Tom Crean – Indiana Hoosiers | Midnight Madness Arrives in Bloomington

(Editor’s Note: Got to watch a little bit of Midnight Madness on the Big Ten Network, which is now shown in Dallas, and it was exciting to see the Hoosiers on the floor with Tom Crean; but definitely weird to not really know any of the players. If you’re like me and need a little introduction, here a couple of good links provided by Peegs.com:

Know Your Whoosiers Part 1 | Know Your Whoosiers Part 2

Also, since the rest of this post was from before Midnight Madness, here is the IndyStar recap of the evening.)

Now onto your regularly scheduled post…

We take this opportunity for a brief pause in the midst of all the football and auto racing madness going on here at the site today. For natives of Indiana, and die-hard fans of college basketball, today is a wonderful day: Midnight Madness is here!

On college campuses all across the country, men’s and women’s basketball teams will be suiting up and taking the floor in front of the home crowds for the first time in the 2008-2009 season. This is one of the few days when I wish I was back in Bloomington, so I could get a first-hand look at what my beloved Indiana Hoosiers will look like this year.

And, of course, Midnight Madness is especially important in Bloomington as Tom Crean will take the floor officially for the first time as head basketball coach at Indiana. Joining him will be a roster full of newcomers and a boundless horizon of possibilities and unknowns. Luckily, gone from the Indiana basketball program this season will be the dark cloud of cheating, scandal, and undisciplined players that hovered over Bloomington last season.

Tom Crean brings a breath of fresh air, a new style, and an entirely new team save for walk-on holdovers Brett Finkelmeier and Kyle Taber. Will Tom Crean and the Indiana Hoosiers be any good this year? Most likely not, if we’re measuring good by wins and losses. But they will take the first step towards building a new foundation for success and recapturing the magic and tradition that Indiana fans are so proud of.

5 wins, 10 wins, 15 wins, who knows. But we do know that Kelvin Sampson is gone, Tom Crean is here, and the page has been turned from the ugliest chapter in Indiana basketball history. And as one chapter ends, another one begins. And if I had a spare hour on a Friday night, and wanted to provide a photoshopped interpretation of what the first page of the next chapter would look like, it just might look a little something like the picture above.

(Photo Art by Midwest Sports Fans – click on image to enlarge)

[tags]indiana hoosiers, college basketball, ncaa basketball, tom crean[/tags]

---

---

---