Former Indiana HC Tom Crean keeps it real amid basketball team's struggles.
01/16/2025 06:09 PM
Indiana basketball sits at 13-5 overall under Mike Woodson. But two of the five losses ended in one-sided fashion, prompting an honest take from former Hoosiers head coach Tom Crean.
IU took two blowout losses to No. 19 Illinois 94-69 on Tuesday, then an 85-60 shellacking at the hands of Iowa Saturday. Indiana fans called for Woodson’s firing after the former loss. How did things unravel so quickly for the Hoosiers? The longtime head coach pointed out the team’s dilemma to Scott Horner of the Indianapolis Star Thursday.
It starts with the guards,” Crean told the Star. “The guards are not doing enough to make everybody else better on the floor.”
Crean adds that the lack of stout guard play disrupts the flow of the Hoosiers’ offense.
“The ball doesn’t find a lot of energy a lot of times in that offense. It’s not that it just stops; it’s that it doesn’t keep moving at a quick pace,” Crean explained. “So it may get passed, but it gets passed because there’s not another option to shoot it.”
Tom Crean continued to call out Indiana basketball’s struggles
Crean wasn’t through in calling out his former school’s struggles. He believes teams are attacking the Hoosiers early, which stops their ball movement.
Illinois rises as the latest example. The Fighting Illini leaped to a massive 60-32 lead in their romp of IU. Indiana even scored first off a Myles Rice jumper. They briefly led 4-3 after Mackenzie Mgbako nailed his two-point attempt. But Illinois exploded from there and handed IU its third Big 10 Conference loss.
Crean, though, didn’t just target the lack of energy in the backcourt. He criticized center Oumar Ballo, who he claimed has “selective conditioning.” Meaning Ballo only plays in spurts and tends to tire himself out.
The 58-year-old coach lastly pointed out the impact of Malik Reneau missing in the lineup. The 6-foot-9 post presence hasn’t been in the lineup due to a right knee ailment.
“They’ve got to get an identity of rebounding. It’s not even close when they don’t play well on the offensive glass. It comes to effort,” Crean said. “The lack of hitting, physicality, those things all play into it.”
Crean last coached in 2022 with Georgia. He owns a 403-306 overall record that includes going 11-9 in the NCAA tournament. But he spent 10 seasons in Bloomington. Crean finished 166-135 at IU, including producing four 20-win campaigns. But Indiana fired him after going 18-16 during the 2016-17 season. He later went a dismal 47-75 with Georgia. The Bulldogs endured a rough 6-26 season during his final year with the team in 2021-22.
Indiana travels to Ohio State on Friday, with the Buckeyes enduring their own two-game losing slide.
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