SportingNews: Indiana coaches take issue with 'biggest underachiever' label

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per the SportingNews:

Hoosiers assistant Tim Buckley, who has been beside coach Tom Crean since the start of their reclamation project in Bloomington in 2008, vehemently disagreed with that label.

“We’re pretty proud of this group,” Buckley said in a news conference Tuesday, per a report from The Indianapolis Star. “And we’re disappointed as much as anybody else with not going further in the NCAA Tournament. Our fifth-place team (Michigan) in the Big Ten played for the national championship. That’s how good this league was. And for us to do it night in and night out; I don’t think we ever lost two games in a row.

“Someone point out to me what was underachieved from April 1, 2008, until we went through draft night. I’m going to speak to that because I know what everybody up here put into it, I know what everybody’s family put into it, I know what every one of the players and their families put into it.”

http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-ba...et-journal-article-victor-oladipo-cody-zeller

Go Gophers!!
 


Wasn't Tom Crean crying, begging, pleading to the media before the season that Jordan Hulls was a NBA point guard? So if they had a "NBA PG" in Hulls, a stud understudy in Yogi Ferrell, Christian Watford, Will Sheehey, and 2 of the top 4 picks in the NBA Draft, wouldn't you expect a little more than a fizzle out in the Sweet 16?

Crean certainly likes patting himself on the back for how far the IU program has come (and it has, absolutely), but if he's gonna' do that he better be ready to take the criticism when one of his teams underachieves. And the bottom line is IU underperformed big-time in the NCAA Tournament, including the "NBA point guard" he was raving about prior to the season. Against Temple and Syracue, the Hoosiers looked nowhere near what they looked like during the regular season.
 






Hey, they love to celebrate, they will even cut down the nets after they lose.
 

I think Indiana last year was the type of team that was very good but the room for improvement wasn't really there (or at least it didn't look like it was there). They were kind of close to their maximum level of play for most of the year, and then other teams improved or figured out how to guard them and cut down on their 3-pointers and all of a sudden they started losing more frequently. In the last month or so of the season Hulls shot significantly worse on 3s than he had over the first 2/3 of the season, and Watford's scoring average was down 2-3 points as well.

I don't think IU last year was that talented of a team to expect an NC in hindsight. Obviously the NBA draft would seem to disagree with that, but they did only have 2 picks in the draft (it's not like their whole team got drafted or will be drafted like UK), and Zeller could well turn out to be something of a bust (when you struggle with physical contact in the post in college, you're going to have major adjustments to make in the NBA which is much more physical in the paint). Ferrell wasn't a great player last season, and Hulls was a liability when he wasn't nailing a lot of 3s. Watford was decent but it's not like he's going to be playing in the NBA. Their bench was pretty lousy for a #1 seed, and these days you've got to have some pretty good depth (2-3 good contributors) to make a run in the tourney if your starters aren't overwhelmingly good.
 



SelectionSunday said:
Wasn't Tom Crean crying, begging, pleading to the media before the season that Jordan Hulls was a NBA point guard? So if they had a "NBA PG" in Hulls, a stud understudy in Yogi Ferrell, Christian Watford, Will Sheehey, and 2 of the top 4 picks in the NBA Draft, wouldn't you expect a little more than a fizzle out in the Sweet 16?

Crean certainly likes patting himself on the back for how far the IU program has come (and it has, absolutely), but if he's gonna' do that he better be ready to take the criticism when one of his teams underachieves. And the bottom line is IU underperformed big-time in the NCAA Tournament, including the "NBA point guard" he was raving about prior to the season. Against Temple and Syracue, the Hoosiers looked nowhere near what they looked like during the regular season.
Click to expand...

I do recall Crean saying Hulls was an NBA player after the Georgia game, where he also claimed Georgia would win 20 games. He is from the Izzo school of drama.
 

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