Georgia basketball: Why Tom Crean is the perfect coach to follow Mark Fox
Tom Crean is the new head coach of Georgia basketball. UGA hired the 18 year head coaching veteran Thursday night after a four-day search.
Tom Crean has signed the contract, landed in Athens, gave his first press conference and has toured the UGA Athletics office. Now all there’s left to do is prepare for the 2018-19 season and hit the recruiting trail. Georgia basketball is in a new era following a four-day search for a head coach after the firing of Mark Fox, who coached at UGA for nine years.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Crean is the right man for the job. I ran down his head coaching résumé Thursday night and it made me even more excited. But I’m also confident in Crean because I know that Mark Fox was the right man for the job in 2009.
Because I mentioned Thursday that Crean was a program builder. He’s a guy who can turn around a program. Marquette had only made four NCAA Tournaments in the 16 years before they hired Crean. They went to the Final Four in his fourth season and didn’t miss a post season after that. At Indiana, he drug that program out of probation and back to the Sweet 16.
But Marquette and Indiana aren’t exactly minor programs. Both have won National Championships. Indiana has five championships and eight Final Four’s. However, they were both frustrated programs. They knew success, they expect excellence. Prior to Crean, Marquette wasn’t experiencing excellence, and Indiana’s probation prohibited excellence.
Crean brought excellence back to both institutions. He took advantage of the rich resources both schools have to bring that excellence. How does that make him the perfect guy for Georgia basketball though? The Bulldogs have never won a National Championship. Their most success is one Final Four.
That’s where Mark Fox comes in. Because if a guy like Crean took the head coaching job in 2009, he would have left after two or three good years to go to a more prestigious program. After the harsh punishments from the 2002 team, and the low points in the Dennis Felton era, Georgia’s program had gone backwards.
The program Hugh Durham built was in shambles when Fox took over. And that was a program that already couldn’t keep Tubby Smith and only got Jim Harrick because no one else would hire him.
After nine years of Coach Fox, we can’t quite say Georgia basketball is back to the stature it was under Durham. But it’s closer. Georgia was invited to a post season tournament every year since 2014. They had three-straight 20-win seasons for the first time since 1995-to-1998.
And thanks to Fox, the Bulldog Nation is hungrier than ever for success on the hardwood. Durham brought winning to Georgia basketball and that remained for a few years, but then it went away. Fox brought some success back, but just couldn’t get over that next hump. The new success added to the fans appetite. The struggles afterwards also added.
And now Georgia football is finally looking like a real National Championship contender. That makes basketball fans even hungrier for success. We want a basketball team that can compliment the football team. We don’t want February and March to be the waiting period for G-Day, we want to watch a winner now more than ever.
And in that nine-year period, Georgia basketball and the rest of the athletic department has made strides off the court. Stegman Coliseum, the teams practice gym and the athletics offices have all received major upgrades. Georgia athletics are world-class with facilities comparable to some of the best around the nation.
All of those things; the success, fan base and administrative support with great facilities, Crean mentioned all of them in his speech at the press conference Friday.
Next: Georgia basketball resets with Crean
He’s not one of those coaches that can work with nothing. Those guys are rare and seldom cut down nets in April. But thanks to Coach Fox, and to the UGA Athletics Department, Crean isn’t working with nothing. Georgia has the perfect environment for Tom Crean.