It's that time of year: College coach carousel!

Barry Rohrsen is out at Manhattan, which means Steve Lavin will soon annnounce he hired his bag man. new assistant coach....

 

Four pages and no mention yet of Missouri's Mike Anderson possibly replacing John Pelphrey at Arkansas?

 

Please let it be. I think CMA has reached his ceiling in Columbia.

 

Anderson should have been Arkansas' hire years ago, probably when they hired Heath.

 

Sorry, but you are wrong. None of the warning signs are there for Crean now.

-- Attendance is still very, very strong. Fans still strongly support Crean and the team. IU fans have been much more understanding and supportive during losing seasons than anyone thought possible. If attendance and donor giving is strong, why fire the coach?

-- The AD is not a man with a quick trigger finger. Glass has fired two coaches. I don't think Fred Glass wanted to fire Bill Lynch, but there was only one year left on his contract and he had two choices: fire him or extend his deal. Given that IU had won 3 B10 games in 3 years, Glass couldn't extend him. Glass also fired the soccer coach because the guy took over the program at its apex and it was slipping. But Glass is a guy who has shown great patience with coaches. The women's bball coach just went 18-15, 19-10, 14-16, 9-20. Glass announced she would be back next season.

-- Given the situation that Crean walked into, there is no way to know right now if he will be successful in the long term. At this point, NC State knows what it has in Lowe. But Crean walked into a situation where he took over in March and the entire team either graduated, went pro or was dismissed from the team. He had to start from scratch and had to scramble to find recruits and then give those recruits a ton of minutes as true freshmen. John Wooden couldn't have had a winning record in the first season.

-- There is hope for the future with the recruiting classes. This isn't a case of a coach saving his job with one amazing recruit. Zeller gets most of the attention since he is an Indiana schoolboy hero with a great lineage. But the 2011 and 2012 classes are solid from top to bottom, showing that Crean can consistently recruit well, even when he has a losing squad. And Crean has some of the best in-state players in 2013 and 2014 either verbally committed or seriously considering IU.

--He is finishing the third year of a 10-year deal. There is no way they are buying him out before year 7. His buyout is 3 mil. They aren't going to pay that -- especially in this economic climate -- until they know he is not the long term answer.

 

Is attendance ever an issue in Bloomington?

 

I thought Anderson left early, the way his team almost blew it at the end.
ProJo says today Keno's ouster is in the works, likely to be official over the weekend. Guess Bob Driscoll has to get his hair poufed in NYC before he gives Keno the word.

 

His record at Marquette is a large enough sample size to make an educated guess. It just depends on how IU wants to define "success" in the long term. The fans (students and alums) are still filling the place, but at some point, they'll grow up and realize that taking to message boards and Twitter and responding to every Purdue loss with "F%$# YOU!! We've got BANNERS!!!!" is going to get rather old. Wouldn't mind seeing Purdue reach at least the Elite Eioght this year; might get IU fans riled up to demand some tangible, measurable progress in Year Four.

Nah, they'll probably just brag about past glories and future recruits. Yay.

The point where fans really get restless is probably about three years away. But to me, while I get that fans will give Crean time because they don't understand recruiting think that every single recruit will decommit, I also wonder at what point questions will be asked. I like to think IU fans will get antsy a year from now if there is no NCAA berth.

At some point, the fact that IU was in the toilet back in 2008 should stop mattering. Howland reached a Final Four in his third year at UCLA. Roy, ditto at Kansas. Pitino had Kentucky losing The Greatest Game Ever Played (that Laettner should have been ejected from) in his third year.

Obviously, the expectations are much lower for Crean. But it's clear that three years is enough for a coach to begin putting a stamp on a program. Allowing for the shambles IU was when Crean took over, it was still reasonable to seek a .500 record and an NIT berth this season, if we looked for tangible, measurable progress. In Year Four, it will be appropriate to ask for an NCAA berth, or at least stay in the hunt for one until the waning weeks of the season. After all, "It's Indiana."

 

It's plenty soon enough to know if Tom Crean is going to be a long-term success. What he's ever done to make people think he *could* be a long-term success is what baffles me.

If IU's goal is to finish third or fourth in the Big Ten and get into the NCAA Tournament, they might have their guy. If the goal is to get back to Final Fours, they don't. Yes, Tom Crean has been to a Final Four. So has John Brady. And yet I know well enough that John Brady won't be leading any school to the promised land any time soon. I have confidence saying the same about Crean.

 

Yeah, but you're comparing Tom Crean to someone who is batshit insane.

I love John Brady. But he is batshit insane.

 

Crean's just as nuts. It's just that his craziness comes in the form of pretending he's the best thing since sliced bread.

In all seriousness, the Brady comparison isn't a perfect one. But it's close. He was a decent recruiter who couldn't coach and caught lightning in a bottle once. The only difference is that Brady was fired, and Crean landed one of the top 10 jobs in college basketball.

 

Not saying I agree with this, but I've heard the argument made that the only thing that distinguishes Crean from any other respectable coach was one player and one win.

That player was Dwyane Wade and that win was the Elite Eight win over Kentucky in 2003.