Indiana basketball: 'Just start it over'

Indiana men's basketball coach Tom Crean stopped Friday night to pump gas during a recruiting trip, one of many such trips that Hoosiers fans are counting on to restore the program to its past glories. But Crean pushed the wrong button at the pump and needed some help.

"I pressed the wrong number, so if you can just clear it, I can do it again," he told a store clerk. "If you can just start it over ..."

If only beginning again was that simple for a Hoosiers program that owns five national titles.

Crean expected challenges when he left Marquette last spring to take over a program that was hit by NCAA violations under former coach Kelvin Sampson, who resigned last year toward the end of what had been a promising season.

This season's Hoosiers (5-12, 0-5 Big Ten), who have lost eight in a row, play host to the No. 21 Gophers (16-3, 4-3 Big Ten) today.

"We are in a tumultuous state right now," Crean told reporters at Big Ten media day in October. "The program is great. We just have to get through the state we are in right now. As a staff and for our players, we just have to take each day for what it is."

But he never anticipated what followed his arrival. Numerous players left the program for a variety of reasons; a portion of one of America's strongest fan bases disappeared; and Crean has been left to rely on nine mostly inexperienced scholarship players and some walk-ons. Home losses to Northeastern and Lipscomb in December showed the rebuilding job that Crean faces.

The fall was fast

The series of obstacles Crean has encountered helped the Hoosiers find the bottom of the Big Ten this season only a year after challenging for the conference title.

Soon after Indiana officials announced Crean would take over the program in April, guard Eric Gordon, the Big Ten Freshman of the Year last year, announced he was taking his services to the pros. D.J. White, last season's Big Ten Player of the Year as a senior, is also in the NBA. Several other players transferred, and Crean dismissed four more. Eli Holman, who transferred to Detroit Mercy, knocked down a potted plant in Crean's office after a heated discussion.

"The system didn't have anything to do with it," Crean said of the players who left for reasons other than turning pro. "There was not one thing that was basketball-related ... and it's unfortunate, it really is. Quite a few of the young men that left, I thought were very talented basketball players. But basketball wasn't even in the equation, to be honest with you."

Only one of this year's scholarship players, Kyle Taber, earned significant minutes under Sampson. And Taber scored a total of 28 points last season.

And if that wasn't enough of a rebuilding project, in November, the NCAA put the program on probation for the next three years -- after Indiana had already stripped itself of a scholarship this season and imposed recruiting limitations as a result of Sampson's alleged string of illegal recruiting phone calls.

"When you take over a situation like this and you deal with all of the uncertainty at the beginning, and when you deal with the total newness to a program and to a team like we have, there's no way to know what to expect it to look like," Crean said Friday in a telephone interview. "The beauty of this is, we take every day with a great enthusiasm and a passion and we try to get the absolute most out of it."

Progress has begun

Crean, who said he doesn't have any regrets about taking on such a major task, is excited about his team's progress. Freshman Tom Pritchard and junior college transfer Devan Dumes are both averaging over 12 points. And freshman guard Verdell Jones, whom the Gophers tried to recruit last spring, has started the team's past six games and averaged double figures in that span.

Indiana also has one of the nation's top recruiting classes for 2009-10, led by Alabama prep Christian Watford, the No. 34 player in the class of 2009, according to rivals.com.

All are signs that suggest his young team is developing properly, Crean said.

"Certainly creating the depth that we need and creating the competition on a daily basis, that's not there yet, and that's not going to come until we can put together some recruiting classes where people have to come in day after day and compete for minutes and compete for jobs," Crean said. "We're getting closer."

His players have bought into the vision of a man who took Marquette to the Final Four in 2003 and helped Dwyane Wade become a star.

"With so many new guys, it is something that we are all going through together," Hoosiers freshman Nick Williams said.  "Coach sets a great example with the energy and enthusiasm he brings every day, and we try to follow his lead."