Crean: Trust, loyalty important for next assistant coach
Indiana coach Tom Crean met with the media earlier this afternoon to discuss tomorrow’s Big Ten Tournament game against Northwestern, which tips at approximately 5PM ET on ESPN2. (You can read some quotes from Crean on Northwestern here.)
The second-year coach was also asked about the dismissal of assistant coach Roshown McLeod, who has yet to speak publicly but plans to do so in the coming days via a press release.
Specifically, the question posed to Crean by Dustin Dopirak of The Herald-Times was this, “You said on your radio show the other night it was abundantly clear to you that you had to make the move you did in letting Roshown go. What did he do or not do to make that abundantly clear?”
And here was the response:
“It’s where it’s at. I really don’t want to go a lot further than that. I understand the positions that you guys are in with asking that question and wanting to know more. I understand that. But everything from me right now is to make sure that we are totally focused on what we’re trying to do here. That doesn’t mean that I’m not already in the process of thinking of what I’m going to do the next time. It would be foolish for me to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to put all that off and not think about it until the end of the year.’ Of course I think about it. My job, day in and day out is to make this program better than it was the day before in every aspect and to get everybody pulling in the same direction all the time. It’s a lot easier said than done, but that’s what the challenge is every day and that’s how you want to try to have it.”
A follow up question asked if there were any specific things he was looking for in a candidate for the position and the words direction, trust and loyalty all came up.
“I have a pretty good idea of what I want to get accomplished with that job,” he said. “I’m not looking to find a person and then build the role around them. I want to find a person that fits exactly what we need. I have a pretty good view of what that is, but I’m still trying to really definitely figure that out. That I have not put a lot of time into yet. I’m probably pretty clear but not totally clear on what I want from that position. There will be some basic tenets of it that are really, really important. You guys can probably figure that out just as easy as I could say it when it comes to going in the same direction, trust, loyalty and all of those kinds of things are extremely important.”
Crean also said that he does not have a timetable to fill the position, but that he doesn’t see it “being a long time.”
Maurice Creek and Matt Roth also met with reporters and you can listen to their comments over at The Hoosier Scoop.
Filed to: Roshown McLeod, Tom Crean