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NEW ORLEANS (AP) Tom Crean is a football coach in a basketball coach's
body. Like any coach, Crean's frenetic style is a hodgepodge of all the men who have influenced him. But whom does he admire the most? It's not Dean Smith or Roy Williams or Mike Krzyzewski. It's not Jud Heathcote, Ralph Willard or Tom Izzo, all who hired and nurtured him. It's Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, a mentor he's never even met. "I don't know him. The guy just looks like he loves coaching football, and he's an incredible motivator of people and he's had success wherever he's been," Crean said Thursday. "I think the greatest coaches are the hungriest to continue to win and the hungriest to continue to learn." Crean isn't as gruff as Parcells - or Bobby Knight or Bob Huggins - but he does let his players know exactly how he feels, and usually at an earsplitting volume. Dwyane Wade, Crean's prized recruit and Marquette's first All-American in a quarter century, said players see Crean as a father figure practicing tough love. "You don't really want a guy to go easy on you because we wouldn't be here if he did," Wade said. "Right after he gets on you, you still know that he loves you in his heart. If he's screaming at you, that's good. If he's silent, it's not." And their ears are usually ringing with the mile-a-minute wisdom of Crean, who knew so early this was his calling that he tagged along with his high school coach to scout opponents. Crean's name now comes up whenever a big-time job becomes available, including North Carolina's this week. "You'd rather be known for that than to be on a hot seat," Crean said. "The only time it's a problem for me is when it comes up in recruiting, and it does." Crean got into coaching at the high school level while he was still an undergraduate at Central Michigan. Heathcote hired him right out of college at Michigan State. After working for Willard at Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh, Crean returned to East Lansing and became Izzo's top assistant and chief recruiter, helping lure Mateen Cleaves to the program. Even while he was with the Spartans, he admired football coach Nick Saban, who is now at LSU and has an invitation to be Crean's guest Saturday night when the Golden Eagles face Kansas in the national semifinals. Basketball may be in his blood, but Crean is a full-fledged member of a football family, so it's easy to see why Parcells is his idol. Crean's father-in-law is Jack Harbaugh, who retired this year after leading Western Kentucky to the 2002 Division I-AA championship, culminating a 14-year run in which he went 91-68 and resurrected the football program. His brothers-in-law are John Harbaugh, special teams coach for the Philadelphia Eagles, and Jim Harbaugh, the former NFL quarterback who now coaches with the Oakland Raiders. "I love football and I was fortunate to marry into it," Crean said. He has learned plenty from wife Joani's family. "When Jim was playing, I learned a ton about what players go through, what a player responds to, good and bad," Crean said. "I think that helped my coaching." From John Harbaugh, he learned about work ethic and "how an NFL team does it, how they break up their week, the systematic approach." Those are lessons he used during the long week before the Final Four. "And then my father-in-law just taught me a ton about coaching and life in general," Crean said. "He left Western Kentucky as a national champion and every day he went into that office and onto that practice field to make his team better." And every day Crean is taking the lessons gleaned from the gridiron and applying them to the hardwood. "Sports are all parallel," he said. "It's all about building relationships and finding ways to get the most out of people. I know a lot of football men and I steal ideas from them all." |