Tom Crean appeared on Pardon the Interruption earlier today with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Video has yet to surface from the World Wide Leader, but here’s a link to the audio of today’s show. The interview is about 9 minutes and 45 seconds into the audio clip. Here are a few highlights:
On whether this season has been better or worse than expected:
“It’s been far harder than anything we could have ever expected. And again, when you take the job on April 2nd you don’t think that within a couple of months you’re going to have a brand new team. And outside of Kyle Taber and a walk-on named Brett Finkelmeier, that’s exactly what had to happen but there’s been a lot of rewards inside of it. Working with these guys has been a challenge but it’s been a fun challenge because it’s been great to watch them get better and to learn to believe. Especially over the last week, they’ve really believed they could win games.”
On the lessons learned from losing this season:
“Enjoy the wins. To never take winning for granted. To never make it a ho-hum type of deal. When you win and you put that time and effort and energy into it, it really means something. It can fuel you to so many more things. But I will never begrudge a win again. And I’m just thankful like at Marquette that I had a chance, it was a privilege to work there. It was a privilege to live there and it was great to coach those guys. They had so much to do with what I’ve learned and what we’ve been able to bring here in a sense of being resilient, being persistent, being demanding and at the same time trying to help nurture them to understand that there’s so much that goes into this and a lot of it’s going to carry into the success of their future life.”
On whether he thinks about how far he could have gone at Marquette this season:
“No, I haven’t felt like that. I’ve really been happy for them. The seniors in that group, they deserve every accolade, every reward that they can get. They did so many things. We were well aware of what we were leaving when we came to Indiana. There were three guys that had scored 1,000 points already in Jerel McNeal, Dominic James and Wesley Matthews. Lazar Hayward was playing well. We had a guy that would have been there, Tyshawn Taylor, who’s the starting guard for Kansas. We understood what we had, but this was just an opportunity that there was no way I could say no to. So I love what I’m doing and I’m proud of them, proud of their coaches, proud of what Buzz has done and I follow it with a lot of respect.”
