How Tom Crean is winning at Indiana

Indiana hired Tom Crean for two reasons:

(1) He will clean up a Hoosiers program destroyed by notorious rule-bender Kelvin Sampson.

And (2) he'll continue Indiana's winning tradition without cheating or getting in trouble.

No one said it would be easy. Crean inherited a program ready to fall apart. Within the first few weeks of his arrival in Bloomington, fall apart things did. Crean has two players left from Sampson's 2007-2008 team. No Eric Gordon. No DJ White. Nothing, really.

But Crean went right to work, enforcing academic standards that eventually made his roster woefully thin. Then he started recruiting. Crean collected a manageable group of JUCO and D-I transfers and freshmen.

After yesterday, Crean took another huge step toward making Indiana Indiana again. I know two people who are Indiana fans. For them, I will say this: Endure this year, root like you're rooting for Rudy. Next year, Indiana will be an extremely young, extremely talented group.

That's a pretty good reason to be optimistic.

Elsewhere
-- Looks like Coach Roy is getting ready to reload the musket ... UNC, your 2011 national champs!

-- Bad news for Big East contenders ... Just throwing this out there: How is it possible for coaches like Bob Huggins, Jamie Dixon, Jim Boeheim, John Thompson III and Mike Brey to get out-recruited by a guy who has one year of head-coaching experience and is 14-17 lifetime? Dude hasn't coached a single Big East game and he out-recruited some of the biggest names in coaching. That's impressive for Buzz Williams, embarrassing for the big wigs.

-- There has been way too much Marquette talk in today's posting. I'm gonna puke.

-- SIU had a big win last night in the season's early-going. Tough loss to swallow if you're UMass.

-- No. 4 UCLA dropped Prairie View A&M last night. Stunning, I know.

Parting thought: Pitt. Fairleigh Dickinson. Tomorrow night.