Conference USA Basketball: Top 10 head coaches of the century (2000-20)
By Joey Loose
3. Conference USA Basketball head coach rankings – Tom Crean
Marquette (2000-2005)
When Crean was hired by Marquette in 1999, he was inheriting a team under .500 playing in an increasingly tough conference. He had no head coaching experience, having spent the last few years with Tom Izzo at Michigan State. As a great recruiter, he had helped build the Spartans team that would win the national title a year after his departure, but he got to put his skills to the test with Marquette.
He brought talent to Milwaukee, but none shone brighter than Dwyane Wade, who played and contributed to Crean’s two best seasons with the Golden Eagles. The 2002 team won 26 games and returned to the NCAA Tournament, but Wade took it many steps further in 2003. That squad marched to the Final Four, Marquette’s first in 26 years.
Marquette joined the Big East in 2005 and Crean left for Indiana in 2008, and the program has yet to match the success of that 2003 team. Crean built a Marquette program that could compete on the national stage in both conferences, even if he couldn’t build similar success at Indiana. As evident by the recruitment of Anthony Edwards to Georgia, Crean remains one of the nation’s best recruiters; we’ll just have to see if he can turn that talent into another national title threat.