Written by Pete Thamel at SI.com
It has been 30 years since Indiana last won the national title, with Keith Smart’s jumper to cap off the 1987 NCAA tournament title serving as a grainy time capsule of what used to be. Long before the age of AAU kingpins, up-transfers and conference television networks, Indiana basketball competed annually for Final Fours and the Hoosiers resonated as one of the country’s iconic programs.
A generation later, the short shorts won by Bobby Knight’s crew in that game have gone from fashionable to obsolete to retro chic. And by firing coach Tom Crean on Thursday, athletic director Fred Glass is demanding that Indiana basketball make a similar retro transformation.
In nine years, Crean cleaned up the Indiana program from the sinkhole of Kelvin Sampson and a flurry of NCAA sanctions. Crean reached three Sweet 16s of the NCAA tournament and won two Big Ten titles in the past five years. Glass deemed that wasn’t enough. And boy, did he make that clear. “The expectations for Indiana University basketball are to perennially contend for and win multiple Big Ten championships, regularly go deep in the NCAA tournament, and win our next national championship—and more after that,” Glass said. “We will identify and recruit a coach who will meet these expectations.”
Is that statement nostalgic, bold or completely irrational? Well, we’re about to find out. By concisely laying out the loftiest of expectations for the next Hoosiers coach, Glass is creating a litmus test for the caliber of the Indiana job. The next coach must create a Midwest version of Kentucky, Duke or Kansas. In Bloomington, the expectations are national title or bust. “I think this is one of the best jobs in college basketball,” Glass said Thursday afternoon.
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