The Crean Dilemma: Here today, should Tom be gone tomorrow?

I have a complicated relationship with Tom Crean.

When he was hired in 2008, Coach Crean was viewed as the savior of IU basketball. As a young fan, I vividly remember using the term “basketball Jesus” to describe my perception of the new big man on campus.

In the years that followed, he did, in fact, raise the program from the dead. From six wins to Sweet 16, the team’s rejuvenation was as noticeable as the part in our coach’s hair. At the apex of his popularity, many IU basketball fans would have loyally followed Crean as he marched off of a cliff.

Today, one might think he did just that.

Crean, predictably beffudled

The sentiment has become prevalent: ‘good recruiter, mediocre tactician’

An embarrassing — and premature — loss to Syracuse tarnished the success of the 2012-13 Hoosiers, college basketball’s best team that season. The following campaign with Noah Vonleh went wasted, as the team consistently failed to get their star big man involved. Ferrell and company improved their effort the following year, but remained unremarkable, losing in the opening round of last season’s NCAA tournament.

Throughout this stretch of perceived underachievement, the suspicion began to seep into the collective conscious of Hoosier Nation that we’d been hoodwinked.

While no reasonable fan would presume to know more than Crean about how to coach college basketball, almost all reasonable fans have concluded, whatever the source of his weakness, Crean knows something considerably less than coaches on the level of Izzo, Krzyzewski, Self, or even that antagonist Calipari.

Once I began to suspect that Crean lacked the quality that would allow him to become one of the best 10 – 15 coaches in the game, my support for him faded.

You don’t win five national championships by making the dribble hand-off the fulcrum of your offense.

I had been raised to understand that the Indiana program deserved a place of distinction in the college basketball hierarchy

As a fan, I wanted my program’s contemporary success to match its pedigree.

As a result, I have become the worst kind of Crean detractor. While I superficially root for the team’s success, I also take pleasure in our coach’s failures. The sports fan within me has become convinced of the paradoxical notion that the best thing for our team is to lose. In my mind, the sooner Crean loses his job, the sooner a new era of IU basketball can begin.

This fall, I optimistically believed the bad losses to Wake Forest and UNLV had put the final nail in Crean’s coffin. Surely, Lazarus couldn’t be raised twice.

Since then, however, IU basketball has resumed peak form. The team has looked, more or less, as if it has a good chance to still fulfill its top-15 preseason potential.

Senior transfer Max Biefeldt sinking a free throw en route to a 103 – 69 victory over Illinois

Strangely, this possibility discouraged me. “Great,” I thought to myself. “This success will buy Crean another year.”

Considering I’m upset our team is good, I believe it may be time for me to reevaluate. By rooting against Crean, I’ve actually started to root against my school. Beyond being somewhat sadistic, cheering for the failure of a man who has never wronged me does not enhance my enjoyment of the entertainment. It coarsens it.

I’m coming to the realization that, if I want to be a fan of the team, I have only one real option: embrace Tom Crean. He may not be perfect, but, at the moment, he is an inextricable element of IU basketball.

Don’t love him because he’s the best. Love him because he’s ours.

But, like you would a good friend or family member, talk shit about him, too.