Indiana Basketball: Will Tom Crean Ever Match Bob Knight’s Success?
“It’s Indiana,” Hoosiers coach Tom Crean proudly reminded the media at his introductory press conference over five years ago. “What I feel is the pinnacle, the absolute pinnacle, of all of college basketball.”
The sentiment, the aura rang true. Crean was now the head coach of one of the most historically successful basketball programs in the nation.
But this wasn’t your grandfather’s Hoosiers.
The tradition of Indiana basketball never left. But the current product was a far cry from the program it used to be. Indiana was no longer a mainstay as one of the nation’s elites.
Nearly three decades of prosperity under Bob Knight—highlighted by three National Championships, five Final Four appearances and 11 Big Ten titles—was replaced by a decade of mediocrity after his dismissal in 2000.
A national championship appearance was sprinkled in with many of Knight’s recruits in April 2002, but that success ultimately proved to be an aberration, rather than a sign of things to come for six seasons under Mike Davis.
The short-tenured Kelvin Sampson sealed the Hoosiers’ fate as a diminished program, summoning NCAA sanctions that crippled the team for three years after his resignation.
The program Tom Crean inherited in 2008 was damaged. But not beyond repair.
It may have appeared so during Crean’s first three seasons—seasons that saw a combined 28 wins compared to 66 losses—but consecutive Sweet 16 appearances and a Big Ten championship later, and Indiana has been revived.
The electricity has returned to Assembly Hall. Indiana is once again an attractable destination for the nation’s top recruits. It took time. It took patience. But under Crean’s guidance, the Hoosiers have resurfaced as a contender.
Surely that won’t be enough to satisfy Indiana’s rabid fanbase, though. Returning the program to the standard that was prevalent under Knight, whether fair to Tom Crean or not, will be demanded.
But is Indiana basketball capable of reaching the heights it was propelled to under Knight with Crean at the helm?
Nobody is asking Crean to be Coach Knight. Personality-wise, they may be polar opposites. Crean isn‘t the hot-headed dictator Knight was, nor was Knight the spirited program salesman that exemplifies Crean.
More importantly, nobody in their right mind should expect Crean to match Knight’s longevity. Crean, in all likelihood, will never coach the Hoosiers for 29 years or earn the program 662 wins.
If matching Knight’s success means challenging or even sniffing his records and accumulated accomplishments, Crean doesn’t stand a chance. But matching the caliber of any given team Knight coached, save the undefeated 1976 squad, and doing so consistently is the next step for Crean and the program.
Indiana contending year in and year out for Big Ten titles and national championships is the standard Knight set. And that’s what’s expected of the Hoosiers once again and, in turn, what’s expected of Tom Crean.
Tom Crean as the recruiter, the program promoter is proving capable of much. Landing 5-star prospect Cody Zeller two years ago may have been the turning point in Indiana’s emergence. Top-five caliber recruiting classes in 2012 and 2013 should cement the turnaround.
Talent will no longer be an issue. There will be an abundance of it in Bloomington. And less top recruits from the talent-rich state of Indiana should bolt for the Ohio States of the world like Greg Oden and Deshaun Thomas did.
Crean’s teams could be every bit as talented as Knight’s. But talent alone won’t raise banner six. It’s up to Crean to maximize the potential of the talent he’s brought in, to put that talent in position to be not only good, but great.
Crean had national championship-caliber talent in 2012. Two Naismith Award nominees in Victor Olidipo and Cody Zeller helped make that argument. Despite claiming the program’s first outright Big Ten regular season title since the 1992-93 season, the Hoosiers never played to their potential.
Indiana could have been a dominant team last season. Instead, Hoosier fans were left with brief spells of brilliance on a roller coaster ride campaign that proved just good enough for a one seed but too inconsistent for a legitimate championship push.
In a season stricken with parity among national powerhouses and mid-majors alike, Indiana was one of the few teams talented enough to surface as the clear-cut best team in the country. But they never did. And the onus has to fall on Tom Crean.
Critics complained Crean subbed too much, played an ineffective 2-3 zone too often, and was outcoached by the likes of Brad Stevens, Bo Ryan (twice), and Jim Boeheim.
The Hoosiers’ up-tempo transition offense accounted for the fifth most points per game in the entire country (78.6), but their 13.0 turnovers per contest was third worst in the Big Ten. It’s a prime example of the discrepancy that prevented Indiana from being great a season ago. And once again, the blame has to fall on the head coach.
Tom Crean has brought Indiana back to national prominence. But just being relevant in the big picture isn’t good enough in the Hoosier state. Being the “pinnacle” of the college basketball landscape, as Crean so eloquently put it in 2008, is the aim.
The Hoosiers haven’t arrived to that caliber of status yet. Crean has certainly loaded them with the talent to do so.
But until he proves that he can match his basketball IQ, his ability to mold a team to be more than the sum of its parts, with his ability to sell the program, he’ll never match the success Bob Knight had at Indiana.
Not for one season. Not consistently. Not ever.
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Coach K Says the New ACC Is the Best Basketball League Ever: Is He Right?
The point of conference realignment was to make super conferences. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski believes the ACC has succeeded.
In an interview with the ACC Digital Network this week, Coach K and Jim Boeheim agreed that the new-look ACC will be the best ever.
“We’re both proud to be a part of I think what’s going to be the greatest conference in the history of basketball,” Krzyzewski said.
Boeheim added:
You’re taking two great conferences and you’ve brought really the best of the Big East into this great conference, and I just think we have a chance to be special going forward in this conference like nobody’s ever seen in college basketball.
Do the two Hall of Famers have a point? Or is Krzyzewski spouting off some short-sighted hyperbole that should be reserved for conference commissioners?
When Coach K says something, he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt. And from a historical perspective, this claim has merit.
Once Louisville joins the league in 2014, the ACC will feature four coaches currently in the Naismith Hall of Fame—Krzyzewski, Boeheim, Roy Williams and Rick Pitino. That’s never happened before, although the Big East in the late 1980s had four coaches who would eventually make the hall—Pitino, Boeheim, John Thompson and Lou Carnesecca.
The new-look ACC will have four of the top 10 programs and five of the top 12 with the most wins in the history of the game. No other league will have more than two.
The league’s teams will have more Final Fours than any other league and trail only the Pac-12—thanks to UCLA’s 11 titles—for total national championships.
| Final Fours | NCAA Titles | |
|---|---|---|
| ACC | 60 | 15 |
| Big Ten | 51 | 11 |
| Pac-12 | 40 | 16 |
| Big 12 | 36 | 5 |
| SEC | 31 | 11 |
| New Big East | 21 | 2 |
| American | 21 | 5 |
*Vacated Final Fours were counted and each league was represented by the schools that will be in the league in 2014. For instance, Louisville was counted as an ACC school and Maryland as a Big Ten school.
Coach K is talking about the future, so these historical numbers have some relevancy, but only go so far. Taking a look of the last 10 seasons provides a better portrait for the current landscape of each league.
Again, the new-look ACC dominates.
| Final Fours | NCAA Titles | |
|---|---|---|
| ACC | 10 | 4 |
| Big Ten | 7 | 0 |
| Pac-12 | 3 | 0 |
| Big 12 | 4 | 1 |
| SEC | 5 | 3 |
| New Big East | 4 | 0 |
| American | 4 | 2 |
If the ACC could duplicate the last 10 years over the next 10 years, it would rival the most dominant stretches by any league ever.
The only worthy comparisons would be several eras of—go figure—the old ACC and Big East.
- The mid-80s Big East from 1982 through 1989 produced eight Final Four teams and two national champions.
- From 1990 through 1999, the ACC sent 11 teams to the Final Four and had three national champions.
- From 2001 through 2010, the ACC had nine Final Four teams and five national champions.
- The Big Ten’s best era was in the 1980s, producing six Final Four teams and three champs.
Only the AAWU/Pac-8 of the 1960s and 70s can top what the ACC would have done had the schools been together in the last 10 years, and it’s tough to argue that a league was dominant when it was just one team (UCLA) doing all the damage.
The Bruins made 10 straight Final Fours from 1967 through 1976, winning eight titles in that time span, but no other team in their league made the Final Four from 1961 through 1987.
Pretty much any way you evaluate a conference—at least at the top—you cannot argue with Coach K. Even the bottom-feeders have all been relevant at some point in recent memory. Virginia Tech has the longest NCAA tourney drought at six years.
Conference realignment is everything that is wrong with college sports. It’s greed. It’s poor geography. It’s mostly all about football. But for once, it has created some fun scenarios looking forward.
And unless the Big Ten can someday recruit Kentucky and Kansas for its own super basketball league—Gordon Gee would not approve—Coach K and the ACC will have bragging rights.
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Has There Ever Been More Offseason Hype for the Louisville-Kentucky Rivalry?
Two years ago, the border of Kentucky stretched down into New Orleans. At least it felt that way at the Final Four.
There was a lot of buildup to the rivalry taking place at the Final Four for the first time. But even if the Cardinals didn’t admit it publicly, there was a sense that they were just happy to be there and Kentucky winning the national title was close to a foregone conclusion. It’s difficult to really hype a game that hardly felt like a fair matchup.
Still, that meeting had to be the most anticipated in the rivalry’s history. Emphasis on had.
The Dec. 28 date at Rupp Arena is now the most hyped game between these two schools, and I realize the ridiculousness of stating this in May, seven months from tipoff.
But rivalries and ridiculousness go hand in hand. For instance, there are four tickets currently available on Stubhub for the Dec. 28 game. Two of those tickets are currently going for $550 a pop. The other two are going for $600 a pop. All four are in the upper level!
Unless Russ Smith decides he’s not passing the ball this season or Kentucky’s freshmen end up playing like the 2012-13 UK freshmen, these two teams should spend a majority of the season at the top of the polls.
Most preseason polls, in fact, will have Kentucky No. 1 and Louisville No. 2. The preseason argument for “who is No. 1?” is really only a two-team race between the schools—the defending champs vs. the recruiting champs.
The Cardinals are even deeper than they were last season and talented depth plus Rick Pitino‘s full-court pressure could make for a historic season. I’m even crazy enough to believe the Cardinals should be No. 1.
Kentucky’s recruiting class is the best on paper in the history of college basketball. John Calipari signed six McDonald’s All-Americans. He has eight on the roster, plus Willie Cauley-Stein, who DraftExpress.com projects as the 14th pick in the 2014 draft.
That potential makes the Dec. 28 meeting not only the most anticipated in the rivalry’s history but also the most anticipated game for the entire college basketball regular season. (Sorry Duke and North Carolina fans, but you can’t really argue this one.)
For two programs with such great histories, it’s surprising that two of the best teams in each program’s history—which these two are expected to be—haven’t met before.
A stroll through the past delivers one (almost) comparable meeting and a few missed opportunities.
- On Dec. 28, 1985, Kentucky, led by Kenny Walker, beat Louisville 69-64 at Rupp. Kentucky would go on to a 32-4 season and lose in the Elite Eight. Louisville went 32-7 and won the national title. But, according to BigBlueHistory.net, Louisville was ranked only 15th and UK was 13th at the time. (In case you haven’t already, notice the date on that game.)
- In 1980, Louisville won the national title. Kentucky went 29-6 and climbed to No. 2 in the polls at one point, but the two never met that season.
- In 1975, UCLA beat Louisville 75-74 in the national semifinals. UCLA beat Kentucky in the national championship game. Oh, what could have been.
It’s understandable that the excitement for the Dec. 28 game started as soon as the season finished.
If next season plays out as we expect it to, we could potentially get a second meeting like we did in 2012. In an ideal world for bourbon staters, Louisville and Kentucky will both be one seeds. Hopefully, they will be paired on opposite sides of the bracket.
And if that championship game happened, they might as well play the Kentucky state song at the Jerry Dome and send the National Guard to Kentucky.
Let the trash talk begin.
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Ranking Tim Duncan-Gregg Popovich Duo Among Best NBA Player-Coach Combos Ever
With their sweep of the Memphis Grizzlies, Tim Duncan, Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs advance to the 2013 NBA Finals aiming for a fifth title.
Pop and his trusty big man are climbing higher on the list of best player-coach tandems ever.
Fifteen years ago, the player and mentor raised the franchise’s first banner, and so began an era of machine-like efficiency and truckloads of victories.
Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich have 128 postseason wins together, the most by a player-coach duo in NBA history. @eliassports
— NBA History (@NBAHistory) May 28, 2013
We all know that Timmy and Pop are one of the best duos of the last couple decades, but where exactly do they stand among the best player-coach pairs of all time?
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Ben McLemore Will Be One of the Most Underrated Draft Picks Ever
Ben McLemore. Before this season, he was unknown, and essentially a non-factor on every draft board across the country.
As a redshirt freshman, McLemore began the season well out of the spotlight that was being shared by players like Nerlens Noel and Cody Zeller.
As the season went on, however, people (including myself) began to catch on. He’s not just some athletic shooting guard that comes at a dime a dozen. He is going to be an All-Star one day. Maybe even a superstar.
He shot up draft boards while other prospects fell. He has now become one of the very few premiere players in this draft.
Still, despite being at, or near the top, McLemore is entering the draft extraordinarily underrated.
McLemore is the best player in what is considered one of the worst drafts in the past decade or more. Because of this, most people aren’t even paying attention to his star potential.
Sure, you can watch the highlight videos and be impressed. “Everyone is a baller in their highlight videos” a commenter said not long ago. And that’s true, highlight videos (including McLemore‘s) are created to make the player look as amazing as possible.
But I watched around 5 regular season games with McLemore, I’ve seen hours of game tape from him, and I have no problems sitting here calling him incredibly underrated.
The lottery will likely decide where McLemore goes in the draft, but it could be as high as No. 1 overall, and it’s extremely unlikely that he falls out of the top three.
In a weak draft, most people are only giving him golf-clap applause for being such a tremendous player. But whoever selects McLemore in the draft will walk away with a player capable of being drafted at the top of any draft.
He’s incredibly athletic with good length and absolutely absurd leaping abilities. He finishes at the rim very well, and dunks with as much power as anyone you’ll ever see. At 6’5″, McLemore is not a small guy, but his leaping abilities allow him to essentially get eye-level with the rim.
His jump shot is smooth and quick, and he can make it from anywhere. He shot at a blistering 49.5 percent from the floor this season, including a smooth 42 percent from three-point range, with a lot of those three-pointers being NBA-distance shots.
He runs the floor well, finishes at the rim with flair and strength, and is quick on his feet and obviously a very capable wing defender.
Perhaps the only chink in his armor is the fact that he fell off a bit during the tournament, but even during Kansas’ Sweet 16 loss to Michigan, McLemore still recorded 20 points. He’ll also have to work on his ball handling and ability to create his own shots, as right now he’s more of a spot-up shooter.
Favorable comparisons are being made to Ray Allen, but I think McLemore could be even better. Ray Allen isn’t looked upon as one of the best athletes in the game, carving his niche as a pure-shooter (and one of the best shooters of all time), but McLemore is a pure athlete. He might not have as clean of a shot as Allen, but he will command more authority offensively because of his high-motor and athleticism.
Ultimately, this is simply informed speculation. McLemore will almost definitely be an above average player in the NBA, and I don’t really think anyone will dispute that. But above average and All-Star are two completely different things, and McLemore is going to fall into the latter category.
As a Charlotte Bobcats fan, it hurts to know that McLemore would be something of a redundancy on this roster and that Noel makes much more sense to improve the team. But if Charlotte should get the chance to draft him, I should hope that they don’t hesitate, even with Gerald Henderson and Ben Gordon already on the roster (assuming both return).
The Orlando Magic have already made it known (even before workouts) that McLemore is likely going to be their top priority in this year’s draft, even with the dependable Arron Afflalo on the roster.
Teams aren’t overlooking McLemore, and neither are draft boards, all of which have him at or near the top.
But someday down the line, people are going to look back at this weak draft and remember that Ben McLemore was a star in the making. People are going to look at him as one of the most underrated picks of all time, even if he goes No. 1 overall.
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