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The Indiana Daily Student

sports men's basketball

Notebook: Crean addresses leadership, suspensions

IU-Wisconsin Men's Basketball

IU Coach Tom Crean spoke for just more than 40 minutes Tuesday and spent much of his time addressing leadership within an IU team that has no seniors.

After three off-court issues involving alcohol in the past nine months and recent suspensions to sophomores Stanford Robinson and Troy Williams for incidents in the summer, Crean conceded that proper leadership hasn’t been present in the Hoosier locker room.

He was blunt in saying leadership has been poor and it needs to grow.

“Our leadership has not been good at all,” Crean said. “It’s a growth process, and it’s certainly not growing fast enough. And that’s not a news flash for us, but it is growing. Do I sit here and say our leadership is great? Absolutely not.”

In February, junior forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea was arrested on a drunk driving charge.

Two months later, junior Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell and Robinson were arrested on charges of minor consumption and possession of false identification after an incident at Kilroy’s Sports bar.

Freshman forward Emmitt Holt was cited for underage drinking and operating a vehicle with a BAC of 0.025 after striking teammate Devin Davis as Davis was crossing 17th Street.

Davis has been in IU Health Bloomington Hospital recovering since the incident.

“You are always going to wonder about what you could have done better,” Crean said. “You beat yourself up for that.”

Junior forward Nick Zeisloft, who transferred from Illinois State and has been praised by Crean for his leadership abilities, said leadership is something the team is constantly working on, but it won’t change overnight.

To Zeisloft, it’s a process. Players like him and the more veteran players are still trying to make it work.

“As a team, we feel like we have a pretty good bond,” Zeisloft said. “But we do need to have some growing up amongst ourselves. I guess that’d be the main thing. Each and every one of us need to look out for each other and grow up as a whole. I definitely see that happening with us, and that’s one of the main things we’re working on.”

Crean explains suspension length

Crean elected to suspend Williams and Robinson for four games — two of which will be exhibitions — for their summer violation.

He said the suspensions were more than what the student-athletic handbook would mandate, but he added there is a line between punishment and discipline.

“You can’t do any less, and I don’t think I’d ever even want to consider it,” Crean said. “We chose to do more.”

Crean said the decision to suspend the two players was made in advance without relation to Saturday’s incident that led to the suspension of Holt.

He had originally intended to announce the suspensions today but ended up doing so Monday.

“Now, we had some mistakes made this summer that were ridiculous, and that is it,” Crean said. “That is where it is.”

Crean said two of the games being exhibition was purely coincidence. The suspension was going to be four games regardless, but the way the schedule fell made it cover two regular season games and the two preseason exhibitions.

Regardless, Crean said the penalty is still just because the two won’t be playing.

“They’re still not playing,” Crean said. “That’s what they really, ultimately come here to do. They want that education that we sell, the GPA and the (potential to be) a three-year graduate ... and all those things, but they’re here to play basketball.”

Walk on tryouts take place

Crean mentioned on his radio show Monday that he was late to the interview because of walk-on tryouts that took place Monday.

Crean said he went into the walk-on tryout with an open mind, but there was no news to report.

“We haven’t made any decisions on that at all yet.”

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