“I’d like to get a lot done in a short period of time.”
That sentiment reverberated throughout IU men's basketball coach Tom Crean’s lecture Monday night in his first address to the Bloomington public. The speech was the first of its kind from an IU basketball coach since Bob Knight’s coaching tenure.
While Crean stressed the patience that both fans and administration will have to have in rebuilding the program, he made his personal goals clear. “Your head coach won’t be real patient,” said Crean. “Trying to keep it in perspective? Yes. Real patient? No.”
He didn’t need a long list of notes or even a PowerPoint presentation to present himself—it seems he naturally speaks in acronyms. “We have a responsibility to CARE,” said Crean, having previously explained his duty to Coach Attitude and Respect Everyday. “Thank God we’re at a place that has the tradition of this program.”
Of course, the poor state of the basketball program in the past six months had to be addressed at some point. Crean did so by insisting that he will expect his players to be competent, reliable, trustworthy and sincere, citing the 19 Fs within the program this past April.
“Changes had to be made,” he said. And I wish there was a way around it. But there was no way around it. There was no way around gutting this program and getting it to a point where those standards were looked at with respect, with honor and with hope.”
“We’re not thinking about last week, last month, or the last six months,” he added. “We’re thinking about tomorrow.”
Crean is also thinking about rebuilding a serious sense of competitiveness and “togetherness” that he feels is currently lacking.
“With this Playstation society we live in, where all you have to do is press the reset button, you have to keep coming after it,” he said, adding that his staff doesn't only focus on the basket itself, but the path it took to get there. "Did you make a pass to the post and the guy turned over but yet you gave up a shot to give another guy with more of a close range shot a better one? That’s all part of the Indiana system.”
A self-described traditionalist, Crean was able to drop names from of past Hoosier teams so quickly that he may have baffled some of the most diehard fans in the crowd.
“It is so easy for me to talk about these former players,” he said. “It is so easy for me to talk about these great teams. It is so easy for me to talk about the 24 national championships in Indiana and all the different sports because I got to live in this air and I got to see it.”
It’s true. Crean continually stated that he has been a fan of IU basketball since the age of 10 and “it never ever went bigger than Indiana” to him. He watched the Hoosiers with “that coach on the sidelines in that God-ugly plaid coat.” But he was sure to separate himself from coaching legend Bob Knight.
“People have stories about the Bob Knight days in here. They have stories about somebody walking in late with his hat on and Bob Knight stopping the speech and telling him to take it off. I’m not going to do that. That wouldn’t be me—unless that hat says Purdue or Wisconsin or something like that.”
Perhaps Crean’s most aggressive stance was his call for students to take an active role in supporting the team. Citing the fact that IU has the most student ticket sales, he gave the audience a preview of his vision for the future of Indiana basketball.
“We’re trying to make it to where people are absolutely fearful when they walk into Assembly Hall,” he said. “When they have to walk down that long hallway…and have to walk by all those championship pictures, and they have to walk down the staircase where they see all the All-Americans. And then they have to walk right up there where you feel like you’re about three-foot eight. And then you walk into the game and there are 17 and a half thousand people – and when they stand up you feel like they’re going to fall on top of you.”
-----
Crean’s primary request was that fans “come in there on a day-to-day basis … for Hoosier Hysteria, scrimmages, and most importantly, those games.”
Hoosier Hysteria is October 17. Also, mark your calendars for the games listed on the
2008-09 men’s basketball schedule.
Linear Mode
