After having a day to listen to the various interviews after Indiana’s season-ending loss on Thursday to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament, I came across one particular question and answer that I felt worthy of our attention.
The question came from Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz, who asked the final question in Tom Crean’s postgame presser. Kravitz asked Crean to address the need for some big guys in the program and received this lengthy response:
“I think we have a lot of needs, Bob. And I think we’ve gotta develop the bigs that we have. We’ve got a very tough situation right now in the sense, if people have followed our program at all, which I know that you have, we had to get a team on the floor before we could build a program. That was last year. Then we were able to recruit guys that we wanted to, that we had a chance to develop relationships with. We’re very bottom heavy and we have to have a balancing act right now between what do we need to do in the short term versus how are we not going to have to start over again when these guys get older.”
“In the purest sense of your question, there’s no doubt we’re trying to address that in a big way. They’ve all gotta get stronger, bigger, better, more athletic that we have in the program. We’ve gotta continue to address that. But I look at our team and we also need somebody that’s better at getting in the lane. We need somebody that can get in the lane and create havoc, that can get into that paint and make decisions to get the ball to shooters. Our team will look different when you add the spacing element into it that Matt Roth and Maurice Creek bring. Obviously Maurice was our best guy at being able to absolutely get in the lane and make a play and make a good decision with it, but we’re not anywhere close to being done recruiting. And that’ll pick up again tomorrow in a big way. We’re going to address it. We have been and at the same time I have to sit here and look ahead into the future and figure out okay, how are we going to have to not do this again. That’s what’s hard because there’s a lot of good young players that we’re recruiting that we want and we’ve gotta make sure that we get those and we’ve gotta make sure we have the ability to sign them when they’re ready to come.”
Around the Hall is recommended reading from the Inside the Hall crew.
Word broke late last night that Indiana will announce plans Saturday to induct Bob Knight into its Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in November.
First, a preface: I’m no fan of the current rules that prevent athletes, specifically in college basketball and college football, from entering the professional league of their choice at the conclusion of high school.
A few thoughts on recruiting the state of Indiana
In Tuesday’s edition of The Indianapolis Star, Bob Kravitz penned a column (link) expressing concern over Tom Crean’s ability to recruit the state of Indiana. The headline: “Crean needs to start getting in-state talent.”
The overall tone of the column was hardly vicious, but there was quite a bit of discussion surrounding the 2010 class and the lack of IU flavor on the Indiana All-Star team.
If you’ve been following the program since Crean took over in the spring of 2008, he’s been transparent about the tremendous ground the program needed to make up in the 2010 recruiting class. And after landing a top 10 class in 2009, the Hoosiers will welcome a less-heralded three-man class this fall.
But back to the Indiana All-Star team. Kravitz mentioned three Purdue recruits — Terone Johnson, Donnie Hale and Travis Carroll — as well as Butler’s Erik Fromm and Chrishawn Hopkins and Ohio State’s Deshaun Thomas. I’ve watched all six players and two stood out as clear-cut Big Ten level guys: Thomas, Mr. Basketball and a McDonald’s All-American and Johnson, who will be a high level player in West Lafayette.
And while it’s easy to type a line like, “Take a quick look at the roster for the Indiana All-Stars boys basketball team. On second thought, if you’re an Indiana University fan, don’t bother. It’s too depressing,” that statement is also a little misleading.
The reality, as Kravitz mentions, is the recruiting work on Thomas and Johnson was all but completed before Crean ever stepped foot in Bloomington. The other four — Carroll, Fromm, Hale and Hopkins — could potentially fill roles at their respective schools, but are not worth losing much, if any, sleep over.
The real litmus test on IU’s ability to recruit Indiana talent will come in the next three classes.
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