College basketball: Coach Tom Crean fired by Indiana after nine seasons

Tom Crean put Indiana basketball back in the national conversation. As it turned out, there was too much talk and not enough wins. Not for the Hoosiers.

Nine years after taking over a team mired in turmoil following an NCAA scandal, Crean was fired Thursday after missing the NCAA Tournament for the fifth time in his tenure. The 50-year-old coach had three years remaining on his contract, and the move comes a little more than three months before his buyout would have dropped from $4 million to $1 million.

But with so much angst among the general public, Athletic Director Fred Glass couldn’t afford to give Crean another chance.

“The expectations for IU basketball are to perennially contend and win multiple Big Ten championships, regularly go deep into the NCAA tournament and win our next national championship and more after that,” Glass said. “We will look to identify and recruit a coach who can help us meet these expectations.”

Glass will immediately begin looking for a successor and will not form a search committee.

Kentucky’s John Calipari called the firing “disappointing.” Louisville’s Rick Pitino called Crean an “outstanding teacher, coach, workaholic” who would land on his feet. Crean did not immediately respond to a text message left by the Associated Press.

The biggest problem: Inconsistency.

Despite going 166-135, winning the two conference titles and last year’s Big Ten coach of the year award, his teams never advanced beyond the Sweet 16. And after last season’s surprising Big Ten title run, the Hoosiers again fell flat.

They began the season as one of the Big Ten favorites and were ranked as high as No. 3 in November after upsets of Kansas and North Carolina. But when Nebraska ended the Hoosiers’ 26-game home-court winning streak in December, the season unraveled.

Glass praised Crean for digging the Hoosiers out from an NCAA recruiting scandal that left the team with only two returning scholarship players in 2008-09. Four seasons later, Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating three-pointer upset then No. 1 Kentucky and put Indiana back on the national map. They wound up getting knocked out of the regional semifinals by Kentucky.

Washington takes it chances with firing of Romar

Washington is expected to become one of the most desirable destinations in college basketball after its decision to fire Lorenzo Romar but one with a lot of question marks.

The school has proven it can be a winner with a regular-season conference title, conference tournament titles and a trip to the Sweet 16 within the past 10 years.

What’s not clear yet is how much Romar’s firing Wednesday will affect the Huskies roster going into next season and how quickly a new coach can rebuild the foundation.

It’s likely that Washington’s roster will be gutted by the decision. That was the risk Athletic Director Jennifer Cohen was willing to take by releasing a coach who was almost universally beloved by current players, alumni and especially an incoming recruiting class that featured arguably the best high school senior in the country in Michael Porter Jr. But Cohen made it clear that one recruit or one class was not going to sway her decision.

“This was a comprehensive evaluation of the program so you look at all the factors that are involved and really think about what is the long-term vision for Husky basketball,” Cohen said. “How do we build a sustainable model? When you have that commitment, when you decide that is how you’re going to build your model, you’re not really able to think about just one person or one recruiting class. You have to think about something a little bit longer term than that.”