Not Since 1900-19018

by Scott - @CrimsonCast on March 5, 2011 in

The last time IU Basketball did not have a road or neutral site win during a season was in 1900-1901.  You may have seen this fact thrown around after the loss to Illinois today, but if you have been listening to the podcast, you know that I have been talking about this possibility for quite some time.

I have been talking about Crean’s inability to win on the road in the B1G for quite some time, just listen to this podcast.

Let’s also not forget that after the loss today (and assuming a loss next Thursday) that brings Crean’s total on B1G Road Games (Tournament included) to 1-29.  I know that people have tons of excuses (Insert Guy-Marc Michel comments here), but can we PLEASE start discussing these road losses as a serious issue that needs to be resolved?

Not only is this the first time in over 100 years since we have not won a road game, this 3 year period ties Tom Crean for the worst road record in Indiana Basketball history.  Below are the years where Indiana has none or only 1 road/neutral game:

Season Coach Final Record Road Wins
1900-1901 J.H. Horne 1-4 0 (Only win that year was vs Wabash)
1904-1905 Zora Clevenger 5-12 2  vs Rayen AC & Buhl AC
1908-1909 Robert Harris 5-9 1 vs Depauw
1912-1913 Arthur Powell 5-11 1 vs Earlham
1913-1914 Arthur Berndt 2-12 1 vs Earlham
1914-1915 Arthur Berndt 4-9 1 vs Earlham
1922-1923 Leslie Mann 8-7 1 vs Purdue
1928-1929 Everett Dean 7-10 1 vs Minnesota
1947-1948 Branch McCracken 8-12 1 vs Miami (Ohio)
1954-1955 Branch McCracken 8-14 1 vs Notre Dame (Ranked #9)
1963-1964 Branch McCracken 9-15 1 vs Wisconsin (2 OT 82-80)
1965-1966 Lou Watson 8-16 1 vs Illinois
1968-1969 Lou Watson 9-15 1 vs Wisconsin
1969-1970 Lou Watson (1/2 Year) 7-17 1 vs Loyola (Chicago)
2008-2009 Tom Crean 6-25 1 vs Chaminade (Neutral Site)
2009-2010 Tom Crean 10-21 2 vs Penn State & Pitt (Neutral Site)
2010-2011 Tom Crean 12-20 0

In the 3 years Tom Crean has been Head Coach he has 3 Road/Neutral site wins.  The only other era that compares is 1912-1915 when the Arthur’s (Powell & Berndt) also combined for only 3 road wins, all against Earlham.  While this season shows regression and not winning on the road is a major concern, Tom Crean’s consistent inability to win on the road is more troubling.

If you look at Crean’s last 4 years at Marquette, if you factor in Conference and NCAA Tournament games, he went 19-27 on the road in Conference or Post-Season games.  Add that to the 1-29 he has posted here at IU and in his last 7 years, Crean is 20-56 on the road in Conference or Post-Season games!

The scary part of those stats for me, is that besides the 2005 team that won 19 games, the rest of those Marquette teams won over 20 games and were in the NCAA tournament.  So even if Crean can somehow win 20+ games here at IU in the future, he hasn’t show anything in his past record to indicate that we will ever be a good coach on the road.

Besides the fact that we need to start playing at Earlham every year, what are your thoughts out there in Hoosier Nation?  Does this worry you also?

Big thanks to Doug Yeskie’s IU Page, where I found most of my historical records.

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  • Mike

    Do you get a special jersey for winning road games?

    I want to see IU win 20+ games, but I don’t particularly care how he does it.

    I know you love the 1-29 road record, but in all honesty good B1G teams win 3-4 road games per year. Crappy ones can compete at home, but not on the road. That’s why they’re crappy teams.

    In my mind, with very few exceptions, IU has been atrocious defensively both home and road. When playing in Bloomington this is negated somewhat by the offense making shots. On the road they’ve shot like a road team, but still played terrible defense. (HOORAY CONSISTENCY!)

    Even though I’ve predicted better things next year, it’s really hard to see this team doing much if they continue to allow the opponent to be so efficient on defense.

  • Scott

    If you look at those stats, even when Crean was winning 20+ games at Marquette, he was a sub .500 coach on the road. Why are we expecting that to change if he goes 20+ wins here?

    If we can’t ever be above .500 on the road, we will never be able to win a B1G title!

    It’s the patterns in his history that are very concerning.

  • bornhoosierfan

    It absolutely worries me. In order for IU to truly return to the glory days we must first finish anything but last in the B10. I would like to sit here and say they will win some road games next year, but I also would’ve liked to think they could have beat No. Iowa, Penn St., Iowa, and Northwestern. I think Crean needs to win next year or send him on his way. Won’t happen though because of the contract and the second coming of the 2009 recruiting class, you know the one that is, really this time, going to get us back in national contention.

  • KCHoosier

    Forget returning to the “glory days.” With Iowa’s win today over Purdue, we are the WORST team in the conference. Next year winning 5 games in the Big 10 will be good for us. My girlfriend is a KU fan and quite frankly, I’m jealous… Kansas, Duke, North Carolina would not put up with 3 years of performance like this and neither should Indiana.

    Crean needs to step up his game game big time… Say all you want about Steve Alford. Look at his teams’ successes. He would have been a MUCH better hire.

  • hgdownunder

    Earlham, haha. Good one, Scott.

  • Mike

    Any “pattern” that doesn’t exclude at the very least Crean’s first two years at IU is simply trying to doctor up a point.
    If we take his last four years at Marquette and compare them to Tom Izzo, Bruce Weber, Bo Ryan, and Thad Matta(4 coaches who were at their respective schools during that period)
    We find the conference road winning % comes in as;
    Ryan .576
    Matta .515
    Weber .485
    Izzo .394

    Over that time period Crean comes in at .424. He’s essentially 2 games behind Weber, 3 behind Matta and 5 behind Ryan.
    The only thing he(and Izzo) is missing is a dominant team over that time period. Each of Ryan, Weber and Matta had a team that lost fewer than 5 games the whole season. It would of course follow that the road record would be pretty good.

    In general, even good teams struggle to hit .500 on the road, so saying Crean hasn’t been above .500 in 7 years is not really illustrating any great pattern of incompetence.

  • Mike

    Another way of looking at this in context is the margin of victory(defeat) when a team is at home versus when they’re on the road.
    IU played 8 opponents both at home and away, They were on average 10 points better at home than on the road. This is of course a sign that the team is disorganized, undisciplined, inconsistent, and the coach should clearly be fired.

    In the 14 games Wisconsin’s difference is 9, Ohio State’s is 7(Ohio State and Wisconsin play tomorrow.) Purdue’s difference is 9.

    This is all a really long way of saying IU simply needs to be better. Home, Road, Neutral, On a train, on a plane, They need to be better here and there, they need to be better everywhere.

  • I guess my response to this is…duh. Crean’s IU record always was going to have to be better than his Marquette record for him to be considered a success at IU. Crean won 65 percent of his games at Marquette, made the NCAA more often than not, and never had a losing season, but he only made it past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament once, and clearly his overall winning percentages were not of the sort that would make him an IU legend. That still would be true even if IU had gone 8-10 in the Big Ten this season.

    During Crean’s three seasons in the Big East, Marquette went 3-5, 4-4, and 4-5 on the road. Whether that is any good depends on what you think of Marquette as a program. I tend to think that was reasonably good considering the type of program that Marquette is. The question mark on Crean always has been whether good results at a tier 2 program would translate to great results at a top tier program. And, the main difference between a solid NCAA tournament team (such as Crean’s last three Marquette teams or most IU teams from 1995-2008), and a championship-contending team, is the ability to beat good teams on the road. When IU was ensuring the 20-10 “groundhog year” seasons in Knight’s last few years and under Davis and in Sampson’s first year, we always did well at home in the Big Ten, but almost always lost conference road games to teams of NCAA or better quality. So saying that Crean has to do better on the road at Marquette than he did at IU is to me the exact same thing as saying he will have to do better at IU than he did at Marquette. And we have known that since April 1, 2008, and nothing in the last three years has changed that.

    I guess the reason I can’t get all hand-wringy about Crean yet is because his IU results are so far below his Marquette results that the current composition of the roster, some of which is Crean’s fault and some of which isn’t, simply has to be the overriding problem. Again, that’s not to say Crean is free of blame or is the awesomest coach ever.