Crean era begins Saturday against Northwestern State

For the past seven months, Tom Crean’s life has been as frantic and high-paced as the “William Tell” overture.

He’s been a public figure, delivering countless speeches, reaching out to former IU players and recruiting future ones. He’s been a salesman, working hard to boost struggling ticket sales and making promises to the masses of restoring tradition. He’s even served on a committee, helping the University select its next athletics director.

On Saturday, Crean will take his team “under the lights,” as he likes to say, for the first time when the score will count in the team’s season-opener.

The Hoosiers host Northwestern State at 7 p.m. in Assembly Hall.

“It’s truly game week now,” Crean said in his weekly press conference Thursday.

The Demons will be the first Division-I team the Hoosiers have faced this fall. The Hoosiers went undefeated in two exhibition games throughout the past week, defeating D-III Anderson by 32 points and D-II Bemidji State, 72-54.

In the two games, the Hoosiers showed flashes of greatness, including a 21-2 run to open the Anderson game. But they also faced struggles the men’s basketball program is not accustomed to facing this early in the season.

Despite the quick start, they allowed Anderson to score 71 points in the first game. In the second, the Hoosiers surrendered a 10-point run to Bemidji State to open the second half, and found themselves with only a one-point lead, 37-36, with 15:57 to play.

In both games, Crean went with a four guard lineup, starting freshman forward Tom Pritchard in the post, playing versatile freshman Nick Williams at the power forward position and playing junior Devan Dumes, freshmen Matt Roth and Verdell Jones in the back court.

Crean said his team doesn’t “have our identity yet,” but showed glimpses on Tuesday of what they want to do: pressure the ball, create havoc on the court and bring a lot of energy.

While he was an assistant coach at Michigan State from 1995-2001, Crean said his teams knew what to expect when they came to play in Assembly Hall. Certain things were assumed: You knew there’d be a packed house, you knew the Hoosiers were going to get to the free-throw line and you knew they’d play well. But with 12 players suiting up for the first time in a regular-season game for the Hoosiers on Saturday, Crean said, “We don’t have that right now.”

In the team’s two exhibition games, Pritchard led the Hoosiers in both scoring and rebounding, averaging 16 points and 9.5 rebounds. Dumes (15 points), freshman guard/forward Malik Story (14.5), Jones (13) and Williams (11.0) averaged in double figures, as well.

The Demons, who play in the Southland conference, went 15-18 overall, finishing 4-11 on the road. They graduated three of their top five scorers, who accounted for 46.2 percent of the team’s offense last season.

“They lost some scoring and rebounding but returned a lot of athleticism and shooting ability,” Crean said.

On Thursday the first-year coach said his team planned to watch some film of Northwestern State on Thursday, go through its defensive sets and game plan in live practice Friday, then review it in the walk-through before Saturday’s opener.

In his first game back from his knee injury, senior forward Kyle Taber scored four points and pulled down nine rebounds while being limited to 15 minutes of play by the coaching and training staff.

Crean said IU trainer Tim Garl told him Taber looks good and could play Saturday without his minutes being monitored.

Noting his front line is “razor thin,” Crean added, “I hope we don’t have a limit with him.”