Transcript: Tom Crean at Hoosier Hysteria
IU head coach Tom Crean met with reporters following Friday’s Hoosier Hysteria at Assembly Hall. A complete transcript of Crean’s comments is available below:
Opening Statement
“The energy of the crowd was non-stop. It was just fantastic. I know our players and the whole program appreciates that when you come out there and see that. This is the last fun time of the year when they get to come out, there’s no real coaching going on. Not taking anything away from the honorary coaches, but we’d had a hour and forty minute workout before we came out. Maurice, we’re just going to go very, very careful with Maurice. He’s not injured, but he’s also not ready to go every day the way that we need to. We’ve been going pretty hard the last few days and we’ll go twice tomorrow and it’s just kind of where we’re at. We always take the last two hours that we get and we put those in at the end of the week right before we start practice because it’s so hard to go from a forty or sixty minute workout to now all of the sudden, you expect them to go a couple of hours. We’re going to try to be very moderate with him and at the same time, building our team.”
On the crowd’s first impression of Victor Oladipo
“I didn’t have any doubt that they’d fall in love with him quickly. He’s got a tremendous personality. We’re talking about a kid that there’s 380 young men in his school in Hyattsville, Maryland, he was one of ten people picked out of the whole school as a junior to go have lunch at the White House with the President. He’s got some special qualities and I think people will see that in him. I think the same thing with Will and with Guy. Those are three guys that have come in and set a standard for what young guys should look like with the way that they work on their bodies and the way that they should work on their games and certainly with what they’re doing academically. And Victor, I think the crowd got a chance to see some of that.”
On Matt Roth being ready to go
“I think he is. And he’s only been back a week because he had a concussion that he got trying to draw a charge in one of our four-on-four games and he missed two weeks. There’s a huge amount of confidence when he’s on the court and he gets that ball in his hands. He’s got range and I didn’t know Christian (Watford) had that kind of range, but then Christian’s legs left him quick, but Matt, he’s got a feel for it and he knows how to get open and I think he’s going to be a bigger part of what we do. When you sit there and you watch him shoot the ball you realize how much we missed him last year.”
On expectations for Guy-Marc Michel
“I just think improvement. He really wants it. He really, really wants to be good. And I don’t think there’s any doubt he’s going to get a lot better. He’s got a good feel, he’s got the jump hook and we want to continue to develop that. We’ve got to get him tighter in every area of his game with getting the ball below his knee on his crab dribble, sealing with his back side, not his back and continue getting him in shape. This is hard for those guys. We’ve had a very challenging preseason by design and it’s not like we’ve put a lot of offense in and it’s not like you can run any offense in this first one anyways. We expect a lot out of him and he expects a lot out of himself.”
On Maurice Creek and easing him back into his role
“His knee is solid, there’s no issues there. He’s had some ankle injuries that he’s dealt with through the summer, but he’s just not strong enough yet. It’s going to take time for that. I’m very, very careful with him and I think our doctors are. I think Tim (Garl) is. And like Tim always says, full intensity, less volume for him right now. And I think that’s the theory we’re going to have with him for a while because he’s not going to be, obviously you guys know this and I think our fans know this and he’s got to understand this, you don’t just pick up where you left off. He’s still going through a very strenuous rehab. We’ve got to get through the drills, the scrimmages, the day after days, get into the games and then eventually I think you’ll see a kid that will really take back off. I just don’t want to rush it too quick for him.”
On setting up an event like Hoosier Hysteria with recruiting in mind
“I think you’re very mindful of that. But I think the recruits and the fans want to see the same thing. And there was tremendous energy in there tonight. When Victor was getting ready to dunk, I don’t know that I’d ever seen more camera phones or cameras being lifted up. Everybody knew what to anticipate, including looking into the recruit section, they all had their phones going. Those are exciting things. That’s what we’re trying to build. We’re trying to build a personality in this team, we’re trying to build a mindset on a daily basis, we’re trying to have them blend together with these guys. Before they earn the victories, they have to believe they can get them. And the only way they’re going to believe it is through hard work, competition and then once they believe it, now they’ve got to go out and earn it. You earn it by every practice, tomorrow morning at 9:30 is the most important day of the year right now for us. And it’ll be the same thing on Sunday and the same thing on Monday. That’s the mindset you have to have.”
On his expectations for the team this season
“I would hope that they would expect more for themselves all the time. I think that’s where expectations start. The bottom line is, they’ve (the returning players) got to carry a big load for us, but at the same time, we’ve got two freshman and a junior college transfer that fully expect to play and I think will compete to play. And I think that’s exactly what we want. I’ve had the question three of four times tonight, you’ve got five returning starters, I don’t even remotely look at it like that. We’ve got five open spots and I think every day the competition has gotta be high. Now are we ready for that yet? Not even remotely close to just got at it every day. But we will be. And that’s how you build the program back up to where it has to be.”
On the importance of Night of the Living Red in two weeks
“Very important because it’s a live scrimmage. I love the Halloween stuff. We want people to wear their costumes. Certainly, recruiting always factors in to decisions that you make there. But we want to go after it in front of a really juiced up crowd. That’s why we’re going to do it at night. That’s why we’re going to be very specific as to what we’re going to try to do. It’s going to be coached to win. There will be competition. There will be a winner and a loser. Somebody will be eating old soggy hotdogs and somebody will be eating steak when it’s all said and done.”
On not having the mic in his hand during Hoosier Hysteria
“I didn’t really want it. Plus my voice is just shot already from the last couple of days. Some day I’m probably going to have my vocal cords permanently damaged, but it’ll get better, we’ll get some medicine in it. I didn’t really want it, I wanted to watch and enjoy it. I thought JMV did a great job. I think anytime you’ve got Don Fischer there, it’s great. Chuck Crabb on the mic. We had 13,000, I couldn’t believe it when J.D. said that. That was awesome. And then for our student ticket sales to be flying like they have the past couple of days. It was just tremendous energy. We want to build on it.”
On Christian Watford having the green light from 35-feet
“In a 3-point shootout he does (laughs). Notice I wasn’t doing any coaching in that. The ball’s going to move this year, the ball’s going to move. There’s no doubt about it. And we need him to score, we need him to be inside-outside and outside-inside depending on what it calls for. But we’ve gotta move the basketball. Our guys have gotta understand that we need to score more points and the way you do that is better ball movement, more offensive rebounds, getting your break started more and most importantly, not giving the other team easy possessions. And at the same time, we’ve gotta take possessions from people. We have to create more turnovers.”
Filed to: Hoosier Hysteria, Tom Crean