Tom Crean is a Cockroach

First appeared on March 11, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

People ask all the time if I’ve ever killed a man. The answer is fairly obvious, considering the life of a part time pretend sports columnist isn’t all glitz and glamor. Sometimes we have to roll our sleeves up and do some dangerous work; things normally reserved for ninjas, trained assassins or Mexican plastic surgeons who work out of motel bathrooms.

Take last year for example, I killed Tom Crean after his team was bounced from the second round of the NCAA Tournament by Wichita State. He was done, the end of the line. After failing to get a team with two lottery picks past the Sweet Sixteen, missing the tournament the next season and then being routinely booed at Assembly Hall while coaching his team to an early exit from the NCAA Tournament, there was nowhere left to hide.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending upon who you are, Tom Crean is a cockroach; you simply can’t kill him. The coach of the Hoosiers is, in the immortal words of Frank Costanza, like a phoenix “rising from Arizona”. After a disastrous trip to the Aloha State, Crean returned, retooled and reprogramed his squad. In November, getting the Hoosiers to play defense would have been a lot like getting Donald Trump to admit he has a weakness. A weakness other than his massive dependency upon both hair product and the availability of mirrors of course.

Since Maui however, the Hoosiers have tightened their collective belts and dedicated themselves to competing on both ends. What Crean has performed is a Today show make-over without the hair spray, wardrobe change, caked on eyeliner and entirely predictable reaction of the over-exuberant, male-ish intern. Indiana has simply been unrecognizable since mid-December and the result of this spectacular transformation was recently recognized when Crean became unanimous choice as Coach of the Year amongst Big Ten coaches and writers.

Gone is the stagnant 2-3 zone which guaranteed a wide open perimeter jumper in 30 seconds or less, gone are the pants that could never to seem to stay up without near constant encouragement, gone is the revolving door at the scorer’s table which fed a seemingly endless supply of line-up changes and player shuffling with no apparent rhyme, reason, pattern or strategy.

For the first time since being announced as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, Tom Crean appears to be at peace with who he is. And who can blame him? His point guard is almost unstoppable, his team is destroying opponents and his critics have been forced to turn their attention elsewhere. Crean is more than just a cat that has burned through eight of his nine lives and he’s more than a blustery and unpopular world leader who’s somehow dodged numerous assassination attempts. Tom Crean is a good basketball coach and for the first time in a long time Hoosier nation appears to be warming to this idea.

Despite this, if Hoosier fans are treated to another frustratingly early exit, Crean will need help getting out of Bloomington. In fact, doing so will likely require more than the best Mexican plastic surgeon, including the one who promised to make Mexican drug-lord El Chapo look like Harrison Ford in his prime only to turn him into a paunchy, middle-aged, little league baseball coach with my uncle Frank’s mustache.
So the challenge lies ahead. Indiana fans are hungry for far more than a Big Ten Tournament title. Their eyes are on a much bigger prize. Coach of the Year and Big Ten Champs or not, it’s time for Tom Crean to deliver in the NCAA Tournament.

© 2016 Eric Walker Williams