by Kent Sterling

In the Detroit News this morning, there is an article about the ongoing conversations between the Cleveland Cavaliers, the current team of the best player in basketball – pending free agent LeBron James, and current Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.  Tuesday’s meeting with players was discussed, where Izzo told them of his interest in the job that would pay him somewhere in the neighborhood of $6-million per year.

Buried toward the bottom is the speculation about the potential replacements:

MSU tried to quell the rumors, citing that Izzo is still part of the MSU community but acknowledging that they have a plan to pursue if Izzo bolts to the NBA.

Most speculation has focused on former MSU assistants, including Brian Gregory at Dayton and Tom Crean at Indiana.

So what does that mean for Indiana?  It would be ridiculous to think that Crean wouldn’t crawl backward overbroken glass up the Ruel W. Steele Memorial Highway to I-465 around the eastside of Indianapolis to I-69 up to East Lansing to take the job.  Michigan State is loaded like Lindsay Lohan on a week long Amsterdam bender, and Indiana is a long way from the nearest bar.

The tide is turning slowly in Bloomington.  The good news about the APR for the Hoosier program yesterday was the latest step in the right direction, but when not losing scholarships is the best news, things aren’t going as well as Indiana fans might like.

I’m not sure anyone could have done a better job that Crean, but I’m also not sure that someone couldn’t have.  There is frustration echoing with IU fans unaccustomed to 16 wins over two seasons.  There have been two brief windows of hope over the past decade – for a couple of weeks in 2002 when IU exploited the toughness and shooting of Bob Knight’s final group of recruits for a trip to the Final Four in Atlanta, and in 2007 with Dan Dakich bringing accountability and some Indiana back to a team that had evolved so far from the heritage of IU hoops that any semblance of order beat the hell out of the intolerable embarrassment that it had been under Mike Davis and Kelvin Sampson.

Eric Gordon making only seven of his last 54 shots finished IU’s last season of hope for success in 2008, and Crean was signed to an eight-year deal by the woefully inept Rick Greenspan as one of his final acts as athletic director.  He wasn’t quite finished as he agreed to extend Crean’s deal two years before he coached a single game.

So if Izzo goes to the Cavs, given Crean’s affinity for East Lansing and the Michigan State tradition excellence, as well as Crean’s success at Marquette, that match would seem to be far more natural that fellow former Izzo assistant Gregory.  The question isn’t whether Crean would welcome a return to MSU, it’s whether IU would welcome it as well.

There is a sense in Bloomington that everything Greenspan did was the act of a buffoon, and Crean’s image suffers from that taint so there are some who would like to see him go.  But those who think Crean moving six hours north would be a plus need to ask, then what?

Cody Zeller might be doing this in Assembly Hall

What top-flight college basketball coach would enthusiastically pursue the IU gig?  A new guy would have to make in-roads with local kids and coaches, and Cook Hall is great, but not enough.  The personal relationship between a coach and recruit is what gets the job done in attracting top 50 kids.  While Crean has not been successful yet in getting Indiana’s best kids to report for duty at Assembly Hall, he’s got Indiana on the list of finalists for kids like Cody Zeller, Michael Chandler, Brandon Dawson, and Jeremiah Davis.

Those don’t necessarily equate to commitments, but someone is going to say yes, and then the snowball might start rolling downhill.

Starting this process over would not necessarily be a disaster.  After all, 10 wins in two years is already a disaster, but Indiana sure doesn’t want to start taking steps backwards from here.  Would IU AD Fred Glass stand in the way of Crean being courted by Big Ten foe Michigan State?  He should.