For a school like Marquette, you don't think that is competitive? You are dreaming. In looking up this morning, that first year in the Big East they finished 4th, ahead of schools like Louisville, Syracuse, tied with Georgetown and Pittsburgh. The next year, tied for 5th with Syracuse, ahead of UCONN, Villanova, etc. The year after that, tied for 5th finishing ahead of Pittsburgh, Villanova, Cincinnati, Syracuse, etc.
By my calculations, in those first three years of the Big East that they were in (his only years coaching there), they won 31 conference games against coaches like Calhoun, Pitino, Boeheim, Dixon, Brey, Huggins, Thompson, Wright. Those 31 wins make them very competitive, especially for a school like Marquette that hadn't done much the previous 20+ years.
In that same time period
Syracuse 26 wins
UCONN 33 wins
Pitt 32 wins
West Virginia 31
Villanova 32
Notre Dame 31
Cincinnati 18
St. John's 17
Seton Hall 20
To suggest they weren't competitive is crazy talk. Oneill only made it to the Sweet 16, never past. Crean did.
Crean produced more NBA players at Marquette than the previous 14 years or all the years after he left. More quality players too. It isn't so much that he is a NBA development machine, it is what he accomplished at that school that hadn't put a bunch of quality guys in the NBA since the 1970's with a few one off exceptions.
The Al Mcguire center, according to what I can find on that school's site, in 2002 they still had to raise significant dollars yet to even break ground.
http://www.gomarquette.com/genrel/021802aaa.html Crean was hired in 1999. After Crean guided that team to the Final Four, the money flowed in to complete the project.
http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2003/04/07/story3.html and
http://enquirer.com/editions/2003/04/03/spt_wwwmarqmoney.html and
https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=fUMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1878,5558100&hl=en
Yes, several decades. 1970's vs 2000's, several decades. Marquette had completely fallen off the map. In the 1970's they were toe to toe with us, Kentucky, UCLA as the top 5 programs in the country. For the next few decades they were nothing but an after thought. They might as well have been Loyola or DePaul. They got back to prominence when they made the Final Four and did so well in the Big East, that was under Crean.