Tom Crean said he took the head coaching job at IU because "It's Indiana."
He was fired today because "It's Indiana."
"The expectations for Indiana University basketball are to perennially contend for and win multiple Big Ten championships, regularly go deep in the NCAA Tournament and win out next national championship—and more after that," IU Athletic Director Fred Glass said in the statement announcing Crean's dismissal.
Glass, and the large majority of Indiana's fan base, expect IU to be a modern blue blood basketball program. The Hoosiers haven't been such since the 1980s with their last national championship coming in 1987.
Crean was plenty of things during his nine-year tenure in Bloomington; a savior pulling the program out of crippling NCAA sanctions from the Kelvin Sampson era, a two-time Big Ten champion, a three-time Sweet 16 contender and a Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2016. He taught teenagers how to be men, took pride in the history of the university and sent graduates into careers and ballers into the NBA.
What ultimately did Crean in was an inability to return Indiana to its once-legendary form. He came to Bloomington for the chance to make history again, never quite could, and now hands a fanbase hungry to return to an era where wearing the candy stipe pants meant being on one of the nation's most prominent teams.
Crean loved Indiana basketball. You could hear it in his voice and in the way he treated program legends like Calbert Cheaney, Scott May and Isiah Thomas like gods among men.
Crean believed in his heart of hearts Indiana was special.
He just couldn't make Indiana special.
But don't begin to think that was from a lack of effort.
Crean was a tireless worker, perhaps to an unhealthy extent. Few coaches slaved over film, notes and quotes quite like him. He studied Ohio State like IU students studied for the most important exams of their undergraduate careers.
He was all-in, all the time.
He put his players first above anything else whether that meant comforting a tearful Thomas Bryant in a Philadelphia locker room after last year's Sweet 16 loss to North Carolina or refusing to sleep while at Devin Davis's hospital room following a car accident that nearly took Davis's life.
Crean cared. A lot. Coaching at Indiana was his world, not just his job.
If you want to know who Tom Crean really was, just go talk to the security guards at Assembly Hall. He'd spend each and every postgame chatting them up about whatever the men and women there wanted to talk about. Win or loss, the visits were always there.
I'm going to interject with a story about myself, which sometimes spells disaster for columnists. But I'm going to do it anyway.
Back in the fall of 2014, I was a sophomore reporter covering the basketball beat for the Indiana Daily Student. I was scared out of my mind of Crean. There was just something about him that intimidated me beyond reason.
After one of the non-conference games, a win over Pittsburgh if I can recall it properly, I walked out of the press room and onto Branch McCracken Court. Crean was there with Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski and his son shooting free throws. Crean was giving the young man some shooting tips.
I didn't want to intervene, so I turned around awkwardly and tried to find the closest exit. Crean saw me and motioned for me to walk over. He introduced me to Wojnarowski as one of the student reporters who was "going to do a fine job" covering his program.
Wojnarowski was kind, and the three of us chatted for a couple of minutes about journalism. I was mostly listening to Crean and Woj share a couple of stories about players and reporters I knew nothing about.
But then Crean turned to me and said, "It doesn't matter if you go into reporting or coaching or anything, if you work as hard as Adrian does you'll be a somebody one day."
Wojnarowski interrupted, brushing that away. He said it was better to work as hard as Crean.
"This guy," he said, "he's the one who outworks everybody."
Crean never left much doubt about that. But it's not about working harder or longer than anyone else, it's about Indiana.
It just wasn't meant to be.
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