As promised. I'll have the last part up in a couple of days.
What are your thoughts on the current state of the team?
Let me put it this way, when you're not involved in a basketball program day to day, you don't really know what's going on, so I'm not going to pretend what's know what's going on in the basketball program. From a public relations standpoint, I think Tom's doing everything right. Whether they're any good or not remains to be seen, but he's bringing in a number of players -- and every time a kid signs somewhere, particularly at Indiana, the kid comes out, he's a great player, whether he is or not, you gotta determine on the court.
But, he cleaned out the ones who should not have been here -- they shouldn't have been here from the start. But they were here, he cleaned them out, and then he's brought in kids that hopefully, within their program, everybody understands what the culture here is supposed to be. I don't know that, because I'm not there every day, but certainly from somebody on the outside, it appears that. But you know what, a year ago at this time, everybody was talking about what a great job Sampson was doing, doing the same thing. But internally, it wasn't that.
Coach Knight had one rule, a very simple rule: Don't embarass the basketball program or yourself. That's it. Hopefully, and that's not a rule you need to coach.
Do you think expectations are any lower this year than in past years, given everything that's happened?
I think that there's no question, but the players themselves can't think that. The players themselves can't have the same expectations as the people around them. I've read where people have written that this is a throwaway year -- there's no throwaway years at Indiana University. There's no throwaways for Crean.
IU fans say, 'Well, we'll cheer just as long as they play hard.' Let me tell you something: There isn't a guy in coaching that believes that. Every guy in coaching's like, yea OK, until we lose a few.
That's how I am with the Cubs.
I think expectations are down, but I don't think they're down with the people that matter, which is the people in those uniforms and the people that sit on the sidelines that are working with them every day.
If you want to coach in Indiana, it's the greatest place in the world to be a basketball coach. When there's a high school job open in the state of Indiana, guys apply from all over the place, other states, just to coach in Indiana. To everybody it might be, but to the state of Indiana and basketball ... hopefully Crean understands it, hopefully the players understand it.
It's still Indiana. There's still those banners in there, there's still expectations, because it's still Indiana.
Was there ever a point during last season that you didn't feel proud to be a former IU basketball player, someone who believed in that tradition?
Yea. It was a lot. Even the players, some of the guys would sit up in a meeting and say, 'This isn't fun. What's going on with this?'
Truthfully, not only as an Indiana player, but as an Indiana coach -- I think only coach Knight had been here longer than I had been -- there were a lot of times well before the end of February where I wasn't happy with how things were, and I was vocal about it. I was vocal to the right people, I wasn't going behind Kelvin's back, but I was talking Kelvin and I'd talk with the other coaches about, you know, we've got to do something. This is ridiculous. I never said that publicly, I would never have said that to anybody other than Kelvin or Jeff Meyer.
That's why I say when I took over as the interim coach, right or wrong, whether I should have or whether I shouldn't have, I wasn't gonna let that continue.
Has that been restored for you at all in the last six months?
I think that the feeling about Indiana basketball is better, publicly, and I think Tom is doing a great job. But, as I've said, I think unless you're there on a daily basis, you don't really know. I couldn't tell you whether one kid on the Indiana basketball team has gone to class this year. I have no idea.
I could tell you every class every guy missed last year, I could tell you every thing every guy was doing last year, but I'm not there (now), so I don't know. My hope is that it is, but as I said before, certainly from reading the newspaper or talking to Tom or Buckley or whoever it is, it seems to be that way. I hope it is. I think every guy who's a former player hopes it is. It's like this: If you played for coach Knight, you have ... if you put a lot of work into things and you've been made to do things that you didn't necessarily want to do at the time, but looking back on things, it was really good for you, you have a great pride in that. And you'll find that out as you get older.
For us, the guys that played for coach Knight feel very strongly about winning, no question, having guys that respect the people that had been here before that made it a great place, and want to not read about guys causing trouble. We just want to see them graduate. We have pride in that, because we all went through it, we all did it.
