I think that's a fair assessment and in hindsight, it's hard to argue. I'm not sure which hire post-Knight firing even has a case for being better than Sampson.
I'll always have a spot in my heart for Tom Crean. The man left a really good gig at Marquette to take on an abject mess of a program, under sanctions, with only 2 walk-ons coming back from the previous year....and this was before the transfer portal.
Given what he inherited, I think Tom Crean deserves our admiration and respect. Most established coaches wouldn't have touched us with a 10 foot pole in that situation. (And, yes, I know that "what he inherited" came from the Sampson debacle).
But Crean probably wasn't ever going to get the program any higher than he got it. And I firmly believe the Syracuse nightmare dogged him the rest of his time here. He just flat-out got outcoached by Jim Boeheim. And nobody was surprised that he did.
