Tom Crean scolds Indiana fans

Last night, Maryland and Indiana did battle in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, and despite a valiant effort from the still-rebuilding Hoosiers, Maryland pulled away late, winning 80-68.

While Crean was likely upset with the way that his team finished the game, he was livid with the way the IU fans finished the game. Rick Bozich explains:

But late in the game, the IU students sitting on the East side of Assembly Hall started chanting a vulgarity at Maryland senior guard Greivis Vazquez. The vulgarity concerned a female body part, not the one in the Seinfeld episode.

That, rightfully, annoyed Crean. He tried to grab the Assembly Hall microphone to lecture the crowd to knock it off, but the game officials would not let him.

He apologized to Maryland coach Gary Williams, as well as Vazquez.

Then came his press conference:



This is a good move by Crean, especially form a PR standpoint. College basketball games are a family event, and as such, chanting "vulgarities" should not be tolerated. It becomes even more important to prevent such things when you are the head coach at a university with stuffy, old school, set-in-their-way boosters with deep pockets.

Having said that, this is college, these are college kids, and chanting vulgarities are just one of the things that college kids do. Eamonn Brennan at the Dagger says it best:

on one hand, Crean is doing the upstanding thing. Good sportsmanship precludes chanting profanities at opposing players, no matter how much you may hate them. (I have a feeling Maryland's Greivis Vasquez was a prime target; he was jawing in his typical Greivis way for much of the night.) And he's also doing the smart thing; acting huffy about naughty words -- asserting Indian's superiority in this regard -- is exactly the sort of thing his aging, good-old-days, money-puking booster base wants to hear.

On the other hand, though ... it happens. They're college kids. They swear sometimes. After the game is over and the swearing subsides, many of them will return to their dorms and illicitly consume alcohol and other substances. This is what college kids do. And it happens all over: It was just a few years ago that Maryland's own fan base resorted to chants of "F**k you, J.J." almost anytime Duke All-American J.J. Redick touched the ball.

In a way, Crean ends up looking like an out of touch scold. Which, again, might be exactly what he's going for.

Whatever you believe, the bottom line is that its not a good thing when your coach says that the fans brought more energy than the team did for a nationally televised game.

Crean has a lot bigger fish to fry than editing IU's student section.