In 2005, Matty inherited a Purdue basketball program that was in pretty bad shape. Coming off of a 7-win season, Painter looked to rebuild. His two best players were both forced to redshirt the first season due to injury. His resulting roster was comprised of walk-ons, a football player, transfers, some guys who wouldn't be playing anywhere else in the league and a couple guys that belonged in the BT. In his first season, Purdue went 9-19.
Over the second and third seasons, Matty lost 6 players to transfer. Attrition forced fan favorite, Bobby "Buckets" Riddell, the 5'9" Lafayette native and walk-on, to not only play significant minutes, but start for part of Painter's second season.
Painter, of course made a splash with the Baby Boilers class that included JJ, Hummel, Smooge and another guy that gave Purdue a top-10 recruiting class nationally. This class and Matty's plan helped restore Purdue to the top-three of the league by year three of Painter's tenure in W.Lafayette.
Tom Crean inherited a team decimated by academic and disciplinary problems in Spring/'08 following Kelvin Sampson's resignation. Like Painter, Crean was forced to using walk-ons and transfers his first season. Along with a few carry-overs, his first class was a good recruiting effort in an abridged time- no super stars on paper, but some solid players. That class included Dumes, Jones, Roth, Story & Pritchard.
The next season ('09), Crean brought in a monster class that included three 4-star recruits, 2 high 3-star recruits and a couple of project players. This class was rated top-5 in the nation.
With that strong class as a lynch pin of his rebuilding plan in Bloomington, Crean is now in his third season in Bloomington...But the media is still telling us that the talent disparity with the rest of the BT is too much too overcome for IU to possibly compete. We told you following the game in Mackey that we weren't buying into that story...and here is a bit of evidence to back up what we've been saying...you make up your own mind.
10 comments:
Just a quick addendum to this. Remember, that '06 Boilers squad not only made it to the second round of the NCAAs, but took overall #1 and eventual champion Florida to the wire once they got there.
Matty is, indeed, an evil genius.
The true level of Evil Genius will be determined next year.
I don't think I'd put my money on red.
That's a very shallow analysis.
Let's look past the injuries IU has had this season (which have been really bad for us this season). Also, let's look past that while IU have a decent amount of Rivals 150 guys, they are all 2's, 3's, or 4's (and are mainly sophs and froshs). The team has no center or PG. Here are the average KenPom ratings (not including Purdue in 2006-2007 or IU in 2010-2011) each team faced during the Big Ten season:
Purdue in 2006-2007: Avg. Big Ten team's KenPom rating: 56.5
IU in 2010-2011: Avg. Big Ten team's KenPom rating: 35.6
That is a HUGE difference in average team rating. Further, in 2006-2007, PSU, Minn and NW were all ranked 112 or worse in the KenPom ratings. In 2010-11, the lowest rated Big Ten team is Iowa at No. 75. There is no easy game in the Big Ten this season unlike in 2006 (relatively speaking).
nice comparison, thanks for that. damn, i really loved watching "another guy" get dunked on last night big time (by another white dude nonetheless).
http://jerseychaser.com/in-the-face-louisvilles-kyle-kuric-dunks-on-notre-dames-scott-marin/
Chris- Who is at fault that Crean puts so much focus on shooting guards and forwards? This isn't new for him, but it doesn't work very well in the BT.
Not only is Crean getting talent, he's not using that talent effectively. The more shallow they get, the better they play because he has no idea how to rotate his line-ups and simply didn't focus on which players played best together.
The talent chasm (between IU and the league) that is talked about by regional and national media is simply not as large as it's being made out to be. The level of player isn't IU's problem.
In the Indy Star, Kravitz says Crean will actually be ahead of expectations by making IU competitive with Purdue by season five of his tenure. Who in their right mind would expect IU to take that long to get back to respectability? I'm told that their banners and heritage are very attractive to recruits. If that's the case why would it take this long for things to pan out in Bloomington?
Crean is a great recruiter and pre-game motivator. But he seems to be inadequate on the dry-erase board and in game management.
Certainly Crean has done things worth criticizing. I will be the first one to admit that. It took him a little longer than I would like to get recruiting at a high level and he clearly made some questionable calls recruiting-wise.
However, to compare the situation Crean inherited to the one Painter inherited is laughable. I believe that is one of the main reasons why Crean has struggled early on, but again, the NCAA situation is one that IU created, so it's hard to complain about it as an IU fan (although on the same token, Crean should be cut SOME slack because he did not create the NCAA problems).
My point with the post above was that this blog post was very shallow and subjective (which of course is what all team blogs are about).
The banners and tradition are attractive to recruits - look what what Crean has lined up for 2011-2014. However, the crapshow of the Sampson era put our program in an almost impossible situation when Crean took over (again, entirely of our own making, but that shouldn't be put on Crean).
In closing, IU is pretty much where I thought they would be at this point (after factoring in injuries). I thought we would be a game or two over .500 this season (which it seems like we will be a game or two blow .500, but again, we suffered a lot of injuries) and next season we would make the tournament. Time will tell I suppose, but IU is on its way back. It has to be obvious to Purdue fans (and it is to a lot of my friends who are PU fans, but the diehard message-board types still seem to be blind to IU's resurgence).
Are you kidding right now? I think anyone who's ever watched basketball understands that IU is getting better. Plus, no one thought IU would remain perpetually in the cellar. The facilities are too good and IU's alums value basketball too much to allow that too happen.
That's part of the reason I am shocked though each time I read/hear comments like yours that give Crean so much leeway. It seems you guys are still shell shocked by the poor decision to hire a cheater...and that anything is better than the embarrassment Sampson brought upon the university. But, there's plenty of room to be critical of Crean's coaching effort.
The next question for you guys should be- What is IU on its way back to? And, what's an acceptable rate of success? But there's no doubt things are improving. Afterall, there's no place to go but up when a team is in last place.
By the way, I gave Crean an extra season in my comparison- the two situations weren't exactly the same, I didn't say they were. But they were comprable. Purdue was completely decimated at the end of Keady's time at Purdue...Painter came to West Lafayette inexpensively and relatively green.
Conversely, Crean is being paid like one of the premier coaches in the nation, perhaps his teams should play in a similar fashion to make the investment make sense.
So maybe the talent level wasn't quite the same in each case (after all, Painter did have senior Carl Landry his first year) ... but then IU wasn't hiring a largely unproven coach who had a whopping 1 year of DI experience in what was arguably a caretaker role (maintaining the squad that Weber developed). They made a point of hiring a coach who'd had established success in a power conference (although the Big East is obviously too big to be considered a single conference, Marquette was 4th of 16 teams in their first season in the conference, so it wasn't like it took Crean time to adjust).
I don't think most people expected Crean to have IU in the Final Four this year, but I'm fairly certain that missing the NIT wasn't in the plan either. Yes, injuries have had an impact, but it was a full-strength team that lost to Northern Iowa, Colorado, and Penn State, wasn't it?
I think we're just surprised that given the talent that IU's been able attract in the past, and given what recruiting services have said about the talent that is currently there, Crean has only had the results you've seen to date. Sure, the Big Ten is the toughest conference in the country, but Michigan has five conference wins, two on the road. Even Iowa has a road win in conference play (which of course IU knows about) ... it's certainly reasonable to give a coach a number of seasons to turn a program around (Beilein being a good example of that), but I think we're surprised that so many IU fans are willing to do so, particularly given the way Mike Davis was treated.
Enjoyed the post and the banter, just wanted to point out that Charles Davis (your presumed football player reference) did not play during Painter's first season in 2005-2006. Davis only played on Gene's last squad, the 2004-2005 season.
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/pur/sports/m-baskbl/auto_pdf/0506cumulative_stats.pdf
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