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When Tom Crean took over as coach a couple of years ago, he was asked why he, a successful coach who'd build a very nice program and life for himself up at Marquette, would want to take over the absolute quagmire that IU basketball was at the time. Honestly, even as an IU student and life-long fan, I couldn't figure it out. I suppose on the surface it made sense as a classic high-risk, high-reward move - if he succeeded, he'd be enshrined as the man who restored Indiana basketball to its former glory, a basketball savior in a state that lives and breathes basketball; if he failed, though, he'd be the person who couldn't save the Hoosiers, the one who left a safe, good program and was left out in the cold by the full collapse of the program.
His answer, though, made perfect sense. "It's Indiana." Not only did that answer fully encompass the "high-reward" part of my original equation, it added a new factor. Yes, at the time IU basketball was probably at its lowest point. Crean was coming into a program that had just narrowly escaped the NCAA's death penalty, but had crippled itself with its own sanctions (as well it should have done, by the way). For years the high standards set by Branch McCracken and Bob Knight had been slipping - not so much under Mike Davis, but drastically under Kelvin Sampson (by the way, they were slipping under Bob Knight at the end as well). Almost the entire team left when Crean was hired, which had been expected for the most part - only two players, Brett Finkelmeier and Kyle Taber, were left.
But it was still Indiana. There were still five national championship banners hanging in Assembly Hall. Players like Scott May, Steve Alford, and Jared Jeffries hadn't ceased to exist. When a school has a history in a sport, a down period doesn't erase the history of that program. It doesn't destroy a fanbase. It simply forces it into hibernation, awaiting something to revive it. And that process started when a coach came to Bloomington who understood, truly, that this was Indiana. And that coach immediately set out to raise the program and the recently jilted fanbase from the dead.
That process did not start with the commitment of Cody Zeller to IU - hell, even when the team wasn't great last year, attendance was high, as was optimism among most of the fans with whom I come into contact. That's part of the beauty of Indiana basketball, what makes it what it is - the fans knew that the team would not be great, but as soon as they knew that the team had a steward who understood the weight of his responsibility, and who was bringing in players who not only were highly skilled, but who also understood that responsibility, they re-invested in the program.
What Zeller represents is a reward for those fans, the ones who trusted Crean. Cody Zeller is a top prospect, but even if he doesn't end up being a top player, he is still a win for Indiana. He's an in-state prospect who's staying here, and at the expense of other top programs. Zeller chose IU over North Carolina and Butler: respectively, a program with five championships, just like Indiana, but with more recent success and Zeller's older brother Tyler; and a program also in Indiana coming off a national runner-up performance and likely still on the rise. Crean went up against those competitors (and surely more) and won.
Zeller's influential - in his comments yesterday, Zeller said that he'd call Yogi Ferrell (another IU target and friend of Zeller's) "in the next day or two," and Ferrell's father has said Yogi is "very excited" about Zeller's decision. Does that mean that Ferrell and others will commit to Crean tomorrow? No, of course not. But it shows that there is a domino effect of sorts here, that one recruit can make a program more attractive to others.
And that is what Zeller means to Indiana. He was the big catch, the crown jewel recruit, and we got him. Cody Zeller is a signal that Indiana University can recruit, attract, and lock in players of the highest caliber once again; a signal that Bloomington is once again a destination for the best young basketball players in the country.
When Tom Crean first took the job at IU, I'll admit that I had tempered hopes. I loved the hire, and I felt like if anyone could save this program, it would be him or someone like him. But I'm a pessimistic person a lot of the time, and I felt like there was a good chance that it wasn't possible to bring the program all the way back to where it had once been. After all, this was a team that hadn't won anything of import in the lifetimes of the players Crean would be trying to recruit. I figured that it would be hard to attract players who were worth attracting to a school that hadn't won a championship since 1987, and hadn't challenged for one since before I was in high school. At best, I assumed that it would be several years before top players wanted to come to Bloomington. I was wrong.
It's Indiana. And history doesn't die. The college basketball world should step lightly, as there's a sleeping giant in Bloomington, Indiana, and that giant may be truly stirring for the first time in twenty years.
When Tom Crean first took the job at IU, I'll admit that I had tempered hopes. I loved the hire, and I felt like if anyone could save this program, it would be him or someone like him. But I'm a pessimistic person a lot of the time, and I felt like there was a good chance that it wasn't possible to bring the program all the way back to where it had once been. After all, this was a team that hadn't won anything of import in the lifetimes of the players Crean would be trying to recruit. I figured that it would be hard to attract players who were worth attracting to a school that hadn't won a championship since 1987, and hadn't challenged for one since before I was in high school. At best, I assumed that it would be several years before top players wanted to come to Bloomington. I was wrong.
It's Indiana. And history doesn't die. The college basketball world should step lightly, as there's a sleeping giant in Bloomington, Indiana, and that giant may be truly stirring for the first time in twenty years.
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