As bad as things got for Indiana basketball over the past four years, tradition always meant something. Through scandal, near decimation, and now rebirth in the NCAA tournament, the Hoosiers — as their T-shirts say — are back.
Coach Tom Crean has plenty to do with that, of course, but it’s even bigger than him. Indiana tradition is what prompted Crean to leave Marquette, after five NCAA tournaments and the 2003 Final Four, to take a job where shortly after he arrived he was down to two walk-ons.
“They asked him why he came to Indiana,” said Don Fischer, in his 39th year as radio voice of the Hoosiers. “He says, ‘Because it’s Indiana.’ Maybe people don’t understand that, but if you’re an Indiana person, you do.”
Hoosiers senior Matt Roth grew up in Washington, Ill. He didn’t fully understand Indiana tradition until December. At halftime against Stetson, from the locker room under the bleachers at Assembly Hall, he could hear an ovation for the 1987 national championship team and stars Steve Alford and Keith Smart, honored for their 25th anniversary.
“It was one of those incredible moments, where you see how much the former players mean to the fans even today,” Roth said. “It provided us with great motivation to keep moving forward and to fight for what this program stands for.”
Indiana defeated Stetson 84-50 that night, not something a team that lost to Lipscomb three years before took for granted. In its next game, Indiana defeated No. 1 Kentucky on Christian Watford’s 3-pointer at the buzzer. The two teams meet again Friday in the Georgia Dome in the NCAA South Regional semifinal.
Roth took a risk most didn’t in the spring of 2008, when coach Kelvin Sampson was fired over illegal calls to recruits, the NCAA boom was lowered, and Crean hired. Roth was one of two incoming recruits to stay. Two who left are Tu Holloway, now playing for Xavier in the South Regional, and Devin Ebanks, who starred for West Virginia and now plays for the Lakers.
Eric Gordon, the leading Big Ten scorer as a freshman in 2008, left for the NBA and later made accusations of drug use among Indiana players. Crean kicked three players off the team and two transferred, including Eli Holman, now at Detroit Mercy, whose flower-pot-throwing tirade in the basketball offices prompted a call to campus police.
Indiana was down three scholarships because of academic issues and NCAA probation, which would last three years. And Crean was limited in recruiting for six months, allowed only two days on the road in April and a handful more in July.
“It wasn’t like anything you would have imagined Indiana to be,” Crean said.
To keep him from getting discouraged, Indiana gave Crean a two-year extension a few months into the job. This was on top of his eight-year contract.
The hardscrabble Hoosiers went 6-25 his first season, the worst in school history. An unprecedented two more 20-loss seasons followed (10-21 and 12-20). But Crean made inroads in recruiting, laid groundwork for his vision on the court, and engaged both former players and fans, who still averaged 14,600 in the six-win season.
“This guy signs every autograph, he speaks to everybody that comes up to him,” Fischer said. “When he doesn’t have time to do it, he says ‘I’ll be back here in 10 minutes and I’ll do it then.’”
Also, Crean isn’t threatened by the part of the fan base that believes no coach will ever live up to former coach Bob Knight.
“I don’t think he ever acts like they shouldn’t feel that way or that he could replace Bob Knight,” Fischer said. “He doesn’t treat it that way.”
And this year Crean brought in freshman Cody Zeller, who leads Indiana with 15.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. Zeller was Indiana’s second Mr. Basketball to sign with the Hoosiers in three years, after only three of the previous 10 had, including his brothers Luke (Notre Dame) and Tyler (North Carolina).
“The players and the coaches were the most important thing,” Zeller said.
By January of last year, Crean saw things clicking in an overtime loss to Michigan State. The Hoosiers finished 3-15 in Big Ten play so it wasn’t obvious to others, but with Zeller aboard the Hoosiers won 13 in a row to start this season and defeated No. 1 Kentucky, No. 2 Ohio State and No. 5 Michigan State before it was through.
Last week when Indiana beat Virginia Commonwealth to make its first Sweet 16 since 2002, Crean saw confirmation during late timeouts, when players demanded defensive stops.
“The magic words from a coach are always about defense, but when you hear those words coming back from your team, that’s another whole level,” Crean said. “We weren’t just on the same page; we were on the same sentence.”
Indiana got one last stop to make Will Sheehey’s jumper with 12.7 seconds left hold up for its first last-minute come-from-behind NCAA tournament win since Smart’s shot in the 1987 title game.
This team is making history of its own.
“It’s been a chance of a lifetime,” Roth said. “And we’re trying to take advantage of each moment.”
The Hoosiers (27-8) won 28 games over the past three seasons. They can match that this season with an upset over Kentucky, the No. 1 overall seed. Their next recruiting class is rated among the top nationally. And even Knight, who has never returned to campus, is talking about Indiana in his job as an ESPN analyst.
“With these five kids coming in and the people they’ve got coming back, this program is on the rise,” Fischer said. “And it’s on the rise in a big way.”
