Is MU basketball a COACH like Cincy was under Bob Huggins destine to fade to the bottom half of the Big East once he left?
Is MU basketball a PROGRAM like Pitt that continues to excel even after Ben Howland left for UCLA five years ago?
This is what we are going to learn.
The episode we are watching with Crean going to IU is pretty standard. Coaches change jobs, it happens. It's ALWAYS messy. No way around it.
If you are a PROGRAM it doesn't really matter. See UCLA, how many coaches have they had in the last 10 to 15 years yet they continue to excel. See Kansas. You think Crean going to IU makes us look like a stepping stone; imagine the shock in Kansas when Williams WON and left for UNC. Kansas is back in the final four five years later.
Now Crean did MU a HUGE favor. He left a ranked team and a recruiting class. MU can pay (they paid Crean). So Bennett, Miller or whoever has to look at the opportunity to jump to a ranked team in the Big East. Such an opportunity rarely, if ever, comes along. This is why they will consider MU and did not want IU. In IU they saw a mess. In MU they see themselves leading a ranked Big East Team in just a few months.
Also with Crean going to a dysfunctional IU program, he did MU another favor. Crean made it easy for the next coach to talk Williams, Taylor or whoever into not following him to IU ("Look Nick, IU is a mess. Go there and lose. It is that simple. Stay with us and have Jay Bilas tell ESPN Nation how your play will got us a top 10 ranking. Tom is a great guy and he will have IU humming in three years, but you can't afford three losing years waiting for that to happen. Playing for a loser now will kill your NBA stock.")
It natural for all the recruits to want out after the coach leaves. They always do because they currently have no coach and they are emotional young men. But if (big if) we get the right guy, Crean made it easy for him to convince everyone to stay. And given how stacked we can be, Miller might even convince his recruits to follow him to a better situation.
Had Crean left for Illinois in 2003, and would have left a depleted team, no Al, no Big East, Nottingham's (or Deane's in that case) job would have been next to impossible. We would now be DePaul.
Bottom line - If Nothingham does this right, and successfully passing the baton, we are a PROGRAM that is larger than its coach. We are Pitt, G-Town or UConn. If he blows it, and people leave and we fade, we are Cincy or DePaul, we were never a PROGRAM in the first place; we were always a COACH.
The opportunity with Crean leaving is we can establish ourselves as a PROGRAM once and for all. Programs replace their coaches and continue with their success. If we do that, and out next coach takes over for a retiring Coach K in a few years, that's ok too. We are a PROGRAM and we will find another. There is always another.
+1
This is a great post, and a great point. We are a PROGRAM and programs continue despite whoever happens to be in charge at the moment.
I agree that this is a defining moment for our program, but we are not a program yet. And we need a really good coach to define it.
Great perspective, Another84. Well said.
I agree with Erick. This will really show us who we are. We really need to land a solid coach. We could potentially lose all of the talent from this recruiting class, and most of our talent from the current squad will be gone by next April, if not already. We need someone who can keep this ship sailing just enough to keep it afloat, weather the storm, and push forward.
And for what it's worth, Cincy will be just fine very shortly, I'm afraid.
First of Jay Bilas liked Crean and do not expect him to drool all over MU now. 2nd of all we do not have an assistant coach on the staff like Jamie Dixon. 3rd we are not one of the elite programs. North Carolina hired Williams to replace the coach that took the premier program in the country to a losing record. Kentucky fell after Tubby Smith left. By UCLA standards they suffered for years after Wooden. For that fact MU suffered for years after McGuire and especially after Raymonds. Sure MU would be fine if they could hire Williams, Holland, Self or Dixon but we will not hire anyone close to that. In the short run the best thing to do would be to hire Buzz Williams as coach as he has the best chance of keeping the current team and recruits. In the long run someone else might be better. MU being in the Big East is now more of a destination program than it was, but the MU program is the coach. We will not survive a bad hire.
How did PROGRAMS get to be PROGRAMS? Was Duke a PROGRAM before Krzyzewski? I think it comes from having a great coach who stays and builds it into a PROGRAM. Not from having your coach leave during the process. I think we are more highly regarded now than we were pre-Crean. And we owe him for that.
But, I do not feel confident about the future. Howefer, a great hire (read energetic, charismatic recruiter) would go a long way to allaying my fears. As you have said, we'll see.