The title of the thread is a little misleading. I want to get that out of the way now.
The fracturing of the Indiana fan base has been happening now for over a decade. It feels like we are at critical mass.
Anytime a major program loses their legend at the helm, rocky seas await. This has been the case at every program save Kansas. Some have managed to get lucky and shorten the post-legend mediocrity. North Carolina had a very short stint until they pried away Roy Williams, Kentucky has had the good fortune of having two legends (possibly landing their third) which has helped everyone forget the years between Rupp to Pitino and Pitino to Calipari, and on and on. The take away for nearly all of the major programs has been it's not if they will get back, but when. Nearly all of the major programs except for two of the former biggest - UCLA and IU.
UCLA feels like a good parallel. All of the obvious comparisons we know, larger than life head coaches, Wooden is from Indiana, etc. The scariest one is that both programs owe their success to aspects of college basketball that might no longer exist.
There isn't a contemporary comparison for Wooden or Knight. Coach K is probably the closest thing to a modern day Wooden, but that would be like saying Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy are the same. It might initially feel that way, but Eddie was/is Eddie, there is no real comparison. John Wooden was basically a cross between Fergie and Jesus (those who get that, will get it). His main reason for success once you strip away the legend and myth was by stockpiling unbelievable amounts of talent, something that has become harder and harder to do even amongst the elite (obviously UK remains an exception).
In the 60's and 70's UCLA could own the West. Now they have to recruit against countless other programs who have been as or more successful - Arizona, Gonzaza, Stanford, UNLV - to name a few. Once Wooden retired, the BEST JOB in the country was now open. Who replaced him? Gene Bartow, for two years. Then it was Gary Cunningham for two, then Larry Brown for two, Larry Farmar for three, you get the idea.
It would be twenty years on the nose until they won another title. Steve Alford is their ninth coach since Wooded. He won 28 games last year and they are lucky to get 5000 fans at home. Wooden retired forty years ago on top, and now the UCLA brand is consumed with apathy.
There is no comparison for Coach Knight. No one even close. Bob Knight the Coach is an archetype that has been wiped away seemingly overnight. There are countless reasons for this, but the fact of the matter is you can no longer succeed by being the arrogant-GENIUS-psycho-bully. Can anyone imagine him in the Twitter era? Would he have made it through his first year?
Coach also had the advantage of tending to the most fertile basketball soil in the country - Indiana High School Basketball. Just put the borders up in the state and you can contend for a title every few years. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy anymore. Everyone else is hip to the game. We have to compete with most major schools in the country for our players now. The days of signing four or five in-state kids and moving on to three months of hunting and fishing are behind us.
Sometimes we all forget how up and down Coach Knight's results could be. Would he have even survived the Peegs era? We were by no means competing for championships every year but he knew what to do with the right team when he got them, so maybe the Peegs Universe would have given him a break. We were elite after all.
Well, we were ELITE, for about 12 years...well, only if you forget that we missed the tournament THREE times in our most successful span as a program. Again, we did win three titles in that span, but no other ELITE team misses the tournament THREE times during their pinnacle (especially over that short of a span).
In fairness Coach Knight would go on to make it to 15 straight tournaments after that, but we only lost single digit games in a season for half of those and won over 25 games only five times. Welcome to the mid-90's, where we will go 19-12 and lose to ANYONE in the first round.
We all know how we got to Coach Crean. We promoted in-house to avoid a perceived player coup and then hired that one guy. So here we are.
Some people like Coach Crean some people don't. I don't really think that's the issue. The issue is "WE'RE INDIANA!!!" We don't stand for above average. We are ELITE after all.
If Crean doesn't get to the tournament he should, and hopefully will, be fired. However, if we do win twenty-something games and win a game or two in the tournament is that really going backward?
I understand that most fans just think that he isn't THE GUY. I am not sure he is either. Is that really so bad? We have signed an All-American three straight years, our guys are getting drafted, they are getting good grades, they are improving once they get here.
If Coach Crean ends up being the Sherpa that takes us up and over the mountain of mediocrity, then so be it. Say he wins between 20 and 25 games for a few years but hits a wall, look how much of a better position we will be in to get THE GUY (whoever that is) when the time is right. He has brought us back into the conversation, maybe that's as far as he can go but at least the job looks good again.
The other way the story could go is our guys actually start playing defense instead of praying for wide open misses and we actually become elite. It might not be probable but it is possible.
The one thing that Fred Glass can't do is ditch Crean only to realize that our job isn't as ELITE as we thought and we end up with the next big mess. There isn't a reason to ditch Lavin just to replace him with Howland - or to ditch Howland just to replace him Alford, when that only ends with a half-filled Assembly Hall and everyone wondering when the next Bob Knight is walking through that door.
The next few years at IU will are crucial to the future of the future of the program. Can we right the ship or do we sink into the abyss screaming about Keith Smart's jumper and how we USED to be so great?
The main thing is we have to hold up our end of the bargain of what made us who we are. We need to fill the place, get loud, and support these athletes who play for this university no matter what happens. We can hate Crean all we want, but we can't get lazy as fans. I can't stand the thought of turning on Big Ten network in 2020 to 7700 "rowdy" fans at Assembly Hall.
Trust me, I'm not saying anyone isn't doing this already. I just know that watching UCLA is like looking into the darkest dimension of our theoretical future and I don't want that to happen here.
This post was edited on 1/30 6:55 PM by DerrickC
The fracturing of the Indiana fan base has been happening now for over a decade. It feels like we are at critical mass.
Anytime a major program loses their legend at the helm, rocky seas await. This has been the case at every program save Kansas. Some have managed to get lucky and shorten the post-legend mediocrity. North Carolina had a very short stint until they pried away Roy Williams, Kentucky has had the good fortune of having two legends (possibly landing their third) which has helped everyone forget the years between Rupp to Pitino and Pitino to Calipari, and on and on. The take away for nearly all of the major programs has been it's not if they will get back, but when. Nearly all of the major programs except for two of the former biggest - UCLA and IU.
UCLA feels like a good parallel. All of the obvious comparisons we know, larger than life head coaches, Wooden is from Indiana, etc. The scariest one is that both programs owe their success to aspects of college basketball that might no longer exist.
There isn't a contemporary comparison for Wooden or Knight. Coach K is probably the closest thing to a modern day Wooden, but that would be like saying Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy are the same. It might initially feel that way, but Eddie was/is Eddie, there is no real comparison. John Wooden was basically a cross between Fergie and Jesus (those who get that, will get it). His main reason for success once you strip away the legend and myth was by stockpiling unbelievable amounts of talent, something that has become harder and harder to do even amongst the elite (obviously UK remains an exception).
In the 60's and 70's UCLA could own the West. Now they have to recruit against countless other programs who have been as or more successful - Arizona, Gonzaza, Stanford, UNLV - to name a few. Once Wooden retired, the BEST JOB in the country was now open. Who replaced him? Gene Bartow, for two years. Then it was Gary Cunningham for two, then Larry Brown for two, Larry Farmar for three, you get the idea.
It would be twenty years on the nose until they won another title. Steve Alford is their ninth coach since Wooded. He won 28 games last year and they are lucky to get 5000 fans at home. Wooden retired forty years ago on top, and now the UCLA brand is consumed with apathy.
There is no comparison for Coach Knight. No one even close. Bob Knight the Coach is an archetype that has been wiped away seemingly overnight. There are countless reasons for this, but the fact of the matter is you can no longer succeed by being the arrogant-GENIUS-psycho-bully. Can anyone imagine him in the Twitter era? Would he have made it through his first year?
Coach also had the advantage of tending to the most fertile basketball soil in the country - Indiana High School Basketball. Just put the borders up in the state and you can contend for a title every few years. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy anymore. Everyone else is hip to the game. We have to compete with most major schools in the country for our players now. The days of signing four or five in-state kids and moving on to three months of hunting and fishing are behind us.
Sometimes we all forget how up and down Coach Knight's results could be. Would he have even survived the Peegs era? We were by no means competing for championships every year but he knew what to do with the right team when he got them, so maybe the Peegs Universe would have given him a break. We were elite after all.
Well, we were ELITE, for about 12 years...well, only if you forget that we missed the tournament THREE times in our most successful span as a program. Again, we did win three titles in that span, but no other ELITE team misses the tournament THREE times during their pinnacle (especially over that short of a span).
In fairness Coach Knight would go on to make it to 15 straight tournaments after that, but we only lost single digit games in a season for half of those and won over 25 games only five times. Welcome to the mid-90's, where we will go 19-12 and lose to ANYONE in the first round.
We all know how we got to Coach Crean. We promoted in-house to avoid a perceived player coup and then hired that one guy. So here we are.
Some people like Coach Crean some people don't. I don't really think that's the issue. The issue is "WE'RE INDIANA!!!" We don't stand for above average. We are ELITE after all.
If Crean doesn't get to the tournament he should, and hopefully will, be fired. However, if we do win twenty-something games and win a game or two in the tournament is that really going backward?
I understand that most fans just think that he isn't THE GUY. I am not sure he is either. Is that really so bad? We have signed an All-American three straight years, our guys are getting drafted, they are getting good grades, they are improving once they get here.
If Coach Crean ends up being the Sherpa that takes us up and over the mountain of mediocrity, then so be it. Say he wins between 20 and 25 games for a few years but hits a wall, look how much of a better position we will be in to get THE GUY (whoever that is) when the time is right. He has brought us back into the conversation, maybe that's as far as he can go but at least the job looks good again.
The other way the story could go is our guys actually start playing defense instead of praying for wide open misses and we actually become elite. It might not be probable but it is possible.
The one thing that Fred Glass can't do is ditch Crean only to realize that our job isn't as ELITE as we thought and we end up with the next big mess. There isn't a reason to ditch Lavin just to replace him with Howland - or to ditch Howland just to replace him Alford, when that only ends with a half-filled Assembly Hall and everyone wondering when the next Bob Knight is walking through that door.
The next few years at IU will are crucial to the future of the future of the program. Can we right the ship or do we sink into the abyss screaming about Keith Smart's jumper and how we USED to be so great?
The main thing is we have to hold up our end of the bargain of what made us who we are. We need to fill the place, get loud, and support these athletes who play for this university no matter what happens. We can hate Crean all we want, but we can't get lazy as fans. I can't stand the thought of turning on Big Ten network in 2020 to 7700 "rowdy" fans at Assembly Hall.
Trust me, I'm not saying anyone isn't doing this already. I just know that watching UCLA is like looking into the darkest dimension of our theoretical future and I don't want that to happen here.
This post was edited on 1/30 6:55 PM by DerrickC
