Thursday, April 03, 2008

Is it too early for dispassionate analysis?

Are we still in the giddy honeymoon phase or can I put my geek hat on and start looking at Crean's career and what he brings to the table? I guess we'll find out.

IU fans have disagreed a bunch about the relative importance of these various coaching dimensions, but I think there's broad agreement that these are indeed the dimensions we care about (in no particular order):

1. Integrity (running a clean program, academics, etc.)
2. Recruiting
3. "Fit" (Indiana ties, Midwest ties, etc.)
4. Age
5. Name recognition
6. Coaching Experience
7. Coaching Ability (Xs and Os)
8. Style of Play

He's my analysis for each one, for what its worth

1. Integrity
Grade: A
Thoughts:
Indiana needed a slam dunk on this dimension and they got it. We all remember the uproar when Sampson was hired, and it centered on two things: the NCAA infractions and his graduation rate. Sampson said all the right things and successfully snowed most of us over, but obviously we learned that it's a lot easier to learn about someone's integrity based on their actions, not their words. Crean has proven over a 9 year period that he runs a clean program and graduates players - there are no negatives for us to rationalize away. If things go south in this regard under Crean, at least we'll be able to say, "No one saw that coming!"

2. Recruiting
Grade: B+
Thoughts:
I do everything in my power to ignore recruiting. I know it's important, I just hate the drama around it. If I had my way, I wouldn't know who the new players on the team were until they were introduced at Midnight Madness. So I'm not the best person to evaluate Crean here. But based on what little I'd know, recruiting is considered one of Crean's strengths, and he has a track record of bring in good classes at Marquette and will hopefully be able to improve on that at Indiana. He's known as a passionate, hard-working recruiter, and that counts for a lot. I didn't give him an A simply because there are a handful of guys in the country that are at another level when it comes to recruiting, and there's no evidence that Crean is on par with them (Roy Williams, Bill Self, Billy Donovan, etc.). Maybe he'll get there at Indiana, but he's not there yet.

3. Fit
Grade: B+
Thoughts:
This is clearly one of the best things about this hire, from my perspective. I didn't give him an A because he hasn't had any formal association with IU or the state of Indiana, but it's obvious that Coach Crean "gets it". He's a lifelong Midwest guy, he's recruited the state of Indiana for years, he's got Big Ten experience from MSU, and he's been a fan of Indiana since he was a kid. And you can tell that he loves the prospect of coaching basketball at Indiana University. Again, other than not being a former player or coach, it's hard to think of anyone who is a better fit.

4. Age
Grade: A
Thoughts:
There was a lot of disagreement about how important it was to bring in a young guy who could coach at Indiana for 20 years, but all else being equal everyone seemed to agree that younger was better. At 42, Crean can be at Indiana for decades. Personally, this was an important factor for me. I would have been willing to trade some additional age to make sure we brought in someone who was a proven commodity, but in Crean we got both - ample major conference track record plus youth.

5. Name Recognition
Grade: B
Thoughts:
Another contentious dimension, in terms of importance. Crean doesn't have the immediate name recognition that someone like Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, or John Calipari has, but he's also a bigger name than Brad Brownell, Tony Bennett, or Anthony Grant. He's been to a Final Four, he's coached multiple NBA players (including Dwayne Wade, one of the biggest names in basketball), and he's coached at a major conference school in the Midwest for nearly a decade. He's a big name, and hopefully he'll be on the same level as those first guys with a few years at IU under his belt.

6. Coaching Experience
Grade: B+
Thoughts:
Another strength for Crean - he's got more major conference experience than many of the rumored coaching candidates. Obviously there are guys like Pitino, Kruger, or Montgomery that have a lot more experience than Crean (and the advanced ages to prove it), so I couldn't give him an A here, but 9 years at Marquette is clearly a strength, not a weakness.

7. Coaching Ability
Grade: B+
Thoughts:
This is the toughest one to analyze, obviously, so I decided to look at some data. Let's look at his career at Marquette.

I'm using Pomeroy ranks here because Pomeroy goes back 9 years and has game-by-game data available on the website.

Looking at the above, it's a solid record. He was in rebuilding mode his first couple years at Marquette and posted solid seasons in the context of what he took over. Then he had a couple excellent seasons capped by the Final Four run in 2003. After losing Wade, Marquette struggled a bit the next two seasons, going to the NIT both times, but nothing awful. Then the last 3 seasons were in the super-sized Big East, where Marquette fared very well. Even though the overall records are similar, the 2006 team was much better than the 2005 team. It's easy to look at those Big East records and think that Marquette was little more than mediocre, but it would be a mistake. The Big East is a meat grinder. Here's a list of the records for the top Big East teams since the expansion:

That's the top 9 teams in the 16 team league. As you can see, there's a little bit of separation for Georgetown, but Marquette is right there with UConn, Louisville, Pitt, 'Nova, ND, and West Virginia in terms of league performance. No one breezes through the Big East. For those 9 teams over 3 seasons (meaning 27 records), there have only been FOUR cases of teams making it through the league with 2 or 3 losses. That should put Marquette's 31-19 record in perspective. Tom Crean took Marquette from Conference USA to the Big East and has been one of the top teams in the league.

I'm not a big fan of scoring offense or scoring defense as a measure of coaching ability, but some might find it interesting. From going through the games one-by-one, my takeaway is that Coach Crean likes to run and score in transition, but will grind it out if necessary. Marquette seemed to be just as successful in low scoring games as high-scoring games, which is a good sign, IMO.

Here's some interesting numbers. Again, these are based on Pomeroy rankings because that's what was available to me. Note that Coach Crean has never lost to a team ranked below 200 (which is actually kind of impressive, given that he had four teams ranked close to 100). Also noteworthy is that his record against 101-200 teams is 53-17, but 8 of those losses happened in his first two rebuilding years. In his last 7 seasons, he's 45-9.

His records against Top 10, Top 25, and Top 100 teams map pretty well to the strength of his individual teams (as you'd expect). Notice the increase in games against Top 25 teams from 2004 to 2008. Eleven games against Top 25 teams in 2007! That's brutal. I'll also say that considering that he has only had a Top 25 team three times out of the 9 seasons, his 24-32 overall record against Top 25 opponents is awfully impressive. I also noted that as I was going through the games - Marquette seemed to do well against the best competition, even when they didn't win.

More numbers that reflect well on Coach Crean. I threw the 10+ point defeats and wins in there, but I don't think they're very interesting. But I like the stats for games decided by 3 points or less (essentially meaning one possession games) and games decided by 6 points or less (two possession games). Being over 50% in both of those is really nice to see. It speaks to good end-game management, and he's been consistently good at that throughout his career.

Data isn't everything, but I'm very happy with what I found. Yes, he's had some average seasons, but that was at Marquette. He re-built the program there when there was absolutely no guarantee that it could be done, he successfully transitioned Marquette into the Big East when there was no guarantee that it would be smooth, he competed with the top teams in the country year in and year out and held his own, and he did it in a way that created a stable environment from season to season.

Obviously the blemish which can't be swept under the rug is NCAA tournament performance. He had the great run to the Final Four, but he also got upset twice in the first round by a 10 seed and a 12 seed (though that "12 seed" was ranked #33 by Pomeroy). Personally, I think the sample size is too small to know what kind of tournament coach he's going to be, but it's worth bringing up.

Do I need to justify why I didn't give him an A? If so, I'll simply say that he may very well be an A a few years from now, but to me an A means "one of the elite minds in college basketball" and other than the fact that he's now MY coach, there doesn't seem to be much justification for putting him in that company.

8. Style of Play
Grade: C+
Thoughts:
This one is completely subjective, because there's no one right way to play basketball, a lot of it just comes down to personal preference. For example, I have gobs of respect for Tom Izzo and I think he's a really excellent coach, but I have never particularly liked his style of play. Even in the national title year, I didn't enjoy watching them shoot brick after brick and score off offensive rebounds. It's not ineffective, it's just not aesthetically pleasing, and that matters to me. Crean doesn't play exactly the same style, but it looks more similar than different to my untrained eye.

I'm sure I'll learn to enjoy this style more as I learn more about it, and begin to understand what the players are doing and why. But when I found out it was Crean, this was really my only concern - would I enjoy watching the team play?

Overall

I think this is a great hire, and the one thing that strikes me is the complete lack of negatives for Coach Crean. Sure, he didn't get an A across the board, but there's no coach who would. The exciting thing is that he didn't get any low marks anywhere, which is why I'm cautiously hopeful that Coach Crean will still be at Indiana 20 years from now.