Crean crosses his fingers with NCAA
How long until Tom Crean doesn’t regret taking the Indiana job? Two years? Three? Four?
There’s going to be time when Crean has the Hoosiers winning. It may not be soon, but it’ll come. But when it finally arrives, just how exhausted is he going to be?
Because Crean sounds like a coach who’s desperately hoping the worst has passed.
The NCAA infractions committee is going to decide in the next few weeks if it will impose more sanctions on Indiana stemming from a phone-call scandal that occurred under ex-coach Kelvin Sampson. It’s already hammered the Hoosiers, stripping the school of three scholarships this season and placing a limit on visits and calls to recruits.
So Monday, Crean asked for mercy.
“We’ve paid a price, a lot of people have paid the price and it’s been a serious price,” Crean said Monday in Indianapolis before participating in the Basketball Hall of Fame Showcase golf tournament. “So I say let’s move forward because (the program) is already behind, way behind, where it should be and where it could be.”
Indiana only has two returning players from last season. One of those, Kyle Taber, is recovering from knee surgery and could be out until Dec. The roster includes two junior college transfers, eight freshmen and only three players taller than 6-foot-6.
No wonder Crean hopes the NCAA is done dishing it out.
Among other things, it’s making recruiting – especially at a storied program like Indiana – tougher than it should be.
“I think you try to explain past precedent to them (recruits),” Crean said. “When you’re not seen at their games or at their school, it is hard to talk to them, and you feel like it will be a lot more work.”
Even if more penalties are handed down, the Hoosiers are unlikely to reach the severity of Kentucky’s 1989 ruling, when it received three years’ probation and was banned from postseason play for two seasons. Rick Pitino’s first season in Lexington wasn’t pretty (when he had eight scholarship players and no one taller than 6-7), but by 1993 the ‘Cats reached the Final Four. Three years later, they won the national title.
Could Indiana recover that quickly? Don’t count against Crean, who hasn’t wasted any time while in Bloomington.
Still, for a coach with a Final Four berth to his credit, getting the Hoosiers to the Final Four by 2012 would be the biggest accomplishment of his career.
