

by hoosierdaddynow on Jan 11, 2011 2:11 PM EST reply actions

And I think it’s far from a foregone conclusion that a coach like Ryan would have the recruits lined up the way Crean does. One of the reasons all of the pre-Zeller reporting stung, all the stuff about how Purdue and Butler are in really good shape, is because it’s true. Our collapse occurred at precisely the time that our conference and in-state opponents were getting really good. There’s nothing in the Indiana Code that mandates that IU have a good basketball program. There’s no guarantee that just any coach could have obtained commitments from Creek and Watford considering the state of the program in summer 2008. There’s certainly no guarantee, even if the W/L records were modestly better, that most other coaches could have obtained commitments from Zeller and the other guys.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 11, 2011 5:46 PM EST up reply actions

With all of the other crap that makes its way out of the General Assembly

You’d think that there would be something in the Indiana Code which does mandate that IU have a good program.

by hoosierdaddynow on Jan 12, 2011 7:07 AM EST up reply actions

An apoligy from any Purdue fant hat might stop by

I realize many of our fans are jaded by how well the “Baby Boilers” did as freshmen. they use that to through at guys like Watford, Creek, and Oladipo and wonder why Indiana can’t achieve success. I think the “Baby Boilers” were a special class that just meshed so perfectly that it is very rare to see that happen.

Other Purdue fans will throw that IU fans, but in reality, what we had is very rare and hasn’t resulted in a Final Four yet (Though the Robbie injury is an X-factor).

A futile crusade to prevent mass ignorance

HammerAndRails, SBNation's Boilermaker Blog

by BoilerTMill on Jan 11, 2011 3:40 PM EST reply actions

I think you are absolutely right about the Baby Boilers. Robbie Hummel was ranked #75 in that class, yet he clearly was one of the best players in the Big Ten from the moment he set foot on the court. That just doesn’t happen every day. I didn’t bring up Painter in the original post because I didn’t want it to turn into an IU-versus-Purdue issue, although it always is to some degree.

I think Painter is a really good coach, but I think the counter-example to the Baby Boilers is Terone Johnson. Johnson is the #51 recruit in the current freshman class. He would be the second-ranked recruit on IU’s team if he were on our roster. Currently, Johnson is playing 20 minutes a game, averaging about 6 points per game, and is shooting 33 percent from the field, 24 from behind the arc. That doesn’t mean he sucks, it doesn’t mean that Painter has failed him, and it doesn’t mean he won’t be a formidable player a year or three. It means he’s a freshman. Yet, if he were on IU’s roster, he would be playing 30-plus minutes a game and would be a focal point for opposing defenses, and God knows what his shooting percentages would look like. Part of building a program is being able to bring in younger players to mesh with older guys who know the ropes. I think we are getting there, but slowly.

You’ve justifiably poked IU fans about counting their chickens before they hatch with the recruits. Frankly, I don’t even think about the freshmen and sophomores. But with Zeller signed, and Ferrell and Perea only 10 months from signing, I think the excitement is to some degree, because they are in the echelon where a bust or a project is much less likely.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 11, 2011 4:04 PM EST up reply actions

Chickens, eggs, etc.

And, dammit, because THAT’S ALL WE HAVE RIGHT NOW.

by hoosierdaddynow on Jan 11, 2011 4:43 PM EST up reply actions

Apology accepted

And not necessary. I have honestly questioned the comparison to Painter and the Baby Boilers myself. The conclusion that I keep coming back to is that it is impoossible for guys like me to comprehend how bad the situation actually was in April, 2008, when Crean came in. It was literally like starting a program from scratch. Painter had an established (if somewhat down) program with a system well established. And the Baby Boilers had leadership from upperclassmen and even Kramer. To an even greater extent, that’s what you see at tOSU this year: very good upperclassmen and supremely talented Freshmen.

So, even though the apology is accepted, I wish that Purdue fans would just sit back and enjoy their very, very good team, and let us wallow quietly in our misery. With our Old Oaken Bucket.

by hoosierdaddynow on Jan 11, 2011 4:42 PM EST up reply actions

Great Post John

Your remarks match my feeling exactly about where this program is vs where we all hope its going.

by ruascott on Jan 11, 2011 11:39 PM EST reply actions

Pssst, John

You are drawing a fair amount of praise over at ITH. Don’t let it go to your head. Seriously, though, I believe that you have captured the feeling of a very large percentage of the fan base with this article. It’s important to hear this now, because there is a lot of pointless and stupid chatter in comments to newspaper articles, callers to talk radio, and the like.

by hoosierdaddynow on Jan 12, 2011 12:24 PM EST reply actions

Yeah, I saw that. I’ll certainly take the compliments when they come. I don’t begrudge the negativity, and I certainly provided some in this piece. But I do think it’s important to push back against the idea that the sum total of Tom Crean’s career and ability is what we have seen in the last 2.5 seasons.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 12, 2011 12:35 PM EST up reply actions

Thanks for being a rare voice of reason in a sea of stupidity.

We need more of that right now. I get so tired of hearing the out-of-touch-with-reality fans that think we should win games just because we step on the court with “Indiana” on the front of our jerseys. I am in no way satisfied with our recent performance, but I also realize that we don’t have a real large margin for error right now. Better talent is coming, and once it arrives we will be able to truly judge Crean’s ability to win at Indiana. Until then I believe he deserves the benefit of the doubt because he was the best coach willing to take on this mess.

by acelion on Jan 12, 2011 12:45 PM EST reply actions

Very good write up, but...

I agree with you about the being young and in-experienced, and about all the “Baby Boiler” stuff at Purdue in 07, and even Terone Johnson now, but what makes people mad is not that IU is losing, but how they are losing. For instance, after the first B10 game against PSU Mo Creek said in his press conference that they weren’t “mentally” prepared..WHAT??! How can you not be mentally prepared after losing 3 straight and opening big 10 play AT HOME to a conference bottom feeder..Regardless of talent, un-preparedness goes back to the coaching staff. Then watching the Minnesota, and even some of the Northwestern game, IU had a chance in those games but (especially against Northwestern) got beat again and again by back door cuts and too often left shots uncontested..that goes back to the coaching staff. and I can’t even begin to speak about the classlessness of Derek Elston. He should be benched for at least a whole game. Back at the end of the Keady era at PU, his teams were downright awful, no shooters, no scorers, or nothing, but each night they gave 110 percent effort and they played defense and won a few games they maybe shouldn’t have.
I understand everybody wants to win and if you lose giving 110 % then that is fine by me but don’t go out there half-a**’ed because that is what really makes people mad.

by BleedCubbieBlue09 on Jan 13, 2011 3:08 PM EST reply actions

I don’t put a ton of stock in postgame comments from players. What was he supposed to say: that they were perfectly focused? Obviously they were not. I don’t think I let the coaching staff off the hook in my post. The defense is particularly troubling. NU is a tough team to defend, but that doesn’t completely explain the performance either.

I think you are overly romanticizing Keady’s last few teams. Remember, Gene’s last team lost at home to a post-apocalyptic Baylor team that finished 1-15 in the Big 12. And that team, while not great, had future NBA player Carl Landry.

I don’t think the Elston thing is that big of a deal. The officials saw it happen and identified it as an intentional foul but not a flagrant foul. It was a poor decision, but I don’t think it mandates a suspension.

Are you an IU fan or a Purdue fan? I can’t tell from your profile. Not that it undercuts your points. I’m just curious.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on Jan 13, 2011 4:02 PM EST up reply actions

Born in Indy

My dad graduated from Krannert buisness school at Purdue and my mom, Kelly at IU. I don’t much get into the whole fan hood of either, just like watching the teams play, rooting for Indiana schools(except Notre Dame) and I like to follow the recruits also and hate the ones (cough teague cough who go to UK or Ohio State or MSU

by BleedCubbieBlue09 on Jan 14, 2011 10:13 AM EST reply actions