Tom Crean, the Georgia men’s basketball head coach who previously led the Marquette and Indiana programs, has been to talk of the town lately in Athens.
Entering his fourth season as coach of the Bulldogs, Crean has slightly improved the team’s overall record each year, but failed to meet the most basic expectations.
Crean still has not reached a postseason and likely would have missed the NIT and NCAA’s in 2019 with No. 1 overall draft pick Anthony Edwards.
Now, the longtime basketball coach is struggling to find even three or four-star recruits to join him in Athens, as several players exit the program.
At this point, who could blame them? Just Monday, UGA Wire reported on the text Crean sent Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell when he picked Louisville over Crean’s Hoosiers.
In addition, Crean has had his fair share of outbursts while at Georgia.
Now, UGA Wire has learned that Crean reportedly cussed out a student manager in practice for not opening the diet Coke brought to him on the court.
Another student manager called Crean “the worst person you could ever work for” …
With all the stories that have been uncovered on Crean over the years, it makes perfect sense why no basketball recruit would want to come to Georgia right now.
The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have hurt the Dawgs in being able to show recruits the campus of Georgia and in the transfer portal. It is a chaotic time in college basketball, but even with all the excuses Crean has in his book, Georgia can do better.
Just last week, Crean stated the reason for Sahvir Wheeler leaving the program stemmed from his desire to play closer to home.
Wheeler announced his ‘Top 10’ on Monday, with the vast majority of his schools being twice as far from home as Athens was.
Tom Crean is running this program into the ground faster than a Mecole Hardman kickoff return. If Georgia wants to have any hope of competing in men’s basketball ever again, the time is now to end this atrocious era.
When Tom Crean inked his 2019 recruiting class, it looked foundational. Now?
– Anthony Edwards: NBA Draft
– Christian Brown: Transfer
– Jaykwon Walton: Transfer
– Toumani Camara: Transfer
– Sahvir Wheeler: Draft/Transfer
– Mike Peake: Transfer
– Rodney Howard: Transfer— Matt Harris (@MattJHarris85) April 20, 2021
To make matters worse, it appears every former star in the program cannot stand the guy.
This is just embarrassing for Georgia at this point.
This new fella came in and completely trashed everything we had accomplished.. told us we didn't do anything, we weren't good enough to play SEC basketball.. looking real funny in the light.
— Juwan Parker (@wans_world3) April 20, 2021