Hoosiers ax Crean after 18- 16 season
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Tom Crean put Indiana basketball back in the national conversation.
As it turned out, there was too much talk and not enough wins.
Nine years after taking over a team mired in turmoil following an NCAA scandal, Crean was fired Thursday after missing the NCAA tournament for the fifth time in his tenure. The 50- year- old coach had three years left on his contract, and the move comes a little more than three months before his buyout would have dropped from $ 4 million to $ 1 million.
“The expectations for IU basketball are to perennially contend and win multiple Big Ten championships, regularly go deep into the NCAA tournament and win our next national championship and more after that,” athletic director Fred Glass said. “We will look to identify and recruit a coach who can help us meet these expectations.”
Glass will immediately begin looking for a successor and will not form a search committee.
Despite going 166- 135, winning two conference titles and last year’s Big Ten coach of the year award, Crean’s teams never advanced beyond the Sweet 16.
They began this season as one of the Big Ten favorites and were ranked No. 3 in November after upsets of Kansas and North Carolina. But when Nebraska ended the Hoosiers’ 26- game home- court winning streak in December, the season unraveled.
Indiana lost its best defender, OG Anunoby, with a season- ending knee injury and their top scorer, James Blackmon Jr., for three games with a leg injury. They ended up a pedestrian 18- 16, including a first- round loss in the NIT.