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For the past several years part of IPFW’s basketball wish list has been trying to get Indiana University on its basketball schedule – ideally for a home game at Memorial Coliseum. Now that Mastodons coach Dane Fife has an old friend in a familiar place, maybe that wish will become possible.
“I would hope that coach Crean would be willing to negotiate,” Fife said.
The relationship between Tom Crean, named Wednesday as the new IU men’s basketball coach, and Fife goes back considerably further than their Dec. 17 game in Milwaukee, where Crean’s Marquette team throttled IPFW 80-56. And maybe it’s because of a more distant past why IU won’t be coming soon to Fort Wayne.
“I probably still owe him one after I didn’t commit to Michigan State, and he was the main recruiter in my recruitment process,” said Fife, who chose IU over Michigan State and Michigan.
As the associate head coach at Michigan State under Tom Izzo, Crean heavily recruited Fife out of Clarkston High School in Michigan, where Fife was the state’s Mr. Basketball who averaged nearly 26 points a game.
“He did an exceptional job,” Fife said of Crean’s recruiting job. “That’s where I got the idea that he is relentless. As a 15-, 16-year-old kid, I had a clear idea of what Tom Crean and Tom Izzo’s plan was for me. The only problem is I wanted to get out of state and play for The General (Bob Knight).”
Now, 10 years after Fife was pulled to IU, it is Crean who was lured to the basketball program in Bloomington.
“In a year, Tom Crean will understand why Indiana basketball is so special to the Indiana fans and the Indiana community,” Fife said.
At Indiana, Crean replaces interim coach Dan Dakich, who stepped in to fill the role vacated by Kelvin Sampson after Sampson resigned under pressure because of reported NCAA rules violations.
Although Fife says that Crean is a tireless and relentless recruiter, he also says he is an honest one.
“Breaking of the rules is nothing you have to worry about with Tom Crean,” Fife says.
With Sampson being named the Indiana coach on March 29, 2006, then having been replaced temporarily by Dakich, Crean becomes the third IU coach in two years and five days – an uprooting transition that not only Fife had to face when Knight was replaced by Mike Davis, but also a similar situation years later for Earl Calloway and Rod Wilmont, members of the NBA D-League Mad Ants, both of whom played for Davis in the 2005-06 season then played for Sampson last year.
“It’s just crazy at Indiana right now,” Wilmont said. “You go through so many coaches in those many years, it’s ridiculous.
“It’s hard for them because I went through the same situation they’re going through right now. But the guys who do stay, they’ve just got to embrace the new coach and the new system. I heard coach Crean is similar to coach Sampson, in a way, with the toughness that his teams play with. From that standpoint, those guys are going to play hard.”
The first instinct, Wilmont says, is to leave the team. But Calloway insists the players should stay for at least a while.
“You can’t leave without giving the guy an opportunity to show himself to you,” he said. “Where you gonna go? You have to go with an open mind and give him a chance. If it doesn’t work, then it’s a good move to leave. But give the guy an opportunity to present; you don’t know what might happen.”
Fife said: “You’ll be astonished. I can’t guarantee he’ll come in and take IU to the national championship, but it won’t be for lack of effort. It’s truly astonishing the time and effort that he puts into his programs to make them the best he can.”
stwarden@jg.net
