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

Prepare to be Shocked: Wichita State no Cinderella

First appeared on March 26, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

The blueprint for life is simple. Eight glasses of water a day, four glasses of milk, six helpings of fruit, a teaspoon of red meat here and there, stay on the right side of the road, avoid falling space junk, squeeze in twenty five hours of exercise a week and maybe you live to see sixty.

The blueprint for building a college basketball program is a bit more complex. Recruiting used to be simple. A high profile coach takes a Friday night trip to a small town gym. Red faced locals stop riding that new coach, the one who thinks you can win games playing zone and walking the ball up the floor, long enough to fawn over the big dog in the crowd. The high profile coach smiles, shakes hands with the parents, walks around and kicks the tires while saying all the right things. The deal gets done with a handshake, sealing a young player's lifelong dream of playing for State U.

Today coaches are up against ESPN, internet rankings, Twitter and the seedy underbelly of AAU circuits. Maybe that’s what made Gregg Marshall and Wichita State so appealing. They seemed to provided a much needed alternative. On the surface they were everything big time college basketball wasn’t.

Enter Kentucky and their high flying Blue Bloods. Hot off the AAU circuit, the best recruiting class in college basketball history. Enter John Calipari. One part college coach, one part politician, one part Dark Lord of the One and Done World. Work the phones, kiss some babies, get the top five guys on the board and ride them like the British are coming. And when the dust settles and they’ve all declared for the Draft, pick up your phone and start over.

Surely Calipari would take one look at Gregg Marshall and tell you that boy’s climbing on the horse from the wrong end. For if John Calipari’s a chef, Gregg Marshall’s an architect. Building something from the ground up. Taking kids so far from Kentucky’s radar they might as well have been playing in some remote Pacific island near Kiribati, shooting coconuts into empty oil drums nailed to palm trees. Molding them, shaping them, teaching them to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Maybe it was the fact Marshall’s speeches seemed so authentic, his words bordering on the prophetic that made me want to see Wichita State drum Kentucky Sunday. “Play angry, play for each other”. Maybe it was the little dog in the big fight that had me clambering onto the Shocker bandwagon, or maybe it was simply the fact that, as a Hoosier, I’m blessed with a bottomless reservoir of hatred for the Wildcats.

Either way it was short lived. In the end Kentucky’s thoroughbreds thundered past the Shockers. Thirty five wins and a cloud of dust. Still the power of the team isn’t lost. What five players, five recruits the big schools barely knew existed, connected on both ends of the floor can do, even when pitted against the best recruiting class in NCAA history.

They took Kentucky to the edge. They mussed Calipari’s perfect hair. And though they came up short on the scoreboard, Gregg Marshall did more than put Wichita State back on the map, he reminded us all what college basketball is supposed to be. Players committed to each other, committed to the name on the front of the jersey.

Players thinking, acting, responding and moving as one. In today’s land of one and dones, Wichita State was ice cold lemonade on the Fourth of July, proving Marshall’s blueprint, while not the most popular, remains time tested.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams