Bulldogs coach lets frustration leak out
COLLEGE STATION — Plenty of college coaches scrutinize a roster they’ve inherited and wonder exactly what they’ve gotten themselves into. Few publicly express as much, but Georgia’s Tom Crean did just that over the weekend in decrying his veteran Bulldogs.
“It’s all on me, because I’m the one who decided to keep these guys,” Crean said following Georgia’s 80-64 home loss to Mississippi on Saturday. “… The last thing I can do, with making decisions on keeping guys in the program in the spring, is now get overly mad at them. Because I’m the one who made the decision, (and) I live with that every day.”
Georgia and its sudden circus thanks to the first-year coach Crean’s cranky comments visit Texas A&M (9-13, 2-8 SEC) at 6 p.m. Tuesday, as the Bulldogs (1013, 1-9) try and snap a four-game losing streak. The last team Georgia defeated> Texas in the Big 12/ SEC Challenge, a 98-88 home victory on Jan. 26.
“They’re very capable of beating anybody in our league,” said A&M coach Billy Kennedy, whose Aggies are coming off a 68-59 victory at Missouri on Saturday, in snapping their own three-game losing streak.
Kennedy took over A&M nearly eight years ago, so it’s been a while since he’s had to deal with an inherited roster. Still, he knows where the too-frank Crean was coming from, no matter the new landing spot for the coach.
“It’s hard, because you want to give a kid a chance, but at the same point you don’t know him, you don’t have a relationship with him,” Kennedy said. “He took a chance with some kids, and I don’t know their situation as well as he does, but that’s a tough call.”
Kennedy took it a step further, and said sometimes it can be tough when it’s players you’ve brought onboard to a program.
“It’s the same when you bring players in and you’ve recruited them, you have them for a year and if they’re not matching what you want them to match, you have to be able to move on and get the kind of guys in here who want to do things the way you want to do them,” Kennedy said. “That’s always a tough thing to do, especially when you’ve recruited your own players — it’s a little bit harder that way.”
It’s also unusual for a coach to publicly criticize his players so harshly, but Kennedy said losing can bring out the warts in discourse.
“It’s not too often you’re losing as much as you’re losing and they’re losing,” said Kennedy, whose program last season made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament with a much different roster than the current one. “So when that happens, sometimes things come out that you don’t want to come out.
“(But) I can’t say that for him, because I don’t know their team as well and their situation as well as he does, obviously.”
The backlash to Crean’s comments was immediate, with junior guard Tyree Crump’s mother taking to Twitter to share her frustration with the new guy.
“Really? Tom Crean, you want to blame the players?” Shantell Crump posted. “What coach would say something like this to the media about his players.”
Crean, the former Marquette and Indiana coach who replaced the fired Mark Fox last March. tried to smooth things over with the players Sunday. Then he publicly apologized Monday, the same day the program landed a commitment from top-10 recruit Anthony Edwards.
“I always try to get our players to understand that you can't let frustration set in. I always preach and I try to be very cognizant of that and I think I did (get frustrated)," Crean said. "I look back at those comments, when I saw them, and it was like I was blaming the players. That was never my intent. … I am definitely sorry to them, which I've apologized to them."
Meantime the Aggies are exhaling after winning Saturday at Missouri for their first SEC victory since a month ago at Alabama.
But A&M is 0-5 in league games in Reed Arena this season.
“You’ve got to win your home games, and we’re trying to turn this around,” guard Wendell Mitchell said. “We can’t relax.”