Tom Crean's Big Red Challenge

The Hoosiers, 22-4 at the time, needed an interim coach. Most of the players lobbied athletic director Rick Greenspan for assistant Ray McCallum because they were closest to him. But Greenspan selected another Hoosiers assistant, Dan Dakich, a former IU player and Knight disciple best known for shutting down Michael Jordan in Indiana's upset of North Carolina in the 1984 NCAA East Regional, Jordan's final college game. When McCallum didn't get the job, all but five players boycotted Dakich's first practice. Though the mutiny was scotched, the team, overwhelmed by the turmoil and feeling betrayed by the administration, lost four of its last five games. Dakich demanded that the players attend class, and if they arrived late for practice, he ran them until they nearly puked. When Ellis and Bassett refused to run theirs, he booted them from the program. The season that had started with so much promise ended with a first-round loss to Arkansas in the NCAA tournament.

Given the rebellion, it was clear that Dakich could not become the permanent coach. But in the postgame press conference after the NCAA loss, Dakich delivered a manifesto. Indiana basketball needed to be reconfigured, he said, "with a foundation of discipline and accountability. This needs to be built back to where there is real pride among the people that know everything that's going on in the basketball program; where . . . former players come and have pride in what is happening here in the program."

Tom Crean took the call on a Sunday night in March, right after the Elite Eight games in the 2008 NCAA tournament had been played. He had been the Marquette basketball coach for nine years, during which he had gone to the NCAAs five times and advanced as far as the Final Four. Crean reckoned he was "in an ideal situation." He had a long-term contract. He and his family liked Milwaukee. He was at a sufficiently prominent school to lure NBA-caliber recruits such as Dwyane Wade, but one sufficiently small that he didn't have to deal with the pressures and distractions besetting the program at Big State U.

But the caller was the former college coach Eddie Fogler, and his questions intrigued Crean. Fogler was representing Indiana and wanted to gauge Crean's interest in the Hoosiers job. By his own account Crean had never been much of a player, even at his small-town Michigan high school. Crean, though, had fallen hard for the game and worked his way up in coaching, starting as a high school assistant while he was still a student at Central Michigan in 1989. Six years later he was an assistant for Tom Izzo at Michigan State, and four years after that, at 33, he became the coach at Marquette. In 2004 he served as an assistant on the under-21 USA national team, coached by Sampson. "I had Indiana at the highest level of basketball program," says Crean. "Who didn't? This was a program beyond reproach that won NCAA titles. Coaching Indiana . . . how do you not take that challenge?"

Two days after Fogler's call, Crean was on campus in Bloomington. Soon he was discussing the job with his brothers-in-law, Jim and John Harbaugh--coaches of the Stanford and Baltimore Ravens football teams, respectively--who knew something about rebuilding programs. Later that week Crean was introduced as the Hoosiers' new coach.

While Crean acknowledges that the process "moved fast, real fast," he insists that he did due diligence and knew what he was getting himself into. "If you were in college basketball, you had some strong ideas that there was some work to be done [at Indiana]," he says, slowing to choose his words carefully. "Not just because of what happened with the previous coach, but [by] looking at suspensions--this guy missed three games, that guy missed three games. Word gets around fast, no doubt."

Still, there was a considerable gap between Crean's expectations and the reality of the mess he was inheriting. The job wasn't going to require a broom and dustpan; it was going to require industrial cleanser. This was laid bare during his first full week of work when, Crean says, he showed up at an academic progress meeting and learned that team members were carrying a total of 19 F's. "We tried to get those grades up," he says of making sure players attended class. "But 19 F's?"

Gordon, as expected, announced his decision to enter the 2008 NBA draft. A few weeks later Crean and his wife, Joani, met with freshman center Eli Holman in the basketball office to discuss Holman's future. A Sampson recruit, Holman had been suspended for a season in high school for shoving a ref; his short temper surfaced in Crean's office. At one point, according to Crean, Holman became so animated that he grabbed a potted plant and threw it against the wall, triggering a call to campus police. No one was hurt and Holman wasn't arrested, but it was clear he was not coming back to play for Crean.

Sampson believes that his former players were "thick as thieves" and that a "pack mentality" took hold. Besides, he says, "I think anytime a coach leaves, there are going to be transfers." Crean contends that as he was trying to persuade players to stay, others were undermining his effort. In total six scholarship players have left for schools ranging from Xavier to Robert Morris College in Chicago; Holman transferred to tiny Detroit Mercy, where McCallum, the popular assistant under Sampson, had just been named coach. "It's not like the players didn't have help deciding to leave," says Crean, choosing his words with painful precision. "There was orchestration and things of that nature."

Asked about Sampson specifically, Crean says only, "We had a great relationship. But on the record I choose not to talk about it anymore." Sampson says of Crean, "I have a lot of respect for Tom. He is an excellent coach and was an excellent choice."