Rock Meets Bottom (A Hoosier Epiphany)
(It’s a generally accepted axiom that the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging its existence. It seems that the delusional Hoosier fan base may finally be coming to grips with reality. Following are some excerpts from recent Hoosier threads.)
First let me say that I believe deep in my heart that the Hoosiers are on the rebound. I don’t know if it will take two years or five years for them to get back to some sort of national recognition. But I believe it is in the works and I am confident that it eventually will happen before I die. During the years where the Hoosiers were on a long slow slide towards national mediocrity, which I believe is owned by Crean, there was never a shortage of fanatical Hoosiers who thought each year was just an aberration. Everybody was spending their time on this website trying to justify that Indiana was still a blue blood program. I’ll go with December 18th 2017, when the Hoosiers lost to the Fort Wayne Mastadons by 20 points. With the benefit of hindsight Crean should have been gone after that loss.
The bottom was the first couple years of Crean's tenure. We would be a lot worse off if it weren't for him. He came to IU when nobody would. The slide started in the mid 90s. It all depends on what you consider national recognition or national relevance. I believe we will be back in the NCAA tournament next year but it may be a few years before IU is consistently a winner.
I believe it started well before the Crean years. Our last year as an elite blue blood was 1992-93, when CalBert and Greg Graham were seniors. It’s been a steady decline since then with many contributing factors, so I don’t really look at 1 specific moment/game over those years, but rather a gradual process getting close to 3 decades now.
After that great 92-93 season someone mentioned, we went to the sweet 16 the next season. After that you could pretty much bank on 11 or 12 losses every season and a first round tournament loss. Mid to late 90s weren’t fun for IU fans and the “we just won the title seven (then eight, then nine...) years ago” has turned into 34 years ago.
For me, I believe it was our “Zapruder” film that mysteriously emerged, the Neil Reed was it/was-it-not a real choke hold. Reed didn’t think it was a big deal at the time, nor did the other players. It was only later, after Reed was told there was a disparaging film against Knight did it become a big attention thing for the media to run with and the anti-Knight sentiment really escalated nationally after that, even with many of Hoosier Nation. Life as an IU fan has been a seemingly endless, topsy turvy roller coaster ride ever since of lots of lows and few highs.
There were “incidents” far worse than what was shown with Reed, but Knight and IU couldn’t have handled it worse, from beginning to end. It was as if both he and IU were intent on doing everything wrong, and doing it with precision and great effort, and that they were constantly looking for a bigger, steeper cliff to fling themselves off of. Ultimately, they succeeded. No surprise that the dopes responsible for the demise of the program have greatly inhibited its resurgence. Again, great effort has been made to screw it up and keep it screwed up. We’re just lucky it’s only been 20 some years.
The slide was underway the mid to late 90’s, while BK was still coaching.
It began right after Bailey graduated. His senior year was the twilight of the RMK yrs. The remaining yearrs, while still better than what we've had to endure recently, paled in comparison to what we had experienced over the previous 20 yrs. And it wasn't due to talent...we were still getting our share of 5 star burger-boys and loaded classes. They just weren't working within the RMK system. Brand shot the horse dead, but it was already dying a slow death.
After Damon Baily, too many talented kids came in who weren’t good fits, and it began to show. BK tried to fix it in recruiting, but kids began to tune him out. As I’ve said previously on several occasions, he began to lose the parents, and that was the doorway to losing the kids. I still remember a very interested national recruit whose mother basically crossed IU off the list before they’d left the AH parking lot after a meeting with BK (and Knight thought they’d gotten along fine). He was oblivious as to how he came off to moms and dads, and it really started to hurt him.
The bottom fell out in the Crean years. The IU fan base was nothing short of a full on cult for Tom Crean. I’m talking move to the mountains, give the guy your money, and let him have your wife type of cult. It will forever be the biggest stain on our program. Crean should’ve been fired after year 3. Spare me the excuses. I said it then and was called a troll, UK fan, Purdue fan, whatever. He set us on this course and most IU fans were taken for a ride.
Yeah, there wasn’t a Crean cult, though some fans were obviously fooled by the style and missed the lack of substance. The plethora of “We’re Back!” shorts and proclamations is a testament to that.
Only past members of the cult would deny that it existed. Everyone has tried to rewrite history since he left. I was here. I lived it. I remember the insanity. IU fans with their extremely low standards have led us to this point.
Crean was a fool and needs extreme talent to win, but neither he, nor KS, or Arch (who is similar to Crean) wrecked the program. Dakich did. He threw all those decent players off from what was about a top 10 team and left Crean with nothing. I don't recall arrests of any of those players or anything to warrant it other than they hated Dakich and his moralistic crap. Crean could have re-recruited them, but probably thought it more safe to suck and have a pity party for 3 years. In the end there were probably more players with arrests and off court issues under Crean than any IU coach ever.
For me it was the home loss to Eastern Washington. Hanner must have played that game high. He watched player after player drive past him without moving. I was in row 10 of section 2 and stood up and yelled "do you know what defense are you in?" It is the only IU basketball game I left early from. I can still see Crean waving his arms like a nut but doing nothing else to correct the worst defense I have ever seen.
Cody saved Crean's ass. And then Yogi bought him another year. But for many fans, the ‘Cuse game and then the underachieving following season- that was it for me with Crean. It was obvious he had hit his ceiling and was just selling snake oil.
Just put a sign out on HW 37, “It’s Indiana!” and watch those 5 stars come running. Anyone can be successful at IU with our recruiting in the hotbed of basketball, just because we’re IU, or so we were told and the gullible (naive) believed.
Impartial sports analysts seldom fail to mention IU fired a basketball coach only one year after being named BT Coach of the Year by winning the conference season title with a 2 game cushion to spare. The same people thinking IU can do better than Knight, Davis, Sampson, Crean, and Miller are the same ones now convinced we’ll do better with Woodson. Meanwhile, Purdue just keeps thumping our asses with a more effective recruiting machine in Keady/Painter.
It’s easier to build a winning program at all costs than it is to create a winning program totally within the confines of the ever changing recruiting rules. IU has taken the moral high ground after being burned at the stake by their own people. Good for us, a clean program now, free from the tainted stains left from our “classic bully” and his enablers who worshipped his winning ways.
Doing it honestly and with class and integrity should be the standard, hopefully while winning at a high level. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
One of Knight’s many famous quotes, regarding a game like Crean’s against Syracuse, would have been, “Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you!”, although he was more of a rabbit hunter. Miller left here without one memorable quote. At least Crean had his now infamous, “It’s Indiana!” uttered in seemingly spontaneous response to “Why Indiana?” on his Day 1. Today, a coach is asked that same question, followed by a longer pause before explanation.
The bottom dropped out in Archie’s first game against Indiana State.
I am convinced that, 10 yrs from now, we'll struggle to remember Archie's name. He really had the 4 most unmemorable years here. He never once gave off the impression that he was even glad to be here. Complete waste of 4 years and $12M. Actually double that with the buyout.
Most people on here thought it was a sold hire. And they were very happy. It didn't work out for. number of reasons. People didn't complain getting Romeo, Lander, and TJD. They did complain about how they were used.
I felt that way as well...until we had a few games under our belt, including a couple 20-point home losses to mid majors. I'm just being retrospective now....Archie never once gave me the impression that he enjoyed being the head coach of IU. Maybe it's just his low brow nature (vs Captain Spazzy-tan before him). Just never seemed like the right fit for either party- program or Archie.
It started when they decided to hire Kelvin Sampson and bring NCAA heat with him. Up to that point IU had been better than that. Rock bottom was Archie losing by a thousand to Purdue on the day Knight returned to Assembly Hall.
29 of IU's 30 coaches produced very average results. Knight just so happened to be one of the greatest of all time. IU was fortunate to have him. As soon as he started to decline, IU returned to their average results and have remained there since. Asking when the bottom fell out is kind of silly.
