For you athletic subscribers, which if you're not I definitely recommend if you love good reads on college hoops, Nicole Auerbach's first piece for the site was following Tom Crean around as he prepared to call a game.

Interesting insight into Crean, who I know is a name that's been floated around here a little bit lately.

Would crean myself if we hired Crean.

Crean
Mussleman
Konkol
Pitino (the one at Minnesota)
Jordan (from Butler)
Sampson
A circus monkey

Anything would be better than what we have.

Ervin Burrell said:

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Would crean myself if we hired Crean.

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

EKUAg said:

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

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I'm not saying Crean would be at the top of my list, but this seems like a crazy statement.

Crean made the NCAA's four of his nine years at IU, including three Sweet 16 appearances. At Marquette, he made the NCAA's five of nine years including a Final Four trip.

Now, you could argue that winning at IU is easier than A&M, but Crean took over that program after the Kelvin Sampson debacle. They flat out sucked when he got there.

Hahahahah. Can't stop laughing at the circus monkey comment

I'd be interested in a circus monkey case study. Would the players, knowing that they're coached by a circus monkey, take more of a leadership role and coach themselves? If so, would they actually end up better than if coached by a bad coach? If so, then is a circus monkey actually better than a bad coach?

These are questions I need answers to.

Crean has always prepared well in all of his jobs including this year as an analyst.

Mikesyracuse1

I'm one that doesn't think a site like The Athletic will be able to survive, but I will say the Doug Gottlieb article about his credit card stealing at ND was a good enough preview to make me re-think.

I don't think it will either, but while it's alive, I'm enjoying it. I think it was like 40 or 50 bucks for the whole year and that gets you all of their coverage. I liked some of Rosenthal's stuff during the MLB playoffs even though I don't normally read a lot of baseball articles.

They're basically betting that there's a market for people who actually want to read long stories and analysis and I find that hard to believe, especially without the site being subsidized by advertising.

bobinator said:

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EKUAg said:

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

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I'm not saying Crean would be at the top of my list, but this seems like a crazy statement.

Crean made the NCAA's four of his nine years at IU, including three Sweet 16 appearances. At Marquette, he made the NCAA's five of nine years including a Final Four trip.

Now, you could argue that winning at IU is easier than A&M, but Crean took over that program after the Kelvin Sampson debacle. They flat out sucked when he got there.

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Making the tourney less than half the time is not good, especially at IU

Yeah, it will be interesting to see how it works out. They have definitely amassed the talent. I could read well-researched analytic articles all day on every sport.

I think one of the main reasons I was initially off-put by it was one of the local Texas Rangers writers (Jamey Newberg) took his stuff that has been free for a decade and moved over to that site, and while his stuff was great in the early years -- critical and praising -- in the last 6-7 years he essentially became a mouthpiece for the franchise in return for more access so nothing was ever critical, ever... So his stuff started going straight to my deleted folder, and I certainly can't imagine now paying for it.

But with the articles and a handful of "first reported by The Athletic" on the ESPN ticker... If they handle the breaking news well enough to make it worthwhile for subscribers, then maybe it can survive.

he reportedly wanted the L'ville job and they decided on a guy with zero head coaching experience instead. Their ADs bottom line was ABC, Anyone But Crean. One man's trash and all...

HoustonAg2106 said:

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bobinator said:

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EKUAg said:

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

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I'm not saying Crean would be at the top of my list, but this seems like a crazy statement.

Crean made the NCAA's four of his nine years at IU, including three Sweet 16 appearances. At Marquette, he made the NCAA's five of nine years including a Final Four trip.

Now, you could argue that winning at IU is easier than A&M, but Crean took over that program after the Kelvin Sampson debacle. They flat out sucked when he got there.

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Making the tourney less than half the time is not good, especially at IU

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If he was making it all the time at IU then he wouldn't be available to Texas A&M.

Guy doesn't coach defense. Is strange and would wear on this fan base.

I didn't say he was particularly good at IU, obviously he got himself fired, but he built that program back up out of a pretty bad scandal and went on a stretch of four NCAA's in six years, including three sweet 16s. He'd be the best coach in A&M history if he could do that here.

Kelvin Samson is an NCAA issue; don't want that. Same with Kermit Davis.

HoustonAg2106 said:

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bobinator said:

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EKUAg said:

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

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I'm not saying Crean would be at the top of my list, but this seems like a crazy statement.

Crean made the NCAA's four of his nine years at IU, including three Sweet 16 appearances. At Marquette, he made the NCAA's five of nine years including a Final Four trip.

Now, you could argue that winning at IU is easier than A&M, but Crean took over that program after the Kelvin Sampson debacle. They flat out sucked when he got there.

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Making the tourney less than half the time is not good, especially at IU

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As a hypothetical exercise, if you could have a coach that only made the tourney every other year, but sporadically would make deep runs (including a Final Four), would it be worth it?

Double Diamond said:

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Guy doesn't coach defense. Is strange and would wear on this fan base.

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I definitely agree with this, and I'm not really advocating for him as our next coach, just thought it was an interesting article for those that have access.

Now, I definitely don't think the timing of the story is a coincidence. He also has a piece on SI.com today.

With a little over two weeks to go in the season, he's making sure his name is out there.

He's going to end up somewhere. I don't think he'd take the Ole Miss job, but Georgia maybe?

Sandman23 said:

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HoustonAg2106 said:

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bobinator said:

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EKUAg said:

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Crean is a no go for me. He is another Kennedy IMHO from what I saw at IU.

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I'm not saying Crean would be at the top of my list, but this seems like a crazy statement.

Crean made the NCAA's four of his nine years at IU, including three Sweet 16 appearances. At Marquette, he made the NCAA's five of nine years including a Final Four trip.

Now, you could argue that winning at IU is easier than A&M, but Crean took over that program after the Kelvin Sampson debacle. They flat out sucked when he got there.

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Making the tourney less than half the time is not good, especially at IU

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As a hypothetical exercise, if you could have a coach that only made the tourney every other year, but sporadically would make deep runs (including a Final Four), would it be worth it?

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Absolutely.

Hell to be honest I'd probably take a coach that made the tourney every other year even without the qualifier of guaranteed deep runs.

And I would agree with both you and mhayden. Which was kind of my point, that dismissing Crean out of hand simply because "he only makes it half the time" is kind of silly.

Sandman23 said:

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And I would agree with both you and mhayden. Which was kind of my point, that dismissing Crean out of hand simply because "he only makes it half the time" is kind of silly.

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

HoustonAg2106 said:

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Sandman23 said:

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And I would agree with both you and mhayden. Which was kind of my point, that dismissing Crean out of hand simply because "he only makes it half the time" is kind of silly.

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

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But that's not something that is 100% true no matter what school/coach.

There's plenty of really good coaches that can't cut it at a higher level but have shown to be very successful at lesser schools (Billy Gillispie, Shaka Smart, etc...)

HoustonAg2106 said:

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

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All other things equal, sure, but he didn't exactly walk into peak Indiana.

free_mhayden said:

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HoustonAg2106 said:

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Sandman23 said:

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And I would agree with both you and mhayden. Which was kind of my point, that dismissing Crean out of hand simply because "he only makes it half the time" is kind of silly.

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

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But that's not something that is 100% true no matter what school/coach.

There's plenty of really good coaches that can't cut it at a higher level but have shown to be very successful at lesser schools (Billy Gillispie, Shaka Smart, etc...)

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Good point

I think the best example of this is McDermott. Dude was good at Northern Iowa, sucked at Iowa State, and now he's good again at Creighton (thought obviously having his kid McBuckets to get him kickstarted there was helpful...)

Reed Arena where coaches love to coach, on the visitor side.

bobinator said:

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HoustonAg2106 said:

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

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All other things equal, sure, but he didn't exactly walk into peak Indiana.

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IU men's soccer program is in a better shape than the basketball one.

swc93 said:

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bobinator said:

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HoustonAg2106 said:

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I'm taking into account the fact that it's harder to win at A&M than it is at a historic program like IU

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All other things equal, sure, but he didn't exactly walk into peak Indiana.

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IU men's soccer program is in a better shape than the basketball one.

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That was kind of my point about Crean. I know he inherited a mess at IU, but 9 years later and it's still in bad shape.

I dunno did you ever think that Indiana isn't a top job without a hall of fame coach like Bob Knight. He made that program and they had very little sustained success in the 20 years since he left.

SilverTongueDevil said:

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I dunno did you ever think that Indiana isn't a top job without a hall of fame coach like Bob Knight. He made that program and they had very little sustained success in the 20 years since he left.

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This. Although I think Miller will do well there, but Indiana is no longer a Tier 1 basketball school, at least not when compared to UK, Duke, UNC, Kansas. Hell, I'd say UCLA is maybe even a drop down, maybe like Tier 1b.

Crean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Billy Kennedy

_lefraud_ said:

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SilverTongueDevil said:

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I dunno did you ever think that Indiana isn't a top job without a hall of fame coach like Bob Knight. He made that program and they had very little sustained success in the 20 years since he left.

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This. Although I think Miller will do well there, but Indiana is no longer a Tier 1 basketball school, at least not when compared to UK, Duke, UNC, Kansas. Hell, I'd say UCLA is maybe even a drop down, maybe like Tier 1b.

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True but all the schools you mentioned found the right coaches and have had them for a long period of time. If IU finds the right coach they have everything else to be on that level...if A&M find the right coach we go on a run of sweet 16's