JIM CREWS – FORMER EVANSVILLE, WEST POINT, & ST. LOUIS MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 725

Website – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crews

Email – jim.crews54@gmail.com

Twitter – @CoachJimCrews

Jim Crews won 431 games in his career as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Evansville, Army, and St. Louis.  During his tenure at Evansville, 52 of the 53 players who spent four years with the Purple Aces earned a degree. Every senior in Crews’ final 12 years graduated. At Army, he graduated all 30 four-year players who came through his program.

Counting his time as a player, assistant coach and head coach, Crews has been a part of 17 NCAA Tournaments. He won a national title and went undefeated in 1976 as a senior at Indiana and won again in 1981 as an assistant coach for the Hoosiers, playing for and coaching with the legendary Bob Knight.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Jim Crews, former head men’s basketball coach at Evansville, Army, and St. Louis.

What We Discuss with Jim Crews

• Growing up a coach’s son in Normal, Illinois
• Playing all sports in his neighborhood as a kid
• “What was different about Coach Knight was he didn’t promise anything except you’d have an opportunity.”
• Playing for all different types/styles of coaches during his sports career
• “Coach Knight taught you how the game worked.”
• “Don’t turn the ball over. Don’t take bad shots. And let’s play hard.”
• His teammates on the undefeated 1976 Indiana Hoosiers coached by Bob Knight
• Taking a coaching job back at his Indiana with Coach Knight
• The evolution of the player – coach relationship
• Recruiting and coaching Isiah Thomas at Indiana
• Being involved with the 84 Olympic tryouts and eventual Olympic team with Bob Knight and MJ
• Why his teams wore sleeves at Evansville
• Coaching kids differently depending on their needs
• “You’re just not on the team. You are the team.”
• “You can’t fool the locker room”
• “At West Point, you do not own those players. That Academy owns those players. You borrow them.”
• .”Even though West Point Cadets complain in epic proportions, they’re the happiest kids in college. And that’s because they feel good about themselves.”
• “Our program is not for everybody.”
• His relationship with Rick Majerus
• The difference in styles between Bob Knight and Rick Majerus

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THANKS, JIM CREWS

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JIM CREWS – FORMER EVANSVILLE, WEST POINT, & ST. LOUIS MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 725

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are very pleased to be able to welcome to the podcast, the former head coach at the University of Evansville, at West Point, and at St. Louis University, Jim Crews. Jim, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:17] Jim Crews: Mike, my pleasure, looking forward to talking to you and Jason.

[00:00:21] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely, excited to have you on. I want to dive into all the things that you’ve been able to do in the game, both as a player and as a coach. Some of the people that you’ve been connected to or some of the most well respected coaches around.

And also just all the things that you’ve been able to do in your career as a head coach at three pretty diverse institutions. So, I want to start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell us a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:47] Jim Crews: Well, I grew up in Normal, which is central Illinois, normal Bloomington, Illinois. And my dad was a college coach. My dad was a coach at Illinois State. He was an assistant in basketball, football, and baseball. It was kind of a combination of NAIA, which I don’t know how this works, tell you truth, guys, but, and I, and division two.

And then in 1970 Illinois State went to Division one and Illinois State. Kind of a trivia question a little bit. Illinois State the first African American division one coach was Will Robinson. Coach Robinson was from Detroit Pershing High School, and my dad was an assistant coach for him. But even before the, well, so I was always able to go to a gym if I wanted to go gym.

Now we always played in the driveway, in, in the street for football or in the yard for football or baseball and so forth. But when dad was at practice, Isaac always exposed to it. I was very fortunate in our neighborhood. Everyone was all the boys. Tell you truth, I don’t think, except for my sister, I don’t even think there was a girl in the neighborhood, but all the boy, , poor sister but anyway all the, all the guys were like two or three years older than me, and I was fortunate that I was good enough that they would let me play, but I was always just getting hammered, which for myself that’s not going to be for everybody.

But it, it was a good situation for me because I always had to kind of figure things out. And I thought that really helped me. But with that and then being exposed with my dad, being around facilities and his knowledge and everything that was tremendous. You know, it’s different now than it was when I was growing up.

We always just played in the park, played over the school, played in the driveway, played in the street. I never played organized. Basketball until seventh grade. And we played, well, there’s a dispute with my buddies. We either played six games or seven games. That’s it. And eighth grade, same thing. Six or seven games.

And that was, it didn’t play organized football until freshman year in high school. But baseball started about eight or nine years old. And so I was lucky. I never got pushed by any coaches to play one particular sport. I enjoyed all three sports probably particularly football and basketball.

Baseball was good, but it was too windy and too cold in the spring for me in high school baseball. But so that was a, that was a great opportunity. Recruiting was different. Recruiting. You got recruited hard still back then, but either I wasn’t aware of all the rankings. Certainly there was not all these things that are on.

The phones and whatever you call it now, the computers and so forth. So it wasn’t that way. So you know, I had an opportunity to go to college, so I was fortunate to get recruited by Coach Knight and go to Indiana and it was tremendous experience for us. What was

[00:03:43] Mike Klinzing: What was the process like in terms of making that decision?

What were some of the other schools that you considered that you thought about and then what ultimately, Pushed you to, to, to decide to go to Indiana and play for Coach Knight.

[00:03:56] Jim Crews: Okay. First of all, I was going, I was going to go to Maryland for the longest time. George Raveling I don’t know if you’re familiar with George Raveling, are you?

Yes, for sure. Great question. What George Raveling is? George Martin Luther King. The Martin Luther King. Man, you’re good. Yeah, you’re good. You’re good. Very good. Exactly. So I love Coach Raveling. I love Coach Raveling and that coach was the head coach out of Maryland. And so I was very, very strongly interested.

Thought I was going to go there for a long time. They probably started. I’m not going to say the earliest, but heavily the earliest in terms of recruiting. I mean, hard Memphis which Coach Bartow, who came from, well, coach Bartow went from, I think Memphis to Illinois, then to ucla, but coach Bartow at Memphis.

So I visited those schools. You could recruit. Well, it’s like now you can, you can visit, you could visit schools when you were a junior. So I visited, I think Maryland and Memphis was when I was a junior and maybe in the, it was in the fall. I went to Indiana. The difference was, and Coach Knight wasn’t Coach Knight.

Coach Knight was no one knew who Coach Knight was. But let me back up a second. The, in my sophomore year if I had second parents, my second parents was Art and Betty Schwartz, who are in normal Illinois also, and Art went to Indiana and his. Kim, who was a couple, she was three years older than I went to Indiana.

And so my sophomore year in high school art Schwartz said, Hey, I’m going to go pick up Kim to bring her back for the summer. You want to go over to Bloomington? And I don’t know why I said, yeah, yeah, let’s go. So I just got in the car. You just kind of did what the older people told you back then, right?

For sure. Yeah. So, I mean, it really was, it kind of interesting. So we just went over there and Assembly Hall was being built then it was not finished then. And so Assembly Hall was there. So that was kind of my first exposure to the campus. Loved the campus as a beautiful campus, and Assembly Hall was a as I said, was being built.

But the Swartz were very dear to our family and to me. And so that kind of got me in there. And then they coach. Came and visited. And what was different about Coach Knight was he didn’t promise anything except you’d have an opportunity, a great opportunity you’re going to have to earn everything that you get.

We’re going to follow the rules. Even if we don’t agree with the rules, we’re going to follow the rules. And he goes probably like everyone else, we’re. They want to win a national championship, but he goes, but we’re going to do it. You’re going to be exposed and surrounded by really good people in terms of the players.

We’re not going to have guys that we’re going to have similar backgrounds as you have and similar ways that parents brought you up just like your parents did. And that was different. You know, you get promised to a lot of things. You’re going to start, or you’re going to average this many points, or you’re going to be on national TV this many times or all kinds of different things.

But he was very direct, very honest, gave you an opportunity. And so that kind of started the process and then went over the Bloomington one or other one or two other times and really enjoyed the players. The older players were great with us and coach Knight and his staff was tremendous. So just really liked it.

It kind of just clicked. It just, it made sense to me to go there. It was very, coach Knight was very similar to. I was brought up and reared with my parents that you have to earn things, you have to work and you know, you have to get along with people and, and make things happen on your own. You just can’t expect good things to happen unless you work.

[00:07:33] Mike Klinzing: Was there ever a thought of playing one of your other sports in college or at that by the time you got to your junior and senior year, you kind of pushed those to the side and, and really decided basketball was where you wanted to be?

[00:07:42] Jim Crews: Well I had opportunities to play football, but I blew or ripped out my or tours that were tore my rotary cuff.

And so that kind of, I was a quarterback, so that kind of eliminated that. It just, I just couldn’t throw, I mean, I could throw, but on certain days it just hurt too much. So that eliminated that from that standpoint. But I did, I actually, I did, I played baseball my freshman year. At iu and we don’t, we don’t have time.

It was, it was a long, it was a long and short story on that, but it was, and it was completely culture shock because basketball, I mean, we started practice at three 15 and I mean you went from one drill to the next and the next to the next to next, and you have to listen, you have to do this and whatever.

And then baseball, it was mad. It was just like kumbaya. Its like you’re down in The Bahamas or something around, aren’t it? Standpoint baseball, I’ve had, I had good grade school. I mentioned basketball. I had an 18 year old freshman that only state coached us. And he really made a great impression on us.

He was pretty tough, but wed him and he was fair. And then in high school, baseball, basketball, and football, I was very had great relationships and really enjoy all three of the, those sports, the different personalities, different way to coach. But they were really good baseball in the summer.

I had a guy that really I think prepared me for Coach Knight. He was a basketball coach at one of our arch rivals. And, but he was the baseball coach for the Junior Legion team, and he was really tough on us and he really held us accountable and put a high standard on it. And he was good.

He was kind of, he was kind of like Coach Knight really in a lot of ways except he was coaching baseball for us in the summer. So it was good.  I’ve just been as many different coaches that I’ve had and been around. I really did. I really enjoyed ’em all. I really did. They’re just all did their own thing in their own different way and taught you in a different way.  But I liked it. I liked it.

[00:09:57] Mike Klinzing: Was there anyone’s style of coach that you felt like got the best. Out of you. Because obviously there’s all different types of coaches and clearly the public perception, the stereotype of what Coach Knight was like is one thing. And then you have a coach who was more like your freshman year baseball coach, where there, there isn’t quite that same level discipline and that kind of thing.

But just when you think about the types of coaches that you played for who, what type of coach do you feel like got the best out of you as a player? Cause some players obviously mesh better with different types of coaches.

[00:10:32] Jim Crews: Well, I think probably to answer one, it’d probably be Coach Knight. But that, that’s a little unfair to some of my other coaches just because, like for football, my football coach, coach Kyoto, who is 93 or 94, just saw him about six weeks ago, doing great, looking great, sounded great, still funny and he was a pretty tough guy.

But he allowed me to call the plays when win football. So he gave me a lot of confidence and gave me a lot of responsibility. And, and so he got me to kind of think like he thought, so I was calling, I’m sure I was calling the plays that he wanted called very few times he did that. And so that, that was just tremendous.

So much fun. But it was a cerebral thing. And I think that’s what Coach Knight what I enjoyed about him is he taught you how the game worked. He made you think, really stimulated. I think not only me, but our whole team. It was very unique as an athlete. You know, in high school there’s so many things you get away because you’re just, you got more God given ability, right?

Well, in college, college, that doesn’t fly too good. He was giving us the answers to the test all the time with scouting reports, but also in terms of the first year that our freshman year, when that was the first year freshman were eligible that’s the first year Coach Knight put the motion offense in, which really kind of just changed college basketball for I don’t know how many years, maybe forever, but I mean, a lot of.

And that was very, very mentally stimulating. And that was, that was fun because we had we all outthought people and that was you know, the, we had good talent. I mean, we had real good talent, but there was always guys that, and teams that were bigger and stronger and faster than we were. And so, but thinking wise, we knew that we had the edge and that was fun.

That was real, that was a lot of fun.

[00:12:32] Mike Klinzing: What did that look like in terms of a practice setting for you as a player or thinking about it, looking back as sort of with your coaching hat on in terms of getting you guys to think and being able to, to go through, especially when you’re putting in something new, when you’re talking about emotion offense, that not a lot of people were running at the time and you’re coming into it as a player and trying to figure that out.

What do you remember about how, how he went about that process of stimulating you guys and getting you to think the game, which then would give you an advantage over your opponent? What did that look like?

[00:13:01] Jim Crews: Well, first of all, I think that the group that we had as freshmen that came in, and then obviously we had a freshman group, a big freshman group, and then we had a good big sophomore group who was Coach Knight’s first recruiting class.

Really good. Steve Green, John LaSow Gray, Doug Allen, great competitor, John Kaster and Steve all just really good, great class and won a lot. But then there was no juniors and then there was four seniors who were mature and those guys were smart. So I can, I can remember really the first day that you know, it was a completely different practice than how we did it in high school, a little bit high school.

We practiced a long time, but we weren’t going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing and think, think, think, think, and move, move. And, but Coach Knight had that, that’s how his practice was. But the one thing that I can really remember, From the motion offenses. The first day Coach Knight put it and he started explaining, okay, this is what we’re going to do on a down screen.

And he explained the cutter and explained the passing and explained the screener and how the screener reacts and how the cutter reads and so forth and so on. And then maybe that’s all he gave us the first day. And then we kind what, maybe played four four or something. And he’s just kind of getting us to move.

And he was figuring out, he, he, but this is what he said. He goes, you guys ask questions? He goes, ask a question. He goes, if I don’t know the answer, I’ll know it by tomorrow. But I thought that was great because a couple things. Number one, he is saying, Hey, let your, if you don’t understand what we’re talking about, speak up.

And number two is, if I don’t have the answer, he’s saying, I might not have the, but I will figure it out and I’ll give you the answer tomorrow. So that, that made a big impression on me. Obviously I’m talking about it, whatever, 50 years later or whatever. It’s, and you know, that’s something. That really good teachers do.

And you know, I don’t think a lot of people think that maybe Coach Knight’s reputation that he would do that, but that really opened everybody’s eyes. I think that okay, we’re going to thank this game and we’re going to think it through and we’re going to figure this out together. And it was really fun developing kind of the first motion offense in terms of how he ran the motion offense back then.  So we thrived on that.

[00:15:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That ability to be able to. Ask a question, I think is something that, again, looking at it from the outside, that probably not a lot of people, when you think of Coach Knight, that’s probably not the first thing that you think of is that interaction back and forth between coach and player.

Cause I think a lot of times, even in that era, it wasn’t always that common. It was more a case of like you talked about, hey, you kind of did what the adults told you to do and you really didn’t question it. There was whole, wasn’t a whole lot of asking why, but it sounds like Coach Knight gave you a lot of the why behind what he was doing, which, oh

[00:15:53] Jim Crews: Yeah. No, he is given the why now there is a time practice is a good time or after practice. Or before practice a good time, during the game. That’s not a good time to ask any Coach . But I mean, seriously, right? I mean, it’s really it. It really isn’t. There is a time to discuss things, but the urgency of a game, there’s a time limit on everything.

So you can’t be doing that too much. I’m not saying it never happened, but you know what I’m saying. Yeah, no, absolutely. But that’s exactly right. That’s, and that and the thing that I really like, there’s many things, but one of the things that also is, I was there four years as a player then eight years as a coach, and I can only remember really one time there, there’s a couple, like we had practiced from three 15 to five 30.

I mean, that was if it was a bad practice, we didn’t go longer. We did not do that, which is a very, very uncharacteristic of coaches number one. And number two is that if he felt that something needed to be changed then he was very adjustable to that. He was very adjustable to that.

As many Hey, don’t turn the ball over. Don’t take bad shots. You know, get your knees bent and let’s play hard. But everything else was pretty flexible. I mean, it really was. And that’s why I think he always evolved and I think that’s why it was kind of mentally stimulating for him. The second thing was that we never ran sprints until our senior year.

And I think the only, he didn’t believe in sprints. He just thought the practice would con condition you for, for the games, which I think it he’s a hundred percent right. But the senior year, because we got beat that one game our junior, so we were 31 and one, and. I think the only reason we ran to senior and we didn’t run much, but we, he, we had run some sprints and I think that he wanted us to believe that it was a little bit tougher our senior year than it was our junior year, and it really probably wasn’t.  But he wanted us to think that.

[00:18:13] Mike Klinzing: Coaches use that psychological, those psychological moves all the time, right? To be able to, to try to get inside their, their players and get ’em to perform at their, at their absolute peak. And, and obviously that final 1976, you guys go undefeated. Just talk a little bit about your memories about that team and when you guys win the championship, what was it like being a part of what was obviously a special team, but a team that I’m sure was filled with guys that you have lifelong relationships with.

So just talk a little bit about that team and what that experience was.

[00:18:48] Jim Crews: Well, first of all, to kind of piggyback on what you said about the coaches getting playing, not playing, but using psychological things, you really think about it and how many professions do you have to have?

And I’m talking about as a athlete, I’m not, coaches don’t have to physically do anything with things, but how many professions? That every three days, once the season starts, every three days in college basketball, you got to mentally and physically and emotionally be at your peak and then execute and produce.

And there’s going to be one winner and one loser every three. That’s an amazing thing if you think about it. It is. I mean, you have to get excited about playing. You have to get mentally prepared to play emotionally excited. You have to mentally have a a scouting report and mentally know what you’re going to be able to do on your things.

And so the mental and the physical and the motion of it being at that level, that is a tough number to do. And that’s why coaching is a tough profession. But those players, they put a lot into it. So sometimes my wife and I will be watching, it doesn’t make any difference with sport, but let’s say it’s basketball and you know, some kid will miss a free throw and you can just kind of hear people saying, how easy that, and I’m going, well, why do they have in golf?

Right? If they’re so easy, then why, why do we have, we don’t have mulligans on the first five minutes. The game you mulligans on the first tee box. I mean, what, what the heck’s that all about? Right. You know, so, but our senior year was kind of a, we had won three big 10 championships and the Big 10 championship was the number one thing every, I mean, our freshman year is win the Big 10 championship and we were able to win the Big 10 championship and, and go to the Final Four actually.

But then our sophomore year we won the Big 10 championship. Back then, guys I think there was only 24 teams, might have been 16, but I think there was only 24 teams that went to the. NCAA tournament and we won the Big 10 championship our second year we tied with Michigan and then got beaten a playoff.

And so we went, we went to a tournament called the ccca, which was all the second place teams in the country. I mean, well not all of them, but either eight or 16. I can’t remember how many. We played three games. So that been eight teams? Eight, yeah, eight teams. So, so if, so there’s 20 or 16 teams that went to eight.

Well, I mean now they take 68 teams. I mean, my point being you can finish fifth in your league and go back. Then we won the big 10 then go. So anyway, going into our senior year, we’d won three big 10 championships. That’s still the number one thing is to win the national championship. But now the only thing the cherry on top of the Sunday was the national championship.

And so that’s the only thing that. Was kind of missing from our class’ career is that, and so we had lost great players and the year before we were beat teams by 25 to 30 points. Literally. I think, I mean if you look it up, I think we’re beat teams by 28 points a game. Just smoking people. And so that was a very, had a few close games, but really nothing our senior year after losing that class before us was, I mean, everyone says, okay, perfect.

32 and old undefeated. That’s true. But it was not even close to a perfect season. I mean, we struggled. We bumbled around. We won a lot of close games which was great, and which was, which is a skill. But you also have to get a little lucky too. But I remember we were up at Wisconsin. We won our fourth Big 10 championship. And that, that meant in a way that means more, we get identified with 32 oh. But I think our class, we Big 10 championships the national championship. And so then we, we play and we have a the year before Scott May broke his arm. And then now we’re fast forward a year, we’re playing Marquette, who’s number two in the country.

And we’re Baton Rouge and we’re playing them in the Elite Eight. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. We beat Alabama, which Alabama was probably the best team we had faced in two years. They were great. Really, really good team. Really good team, great team. But. Couple things that were funny. I at least, I think they were funny.

So we’re staying down in Baton Rouge. Well, we end up, we’re staying at the same hotel as Marquette. The team that we’re playing, and I’m sure Coach Knight probably was, I mean, we never, I never saw him say anything about it, but I’m sure he was not pleased with that. So it’s, we pre, we’d eat a pregame meal and then we’d always take a walk and we’d always, if it’s warm out, which in the Midwest is not too warm, but we’d take a walk to loosen up, get some fresh air, even if it’s 10 degrees out, we’d go take a short walk just to get fresh air instead of being inside all the time.

That was just kind of ritual. We also wore a coat and tie. So we have a pregame meal and it’s like a 12 o’clock or one o’clock game, so it’s early. So it’s, so anyway, so we’re taking our walk and we’re just walking and we look over there and there’s Marquette’s team and, well, it’s not even all of them.

It’s, I’d say maybe seven of them are out there. They’re not all there together. And they’re laying, they got their shirts off listening to music…

[00:24:49] Mike Klinzing: Coach McGuire might’ve had a little different philosophy.

[00:24:52] Jim Crews: He was on a motorcycle, motorcycle ride probably, and we’re, and we just kind of start laughing.

They’re probably laughing at us and we’re laughing. We’re laughing at us. And, and they’re probably laughing at both of, obviously two ways to skin the cat, because Marquette was tremendous and we were pretty, and we was kind of in the to, but we, and there were so things that were. Kind of, I don’t know. We played on tartan floor just like we did at Dayton when we got beat the year before against Kentucky in the elite eight, Scott May who played five minutes in the Kentucky game because of the broken arm.

Got in quick foul trouble at Mar at the Marquette game and there was something else. I think we got down a little bit too. And anyway, so that was a, that was probably the most emotion in terms of happiness. Emotion for us is going to the final four and beating Marquette and then we beat ucla who was the na who had just won the last 10 out 12 national championships.

We beat them for the second time. We started the season, beat them in St. Louis and we beat ’em bad and we beat ’em pretty good in the semi-finals. And then we played Michigan. What was interesting to me is here, sitting there before the game, just sitting there and you’re thinking about different things.

And what I was thinking, I was going, this is kind of amazing. I said, we’ve played Michigan four times in the last two years, and we’ve beat them every time and we know that we’re better than them. They know that we’re better than them and they know it and we know it, that they can beat us because they’re really good.

Yeah. And it’s coming down to one game. I’m thinking, wait a minute, this is amazing. All the work that we’ve done, it’s been over four years and all the practices, all the games, and really all the success and everything, and the one thing that we’re missing, it comes down to one game for a four year thing, because if not, It would just been, I mean, we still would’ve had a great team and everything else, but without that that’s a cherry on top.

Yeah, that was, that was a big cherry on top. And really tell you the truth, I feel our guys do, the, our class is really connected to the class that was ahead of us. And I really feel bad and all the guys in my class feel bad for the class ahead of us. Cause we were really one class, it was a class of what is it?

Nine guys basically. They had no, they had five. We had five yeah, 10. There’s a class of 10. And you know, when people talk and it’s always about the, the our senior year, it’s not about them at all. They, they’ve been in the shadows. And it’s really unfortunate because they started it.

They were coach Knight’s first group. They were tougher nails. They were successful. They were good. They got us. Everything from how to think and, and how to practice and how to accept us and so forth and so on. And that, that, that always puts a little kind of tear in my eye about that, to tell you the truth for sure.

[00:28:00] Mike Klinzing: Which of those guys, which of your teammates are you probably in the closest contact with? Who do you stay in touch with the most?

[00:28:08] Jim Crews: The guys in my class would be, I know Bobby does, Bobby lives in Atlanta, Quinn and Scotts. Scott and Quinn are both in Bloomington and then Quinn works up here with the Pacers.

So those two guys. And then actually Tom Abernathy is lives about two blocks, three blocks from me. So those, the out the five in our class. And that’s a neat thing as I told you in the recruiting is Coach Knight said he’s going to put guys around you that you’re going to enjoy, and you meet guys for the first time when you’re 18 years old.

And now literally 50 years later great friends always have been. And That’s pretty cool.

[00:28:42] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s, that’s really what it’s all about ultimately, right? I mean, I think as a coach that hundred percent, that’s what you hope that you can establish for your players. And obviously as a player, that’s what you hope for in your team situation, that you have guys that you bond with during your time, that you’re playing with them and that those bonds continue long after you leave campus or you leave that team.

[00:29:03] Jim Crews: What do you don’t when you come, you go, I was watching a football game the other night in the Eagles. So they got beat. Yep. And they were undefeated. So they mentioned the Miami Dolphins. So the Miami Dolphins always celebrate when the last undefeated team goes. So they’re the only undefeated team?

No, the last undefeated team. Well, we’re kind of the same boat, but we’re completely opposite. We, honestly, I don’t think we’ve had one discussion about being undefeated or any of that stuff for 50 years with the guys I played with. Honest to God. I mean, we talk about our kids, we might talk about basketball, we might talk about a funny story, but it’s never about being undefeated or anything.

Not once, not once.

[00:29:47] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, again, everybody approaches it differently and yeah. So you guys aren’t cracking the champagne every year with the last undefeated team goes down. When did coaching get on your radar? Was that something, obviously your dad was a coach, so you grew up in a, in a coaching household, but were you thinking about it while you were still playing?

Or, or when did it come on your radar?

[00:30:07] Jim Crews: That’s a great question For me, I never thought I was going to coach. Never. And I’ll tell you why. Reasons I used tell players’ you don’t do what I did. So when I was growing up You know, I don’t, I really don’t know if you might know it, I don’t hear this, but like a lot of times if you were an athlete, you’re kind of called a dumb jock.

[00:30:35] Mike Klinzing: You don’t hear that as much anymore. But certainly I think when, when you were a kid or when I was a kid.

[00:30:41] Jim Crews: I think you heard that a lot more. Yeah. You can’t heard that. So it is probably too close to the truth. So that bothered me a little bit. So with me, I’m talking about, and then back then Mike and Jason is if you wanted to coach coaches were a lot of times physical education teachers back then and Illinois State was a physical, not a physical, but it was a teacher’s institute back then.

I don’t know if it still is to tell you the truth. And so if you coached, you went into physical education, well, again, for zero assumption. I mean, people would, that was a stereotype. And again, I was probably insecure enough thinking, well, I’m not, I’m not dealing with this stuff. So I said, I’ve never coached, so I majored in business at Indiana, never thought about coaching and then it to my senior year in college.

And then you knowing what am

which, which is an interesting story too. In fact. Well really this is when I knew I wasn’t going to play in the nba. It’s funny how things were playing Minnesota my freshman year, and it’s one of those games where, where, well you’re in your area, Bill Mussellman from your area. Yep, for sure. He’s from, yep, exactly.

So Billman coach and I, they competed against each other. So they had a big competitive thing going. Minnesota had won the Big 10 championship the year before. And then, and that same year they got in a big fight with Ohio State. I mean, if anyone wants to Google that, it’s an ugly scene. That was the, the witty.

That’s exactly right. Remember? And so, So anyway, they had guys, like, people don’t know these guys, but Clyde Turner’s like six nine. Jim Brewers like six eight. Ron Beha was like 6, 7, 6 8. They had a guard named Nicks who was six four, and he was the smallest guy. So they had all, Dave Winfield was also like six six.

So they had this big team. Big team, okay. Well, we weren’t very big. Our center was six, seven we weren’t very big that freshman year. And it’s one of those electric games. I mean, it’s stoked, the atmosphere, ised, I mean, everything ised and it’s an afternoon game and game goes on. All of a sudden there’s a loose ball.

And the loose ball is like eight feet from me and there’s like three Minnesota guys and they’re like 12, 14 feet away from the ball. And two of those suckers beat me to the ball . And right then I go, not only are they than me, they’re faster and quicker than me. I said, I got no chance for the pros.

That’s dead serious. That’s dead serious. I knew I’d never be a pro then. So anyway, senior year thinking what I do, I said, eh, maybe, maybe I should coach. I don’t know. But anyway, I got a job. But in the spring I had a job in the spring already for the next fall or next summer. And, but Coach Knight offered me a coaching job and I turned it down. Wow. And went into business for one year and then had the opportunity to come back the next year. So I was very, very fortunate to get two offers instead of one. I mean, you be lucky to get one offer and I was really lucky to get two. But as soon as I started coaching, I mean within a day or two, I go, this is what I really enjoy.

So I was very, very blessed and very fortunate to coach with him for eight years. And that was when the Pan-American Games were going on. The Olympic Games were going on when he was the coach of both those. So that was a lot. We had good teams. We won National Championship with Randy Whitman and Isaiah Thomas and Ted Kittle and turn those guys.

And so a lot of good stuff that was going on in Bloomington, but then obviously kind of globally

[00:34:30] Mike Klinzing: So I have like a million questions from this area, but I’m going to start with two. First question is, what, initially you said after a day or two, you knew that this is where you wound to end up, that it was the right place for you.

So what did you love about coaching initially right out of the gate? And then the second part of the question is, what was it like to transition from being a player under Coach Knight, where you have that player coach relationship to all of a sudden now you go to, now you’re a colleague of Coach Knight as opposed to a player.

So first of all, what, what did you love about coaching and then just what was the transition like with Coach Knight going from player to coach?

[00:35:08] Jim Crews: Well, from a coaching standpoint, I thought right off the bat it’s so easy and other Things, it’s a programs, the of those is of puzzle and you’re to get that piece.

The best it can be. And then you’re putting the puzzle together to make a really good team. And the, and the pieces fit differently at all times. It’s always evolving, it’s changing. And I thought that was just really stimulating. I thought it was just really because what you’re trying to do is have guys with tremendous ambition, but a collective responsibility, and you have to get that balance.

And that’s hard because we all have that selfish gene in us. And to be a part of something that’s bigger than yourself, you have to really kind. I conquer that selfish gene in it, . So that, I just thought that was, it was just really stimulating to put those pieces together and, and I really just enjoyed it.

And to be truthful, I probably thought like a coach because I was always, as I said, even from my neighborhood. You know, playing with older kids, I was always trying to, I had to figure out how to survive. Right. And that’s kind of how coaches, I think, think in terms of doing things also. So, and then from the relationship with being a player to a coach, it was, it was really great.

I mean, because from a coach when, when you’re around a head coach or assistant coach for that matter is you know, you see for three hours. I mean, that’s all you see for three hours. That’s it. You don’t see him any other time. I mean, on the road you see him a little bit more, but at home you don’t see him more.

And as a coach I was able to see coach Knight you know, with his buddies or we’d go play golf. We played tennis. We we’d go to the movies. We’d be in a car for six hours recruiting together. We’d be in a hotel room. I mean, you’re get you’re over his house it’s around his family he’s around your, our family and so completely different than when you’re a player.

And you know, it’s kind of interesting too because in today’s age you know, a lot of kids are always saying you relationship with the coach and your relationship with a coach. Well, I’m not saying. That relationship’s good, that’s fine. But I think it’s kind of a, sometimes it gets to be a buddy buddy kind thing.

There’s a fine line here,

[00:38:05] Mike Klinzing: right? I mean there’s a, yeah,

[00:38:07] Jim Crews: I remember Calbert Cheney, yes. Yeah. You know, he’s the leading Big 10 scorer. Well, Calbert, who is from Evansville, where we used to coach and then he ended up being on our staff at St. Louis. And there’s buddy than Calbert. He’s just an awesome individual and a really good, too individual.

I mean, Calbert. So we’re just one day and goes, cause why would a kid want a relationship with the head coach? He. Like the head coach is 40, 50 years old. , like, I don’t want to, he goes, I didn’t want to a relationship with a coach. Yeah, I want to get along with him, but I don’t this tight relationship. I said, I, when I’m 20, I don’t want to out with my, don’t you know Joe all the time, you know?

Yeah. It’s like they think that’s, and maybe they do it, I don’t know. But anyway so seeing it from a diff more of a human instead of just the coach you know, you can coach had a good sense of humor and he had some good friends and there was a lot of laughter going on and, and you know, you’d see that a little bit as a player, but you didn’t see it n not nearly like you would as a coach.

So I really enjoyed that. And so we had a good relationship coach and I  enjoyed it. I thought from a Teaching standpoint. He gave his assistance a lot of responsibility. He did not micromanage much at all. He real, I, I didn’t, eight years I was there, he didn’t micromanage you. I mean you had to get your things done.

He gave it, but he didn’t look over your shoulder. You know, he expected you to produce and get things done ever and have things prepared. But I like that. And he also gave, there was only one thing that I really, there was film exchange back in my day where you exchanged films with like we had exchanged films with Ohio University because they played Ohio State or something like that.

I didn’t do that. But everything else in the program, from recruiting to scouting, to scheduling, to budget stuff, to travel to whatever camps, to clinics, to organizing the PanAm trials or the Olympic trials, he let us do that stuff and that was awesome. I mean, that was really awesome. And then he let you coach, he let the assistants did coaching.

He overlooked it and then he would interject. Or if he needed to take over a little bit, he’d take over a little bit. But he wanted you coaching all the time. You weren’t there watching him coach. You were not there watching him Coach,

[00:40:49] Mike Klinzing: I’m sure for you going forward in your career, obviously that was a huge plus in your development as a coach to be able to have somebody that empowered you to be able to do all those things and have a hand in all those different parts of the program.

It’s funny because now we’ll talk to coaches, Jim, that obviously at different levels. You know, if you go in and you start out as a. Director of ops at the division one level, you have a different experience compared to somebody who’s coming in as a Division three assistant in terms of just the number of people on the staff and the number of things that you get to do.

And I think guys have different feelings about where they start and what they learn in their first couple positions that helps them to kind of advance along the way. So I’m sure for you that you look back on that time and being able to have your hands at all those different app facets of the program, I’m sure was invaluable to you as you went on to the rest of your career.

[00:41:38] Jim Crews: A hundred percent. It was little like playing from the standpoint like coach would practice the first day of practice. He didn’t slow things down for freshmen. Like he just threw you in the water and you have to start learning how to swim there. Yep. Hang you better, hang on someone or you better watch someone else learn to swim.

And he did that as coaching too, is here’s your here it is, this is your figure out who we’re going to play and then let’s go. Or this is what you’re doing with recruiting, let’s go. And so it was great. Like you just said, it was great. Background and foundation to become a head coach. I mean, and that’s what he wanted.

He wanted coaches to become head coaches. And so that was, I couldn’t have been at a better place at a better time than Indiana and with Coach Knight when I was there.

[00:42:20] Mike Klinzing: Tell us a little bit about Coaching Isiah Thomas. What was Isiah like as a college player? Obviously goes down as one of the greatest players in the history of the game, but just what, what was it like coaching a guy that ended up not only achieving what he did in college, but also what he went on to do in the professional level?

[00:42:35] Jim Crews: Well, I’ll start with the recruiting. It was really interesting. So back then, and again, I have no idea what the rules are now, and they might have been, they’re probably different than, I know they’re different than when I was in coaching five years, six years ago. But anyway, back then, You could go into the home and you could take anyone you wanted to in the home, let’s say.

So when we were recruited Isaiah Thomas, we had a guy on our staff named Tommy Miller. Tommy played for coach at West Point and Tommy was from Chicago. And Tommy Miller played for the same high school coach, coach Pingatore, who just passed away about two years ago. Who was Isaiah’s coach at St. Joe’s. And so Tommy did a lot. And one another thing with recruiting coach always kind of had our staff. And even when I was getting recruited by Indiana, the whole staff recruited just wasn’t one person, which I think. A big plus too in a lot of ways, which I won’t go into, but I think that’s a real positive.

So anyway, the night that they go into coat or Isaiah’s home and Isaiah’s in a rough neighborhood, and so it’s Tommy Miller and it’s Coach Knight. And it’s it’s Wayne Emre who was the general manager of the Milwaukee Milwaukees, who was a close friend of coaches. It was golly, I’m trying to think of the other, it was a doctor, Dr.  Baba in Bloomington and Quinn was there, and Quinn Buckner. So they go in the home and it, I don’t know how long they were, but it’s, they couldn’t tell who’s in this house. Who doesn’t live in this house. There are people coming in, there are people going out. It was very confrontational by some of Isiah’s brothers.

With coach they’re leaving and it ends up, or Isaiah had a brother that had a drug problem and he also had a brother that was a police officer. They’re literally fighting in the street, as, as these guys were getting in the car. Wow. So I did not, I was not there. So I get in the office early the next morning, so I call up Quinn, I said, Hey, what went on?

He goes, you wouldn’t believe it. And he tells me a story. And then I called up Dr. Ba. I said, Hey, how’d it go last night? And he goes, you wouldn’t believe it. And he tells me a story. And I did that with everybody, was there, Wayne Embry, everyone. And they never told me the same story they had. There were so many stories going on that couldn’t track there, a story going on in the staircase, and then there’s a story in the you know, at the same time, maybe in the living room, or so

So anyway, what makes it interesting is, Coach calls up Coach Pingatore, I don’t know if his is probably the, I don’t know if it was the next day or two days later and calls him up and goes, ping. And they and Ping love coach, and coach love Ping and he goes, ping, this is not going to work out. He goes, this is not the right place for Isaiah.

It’s just not the right place. And so they talked and it was good and he goes, OK and everything. And I don’t know, four hours later, two hours later, I don’t know when, but very short time. Isiah calls Coach. And he goes, Hey, I’m coming to Indiana. And you know, this is kind of funny because here’s obviously one of the highest recruited guys in the country and you know, we just told him he is not coming and now he’s telling us he is coming.

And Coach goes, no, you can’t come. He goes, I’m not giving you a scholarship. And I said, I don’t care. He goes, you can’t stop me. I’ll walk on. I’ll just come and . So it’s interesting how things work out. Obviously he got a scholarship and it worked out great. And Isiah, I said, now Isiah, I don’t know how tall, he’s not very tall.

He’s six foot, I guess I don’t even know if he’s six. Don’t know what they listed him as. But I always thought watching Isaiah in high school and everything else, I said, you know what? If there’s a, if we’re playing for the Big 10 championship and there’s a rebound that needs to be had and for the championship, Isaiah’s going to get, I don’t care about those 6, 8, 6 9 guys.

And that’s what Isaiah was, a tremendous competitor. Very, very good. He’s very, very close. The, like the teammates that he had at Indiana, Landon and Ray, but Randy Whitman and Ted Kit and those guys, Jimmy Thomas, those guys are very, very close. He was a good teammate that he was very, very respected with those guys, especially all the hoopla he got.

And the two years he was there, we won two big 10 championships. And we struggled. I mean, the year that we won the national championship in 81, we were seven and five, got like seventh place in the Hawaii tournament out in Rainbow Tournament. A rainbow, what do you call it? Rainbow tournament out in Hawaii.

So it wasn’t an easy process, but finally got there and it clicked right at the right time and kind of went through the NCAA like no other.

[00:47:38] Mike Klinzing: A guy like that, obviously just being able to be around him day in and day out and seeing, I think you hit it on the head in terms of the competitiveness. And when I think about Isiah Thomas, that’s probably the first thing that comes to mind is just how competitive he was and a guy at his size to be able to do what he did, both at the college level and then in the pros, I think is a testament to what kind of a competitor that he was.

You mentioned earlier about getting a chance to be around Coach Knight with the Olympic trials in 1984. So how, how much were you around able to see, I know there’s the, the famous Bob Knight quote of calling Jordan saying he has the opportunity to be the greatest player in the history of the game before he sets foot an NBA court.

Kind of very obviously a pretty, a pretty accurate prognosis from Coach Knight, but just were you around any of that at the trials and just what do you remember about that?

[00:48:29] Jim Crews: Oh yeah, I scouted for the Olympic team. So I had to go South America, Italy, Canada, wherever, all over the place to scout for them.

But the Olympic trials was in Bloomington, which was just a tremendous thing. Coach Knight the, the collection of coaches, and I’m not going to remember ’em all right now, but you know, like Big House Gaines from Winston-Salem and Judd Heath coat from Michigan State and digger from Notre Dame and CM New, who was on the Olympic staff from, he was at Vanderbilt at the time, and I can’t remember ’em all, but I mean, it was kind of the who’s who.

But all these guys would get in the room after every practice. So we’d have two or three practices during the trial, probably three. We’d probably have, yeah, kind of like drills and little scrimmage and then drills, little scrimmage and then scrimmage at night. And then after H one, we would. Coach, I would get it at the, at the board and just our locker room wasn’t very big.

The IU locker room really, but all these guys would just jam in there and then, They’d kind of have column A, column B, column C, and you know, A was the top players B’s, the next and then C’s. But it would be changing after each practice, each session, okay, let’s move this from B to A and this one from A to whatever, C to B and B to a and and so that was in and getting the inside of those guys, just evaluating guys and looking at that and then watching that.

And then you just had tremendous guys. I mean guys that did make the team Terry Porter, John Stock, and Charles Barkley. I mean, those guys are pretty good. And but the and it wasn’t maybe the best 12 players. It was the collection of 12 players to make the best team for. And obviously that was great.

So then the four weeks of practice before they went to the thing, I was there every day with that. So that was, that was fun just to watch guys. And is, is interesting, Sam Perkins from North Carolina. Was a six 10 long armed, long-legged player. You know, his reputation was kind of like, he’s a little bit laid back, little lazy, and he was player.

Really was competitive. Yeah. Doesn’t point a point A to point B all the time.

[00:50:45] Mike Klinzing: There’s some guys that are like that, Jim, isn’t there? There’s some guys that just don’t look like they’re, they’re going hard all the time. And man do they go hard.

[00:50:52] Jim Crews: He’s the couples of basketball. Sam Perkins  I can remember once too is like, coach Knight was really upset with the team and, and they had played an exhibition game and coach was, he was, he was ticked at him and he, he was, he was on him and he’s on, and then in the locker room. So coach is gone and. And they had next game coming up or something, and Sam Perkin just speaks up.

He goes, Hey, coach is upset. He goes, that’s his problem. We got a game to play. Let’s go. But that’s exactly what Coach Knight would want. And so yeah, those guys that, that, those were competitive things. Now, those Olympic trials and Olympic practices, I mean, those were, they got after those guys. And, and Jordan was a guy that he went from a guy that you know, we played him that year.

In fact, we his last game college game was against Indiana. We beat ’em.  We upset him. And and that was Jordan was an all right shooter. I mean, he was all right, but I mean, at the Olympic, so whatever happened after that game in Atlanta, when we played him in spring to the Olympics, That dude got a lot better shooting.

I don’t know what he did, but he got a lot better shooting. I mean, that guy was really competitive on things, but really the whole team was, I mean, Patrick Hewing was there and, and Joe Klein and, and Alvin Robertson was there and Leon Wood and really good. I mean, the best of the best.

[00:52:30] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I mean, just to be able to see and to be in that environment, to be around those guys, and obviously as you said, as a coach, to be around the coaches that were associated with it.

Again, something that not everybody gets an opportunity to do, and I’m sure that it’s served you well as you move forward. Let’s jump to the opportunity that you get at Evansville. Talk about how that opportunity comes to you and then what you remember about that first experience in your early years there as a head coach.

[00:53:00] Jim Crews: Well Evansville was great. It opened up in 85 in the spring of 85 and That was the first kind of year that I was kind of, the year before the Olympics and all that was coming up. And coach and I talked and, and it was just best that I stayed in Bloomington that particular year, which was great. I loved it.

And we had a good year and the Olympic experience was once in a lifetime thing. And then coach came in and he goes, Hey, that Evansville job is open. Would you be interested? He goes, yeah, I think that be that, be pretty. And I, ironically, I Evansville when I was a little Illinois state, when was, and they went to the finals and the division two.

Finals were in Evansville and Winston-Salem won with, with Earl Monroe and Big House Gaines, who I mentioned.

And so when Winston-Salem, they came out, they wore these cowboy hats, was a little guy. I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. These, these guys warmed up with cowboy hats on . And I don’t know why, I don’t know why I thought that was cool, but I thought that was cool. So fast forward to the 1980 and were having a big dinner late at night, some barbecue place, and I’m there with big house Gaines right across from me.

Right. I can’t, I said Coach Gaines. I said, I want to know the store behind those cowboy hats. I said, I thought that was the great. Said, why do you guys, that cowboy and his whole complexion completely changed. Like he just got ticked. He goes, oh my gosh. He this clothing store who’s the sponsor of the tournament.

They made us wear those hats. Those were the stupidest, I mean, I justed them off. Thought was thing the world thought. That’s funny. Yeah. So so where were we going with this? I’m sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, Evansville. So, so anyway, the ad at Evansville was a Jim Byers who was the, he used to be the football coach at Evans.

So he played football at Michigan when he was young. His dad was a Legendary coach in Evansville at a high school. In fact, their team never got scored on one year. They went

and so coachers he up and it was still during the season in February and had a game and up for the game. And then we like for four hours in Coach Knight’s office. And this is what was awesome about Coach Byers. I mean, we talked for four hours and everything he said was exactly true and honest. He did not.

And that’s how he was as an ad and a boss. He was such a tremendous leader and tremendous ad for our, well, he was there about 15 of the 17 years I was there. And I couldn’t have gotten any luckier. I mean, I could not have gotten any luckier. It was it was a perfect match of my personality with Evansville and what Evans will kind of looking for and what they are.

And, and just the town is a great place to rear our children. And it was a Evansville only about 22 kids at the most 2000 kids. But we, we, we’d start winning and, and, and we are getting 10, 12,000 people games. And so that was, that was cool. So we had a kind of, a big time, we had a big time atmosphere, but a very small private college experience for the students athlete on that.

So that was. That was fun. That was fun. We, a lot of great relationships there. We wore the sleeves that was very famous back in the day. We wore the, did you know about the sleeves or not? Yes, yes. Did you you The T-shirt? Yes. The T-shirt. Well, we wore those in honor of Coach McCutchen. Jerry Sloan went there who played for the Utah Jazz and was a great coach at the Utah, or played for the Bulls.

But then the Utah Jazz Jerry played there and they won five national championships during Coach McCutcheons time and they used to wear those sleeves. I have no idea why they wore those sleeves exactly. But in those honor, because that’s the only reason we were in the position. We were at Division one and kids getting scholarships is because of those guys.

And so we did that in their honor and what it represented in terms of how things, what we believed in, in terms of kids graduating, following the rules and giving back to the community. And so we were very proud of those sleeves.

[00:57:46] Mike Klinzing: When you think about your time there at Evansville, and obviously you’re there a long time, if you had to point to one or two keys to what you felt like allowed you to have the success that you did there, whether that be something culture-wise or something on the floor that you guys did, just pick out one or two things that you think were key to your success.

[00:58:05] Jim Crews: Well, I think, well, first of all, we had kids that I think understood who they were as players. They weren’t the most talent. They had good talent. They weren’t the most talented, but again, it came with, they were tough, competitive, and smart. And they were willing to fight for what, what they felt was right and what we felt was right and how college basketball should be played up.

And they really kind of had a chip on their shoulder about that for a long time. So they were very, very. In tuned with how things should be done. And we had great, once that thing got Marty Simmons changed our whole thing. Marty was a great player. In high school. They went 68-0, Lawrenceville, Illinois.

He went to Indiana played against Jordan’s team in 84. Yeah. And then played 85 as a sophomore. But then he transferred and we were lucky enough to get Marty there and Marty had to sit out back then he sat out as a transfer and he changed how these guys thought. I mean, in terms of how to go to class, how to act in class, how to prepare for practice, how to prepare for games, how to work in things, how to thank how we’re going to be a team, changed our whole culture, changed our whole mentality.

And we were fortunate the first year, Marty, we won a championship our first year with Marty there. And so then. We really had strong leaders within the, the, it was, it was a very much a player driven leadership thing there. So we were fortunate to get guys that thrived on that. And you know, we had some, we had one kid We had a really good leader.

His name was Scotter. He’s about six one. And he was good, but he was smart. Like he if anything came up, he had kind challenged another player, but he always had a kid who was seven one behind him, Sasha Hoop when he was,

we had some smart guys, , we had some smart guys. So I, I just think that they knew how to play and they were very unselfish guys and really thrived on, we had a tremendous atmosphere there in Evansville, and they thrived on that thing. They weren’t, they were willing to work and get after it. And we kind of told ’em how it was going to be at in recruiting.

So we didn’t try to sugar coat anything. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. We’re going to work, but here’s the good things too. So here’s the good, bad and ugly. And we had enough guys that showed up that enjoyed that. And that’s it’s as again, it goes for that individual ambition and collective responsibility trying to get that balance.  That’s the whole, whole thing. How do

[01:00:41] Mike Klinzing: How you develop leaders on your team? How did you do that over the course of your career? Was there something that obviously you can look for in the recruiting process, look for kids who have those leadership traits, but still you as a coach have to sort of provide the environment to allow that leadership to thrive.

Is there anything that you could point to that maybe a coach that’s listening that, that they could take from, from some of the lessons that you learned about trying to develop leaders on your team?

[01:01:06] Jim Crews: Well, I think having conversations with them in terms of what you expect from ’em and what you want from ’em, and say, these things are going to happen.

For example, even from this standpoint, you could, you could say it didn’t happen a lot, but I’d say three or four times over the years, or maybe more than that a little bit. But I’d bring a leader in and I’d go, you know what you know, everyone knows that you’re the leader, but we’re not getting much.

I’m going to be jump on you. I’m all over you today. I’m all over you today. And you know what I expect. I expect how you’re going to, everyone’s going to look and see how you respond when I’m on you, but I’m telling you, I’m going to be on you. And that worked out good because they got a heads up, I’m a little bit, and then they’re going to respond in the way that needs to be, respond, how they need to respond.

And then that gets to, so if you, and you tell ’em what we’re trying to, or hey so and so, he’s struggling this guy’s struggling with something. Maybe it’s personal and you might not tell him, or you might tell him. It just depends on what personal thing it is. But I mean, it’s like, Hey, this guy needs, he needs a buddy now more than ever.

He needs encouragement right now more than ever. You, you give him that thing, or Hey, you need to get so, and. Straighten out. I mean, he ain’t thinking the way that we need to be thinking right now. If we’re going to be as good, get you get and get of you and do that. And so it’s just whatever situation kind comes is you just bring in the fold and explain it to, and of ’em are very receptive of that.

Most of ’em enjoy that. And you know, when you grow up, everyone says you know your parents, your teachers, your coaches. Man, I wish I was the boss. I can boss everyone around. Well, yeah, that’s all fine until you’re responsible for all the guys that you’re bossing around a and so they, they get a completely different take on that.

And so I, I think just putting ’em in the loop and being honest with them and tell ’em what you expect, not only from them but from the team. And this is what we’re missing right now. And you know, in coaching, it’s a day by day thing. I mean that, because if you have to be ready every three days, emotionally, Emotionally and mentally and physically.

And then you have to practice. I mean, you can’t just loudly gag around in practice and then expect to, so it’s have to be, you have to hold guys accountable and practice. And so that’s the grind. And it’s a long, and I think the more your message besides your voice, the better. This. For example, we might call up a parent, you need to talk to your son, mom, talk to your son.

Oh, you know? Or it could be vice versa. Hey Curtis, I called your mom last night as Curtis eyes got about two inches wide. Like, oh my gosh, I can take your stuff. I can’t take my mom’s stuff, you know? And. The more that they’re involved with it, then they know it’s their team. I mean, they know it’s their team and that that’s what we promoted.

They, they have to, hey, they have to believe in the program. They have to believe in the program. They, they have to believe in their teammates. They have to believe in themselves. That’s what you constantly get them to do. And sometimes I can remember we had a really, really, really good player. And I asked him like, who’s better this other kid on this other team?

Or you, well, he said, other kid on the other team. And I mean, I just crucified the kid. You just killed . But my point was like a minute, you’re not believing in yourself. Like you and, but it’s the same thing. It’s like your children, they all respond differently. Marty Simmons. I’d tell him that was the dumbest shot I’ve ever seen in my life.

And Scott Haner, his best buddy, was on the team, who was a great shooter, got 65 points in one game, actually. I’d come over and say, Hey Scott, you just need to keep taking those shots, but you just need to get your feet underneath. I mean, completely different, completely different personalities. And you have to figure out what’s what makes him tick a little bit.

[01:05:15] Mike Klinzing: And that changes right year to year player to player. The good coaches are adaptable.

[01:05:19] Jim Crews: A hundred percent. And it changes from player to player from year to year. Cause they go from freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and even. And even during the season, I mean the same kid. Sometimes he needs a kick, but sometimes he needs a, I mean, it might even be in the same practice.

Yeah, I mean that’s what’s really and that’s what’s really hard I think in, in life actually, in my opinion, is sometimes you just don’t know what that person needs, you know? And. That’s hard because the you always want to put the person in position to be successful as they can be.

And sometimes you just don’t know. A lot of times you just don’t know what’s going on with an individual. You just don’t know. And  I can give you a great example. We had a kid is, his mother was killed in a farming accident. They were farmers and, and when he was like nine years old, so he comes down. So now we’re playing and was a tough, good player.

Great. I mean, if you knocked him down, he’d get up and pat you on the rear end, Mike, and hey, that’s, that’s good. He’d at you like, that’s good. Would appreciate you knocking on his butt. I’m, but that’s competition. And he was just great. Well, so we, we go to Hawaii, I’m trying to get this all down. So we get, go to Hawaii and you know, there’s some parents on the trip and some, some of the parents were just moms.

The dads didn’t go. So let’s say there’s five moms on the, or something, maybe six and everything. Cause everyone can’t afford that. And so we do that. And then, so the mom, and now it’s over Christmas. It’s over Christmas and New Year’s. That’s when we’re there, new Year’s and Christmas. So that’s an emotional thing for a lot of people.

And then we’re coming back on the flight. And it’s New Year’s Eve and it like strikes midnight when we’re on this flight. And so it’s all joyous. And a lot of these moms are they’re hugging their boys and giving them, giving a kiss. Well, it doesn’t register with me. And you know, like we practice either a day or the next day and then all of a sudden something done go right in practice and this kid’s going, I mean, he goes AWOL for three days.

Three days. Well, it was all, this thing was all catching up. I didn’t, I didn’t put the dot, I didn’t connect the dots. You know, he didn’t have a mom. We had all these moms on the flight. It’s over the, it’s over the holidays. That’s when you miss your loved ones over the holidays. And then it’s reinforced on New Year’s Eve because all this joyous stuff going on with New Year’s Eve on the flight and, and he’s not part of it.

And so I was an idiot. I didn’t, I didn’t connect any of the dots. And then he came back and he’s been great and he’s awesome guy and everything else, but he was just going through something at that time. And that’s what makes it tough, I think, sometimes in life. And that’s coaching, not coaching.

I think it’s just, you just don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. Right. You just don’t know.

[01:08:50] Mike Klinzing: No, that speaks to everything that you were talking about earlier, Jim, about just having communication with your guys and, and talking to ’em and, and trying to figure out what makes ’em tick and how each guy’s different.

And even when you’re doing that all the time, there’s still things that as a coach, as a boss, as a parent, as a friend, that you can miss that you know, you don’t always catch. But I think what you’re trying to do, especially as a coach, is you’re trying to get to know those kids and, and understand them and understand their situation so that again, you can, you can get the most out of them and so that they can get the most out of themselves, which ultimately is what anybody wants to do as a coach, is to try to maximize what your players can be as people and as basketball players and what your team can be collectively as a group like you talked about at the very beginning.

[01:09:33] Jim Crews: That’s hundred percent. And I think also if you got guys that, and we were everywhere we at. If you have players that are like I, in terms of kind of believing what you believe, well, and we all got different personalities. That’s a good thing. But sometimes the players are going know things that the coaches don’t know and they can help too, if they’re the right kind of guys.

You’re just not on the team. You are the team. And if you’re are the team, then that means you got 10, 12 guys around you. And it’s not maybe all 12 of ’em, but there’s going to be three or four that are close enough, really close enough to you to, to join forces, to you when, when tough times come.

And really the my best memories, as many championships as I’ve been very fortunate to be around and for 40 years is s really some of the, not some, but the, the top highlights were things that were off the court when players stepped up and, and did things that were just off the chart.

I mean to, just to give you one quick example. Had a kid I can remember, I can’t remember. You’ll that’ve, but it’s 20, it 28th, what it was and the it, this, he was graduated, had graduated and graduate and he was working camp and was something I was, I a little, I like an hour or something coming anyway, had our equipment, man,

Dirty clothes. The dryer, year or two, probably young, but they used to have these dryers that were just these enormous things. Well, I don’t know, back in the day, I guess when you could stick your arm in dryers and it would stop. He sticks his arm in this thing and it just grabs it and rips it and tears it apart.

I mean, it’s just bleeding everywhere. It’s just bleeding everywhere. So anyway, try to speed up the story a little bit. So two guys, he’s screaming, they think he’s just screwing around one, and then they finally come in there. They basically save his life, get that bleeding, get the call, the ambulance, boom.

He gets helicoptered over to Louisville, boom. Or I Ds probably helicopter, I don’t know what he got over to Louisville some way on the flight. And so anyway, they set up a schedule and so he’s be in the hospital he is in hospital for a month or weeks or something like that. And so they just put a big calendar on the board.

Okay, who’s going today? Who’s going tomorrow? You know, it could be two guys, three guys, one, they’ll make a difference. Ever day…players, they’re going, we’re in Louisville, drive to Louisville,  drive to Louisville about it. So the team is trying to make this guy, his name was Mil Donald out of Cincinnati. That’s where he from. He’s awesome guy. And Mil you’d go in there and you’re trying to make him, you’d leave and he’s making you.

That’s, that’s when you know you have, and stories like that. There’s been a, those kind of stories are so much more meaningful as wonderful as championships are. And even some scenes when you don’t have championships obviously are good too. But championship, those stories like that have always touched me in a much more profound way.

[01:13:06] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think when you look back as a player or as a coach, A lot of times those games can run together, the wins, the losses, especially you talk about teams that you play in your conference that you’ve played multiple times. You’re trying to remember when was that game, in this game. But what you really remember, again, are the people and the relationships that you have.

And that’s, that’s really what it’s all about When you, what it comes down to. And clearly a day to day you’re trying to win games. And ultimately, especially at the college level, you’re being judged on your one loss record. But the impact that you have on players and that story that you just told, clearly that’s a story that everybody who’s involved in it benefited from, from, from that experience and, and, and remembers it to this day.

And, and it’ll always be meaningful in their life. And that that’s really what it’s all about.

[01:13:51] Jim Crews: What we used to tell the teams all the time, this, and it’s so true. I mean, you don’t know it when you’re real young, but like, you can’t fool locker. We, players and coaches.  We can fool the fans. We can fool the media. We can fool our girl girlfriends or wives. We can fool you cannot fool the locker room. They know what is true, period. or they know all our good, bad, and ugly of it. So it better be more good than ugly. That’s cause it’s about relations. So who’s not, who’s about it?

Who’s about it? Who’s up when they, to other words, who’s authentic and who’s authentic? Basically that’s what it, and so that’s why recruiting is so important, because there’s nothing more important than that locker room. And because that’s, that’s what the life is right there. You know, again, you can fool people with other whatever monarchy, but.

You know, even winning. I mean, if you’re 25 and five, that’s really good. I mean, that’s really, really good. But you know what, if it’s bad, it ain’t good. So that’s what I’ve been very fortunate with. We’ve had so many players and, and assistant coaches that have been off the charts in terms of quality, quality people.

[01:15:20] Mike Klinzing: Talk to me a little bit about your experience coaching at Army and what that’s like and how it maybe was different from your experiences at Evansville and, and St. Louis. Just obviously because of the environment.

[01:15:30] Jim Crews: Yeah. Completely different from this standpoint. It’s fundamentally different when you recruited schools besides the academies or Certainly West Point, I can’t speak for the other one, but I’m sure it’s pretty much the same.

But in terms of the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy, but you know, it is like when you’re at a school, It’s like you kind of own the players and you’re responsible for the players. You know it’s always interesting. A pro guy gets in trouble. The coach gets in trouble with so and so plays for the Pacers or the next, the coach doesn’t get in trouble, but if they’re playing at Evansville or St. Louis or whatever school, Idaho the coach gets blamed for it. So, but the coach is responsible. So if that’s a good thing or bad, I’m not quite sure on that one. But at West Point, you do not own those players. That Academy owns those players. You borrow them. And fundamentally that is the right thing.

I think, to tell you the truth, it really is. West Point is a place where, oh, to be honest with you, I think so many schools. You always hear the thing, the saying where that’s where you find yourself. I personally think, and I’ve always thought this, I’ve always thought this, I personally think that they got invisible neon lights at most of these universities.

If not, I mean the vast majority of their definition of finding yourself as you, whatever, drink it to death, drug it to death, sex it to death, gamble to death, whatever, to death. And that’s not finding yourself, that’s losing yourself at West Point. Or you find yourself because every single thing that you do there, you have to earn it , everything.

There is not an easy point academically. There’s not an easy thing physically, because I have to do physical things. For the military part, there’s the not an easy thing in terms of responsibility because you’re going to be a leader once you’re a sophomore, junior and senior there, and you’re in control of one kid, two kids, or 15 kids in the thing you are going.

And what you find there is is just like coaches, parents, teachers, whoever. We can’t put a magic wand over anybody’s head. Jason can’t put it over those three kids head and say you’re confident. You have to earn confidence West Point, you earn confidence, you earn it, and those kids become the happiest college kids in America.

Even there’s a book, I can’t remember the book I read the first, I was there by who was really

West Point, but he’s supposed to do an article for Rolling Stone Magazine. He ends up doing a book and he ended up loving the place. Then I can’t remember the authors, this is 20 years ago, so I can’t remember, but he had a line in there. He goes, even though West Point Cadets complain in epic proportions, they’re the happiest kids in college.

And that’s right because they feel good about themselves. Cause they earn, they earn, they earn, they, they know that they’re earning it and they feel good about it. And that’s what makes West Point tremendous. It’s a leadership academy and they’re teaching kids how to be leaders and they have boundaries.

The lines are pretty straight and very clear. They’re not blurry lines and they’re not crooked lines. And I think that people need those lines and that’s what made West Point absolutely fabulous. And then you just, you get to experience things that you just don’t. Experience at other places.

I mean, I went to Iraq quite the Middle East four times with the of West Point. And you know, seeing soldiers in arm way in the zones, that’s, that’s a different experience flying on planes. Two 40 guys and girls going to war and really don’t know if they’re coming back. That’s an experience.

So those kids are great. Those kids are good. I just talked to a bunch of them a couple days ago, Have you ever been West Point, Mike?

[01:19:52] Mike Klinzing: I have not been to West Point, I have been to. And No,

[01:19:56] Jim Crews: no, no, no. I’d like to live in Annapolis, but West Point, you have to go see West Point.

[01:20:00] Mike Klinzing: And I’ve been to the Air Force Academy when we played, and when I was at Kent, we played at the Air Force Academy.

And then I actually, I have a friend who he put together these experiences and that’s why I went to the Naval Academy and also went to, went back out to the Air Force Academy. These are all within the last probably five, six years. So just to go in and be able to experience that. And again, I know West Point is obviously each of them are different, have their own personalities, but you definitely get a feel for what those academies look and feel like in terms of the discipline and just the things that are required of the students and the academic load and all those kinds of things.

You can’t help but go to, again, the two that I went to and you can’t help but walk out of. Just impressed with what you see in every way, shape, or form with the young people that you’re interacting with as you walk around that camp, those campuses, it just was, again, it kind of blows you away. Just the fact that when you think about, and you know, you mentioned it earlier, just about going and finding yourself and what we typically think of as, Hey, here’s what college students are doing and whatever, and then you look at what the people are doing at those academies, what those kids are going through and what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

And you can’t help leave those places and feel like, wow, the respect that you have for, for what those kids are doing is just, it’s incredible.

[01:21:20] Jim Crews: That’s hundred percent. I had two different guys, Mike, I had two different guys that had teenage kids that, so they, they’re living on post. You can live on, we lived on post, so it’s like a you got the.

The school part, but then there’s you’ve got the fire station, you’ve got the hospital, you’ve got the px, the grocery store you got, yeah. I mean, it’s like a little village within this post. And so anyway, I had two guys at different times say they moved there. And so I’m just talking to him and he goes, it’s, he goes, I got a teenage boy.

His pants are halfway down his rear, he is got his hat on his body language. And he goes, just being here for a couple months. He goes, all of a sudden he’s sitting up straight, his hats on straight, his pants are, and he goes, I haven’t said a, but other young guys cadets, how they’re acting. And two different people said the same story to me.

Which that’s how you’re talking about influence. Yeah. It influences a lot of people. It’s, and you. Those out of all the guys that we recruited there. Cause you have a JV team, you got a prep school team. I mean, you’re recruiting 15 guys a year to come in at 15 to 20 sometimes. I mean, it’s how much recruiting you do there.

But we only had one kid ever that was interested in the military to start. I mean, everyone’s, you go on these homes and I mean, they, they don’t know anything about this stuff. Right, exactly. But that’s, yeah. Yeah. But, but it’s, it’s the best. I think it’s the best school in the country. I really do. I I just think it’s the best school in the country because it’s teaching leadership, it’s teaching more than, and their academic load is off the chart.

And Christmas, I mean, they’re taking 20, 22 hours and you’re talking about engineering and things that I can’t even pronounce. So hey’re pretty good. They’re pretty good and fun guy and fun guys. They’re, fun. They’ve been a real joy to my life.

[01:23:22] Mike Klinzing: I can imagine. And again, those places you walk out of there, you walk on the ground and you can’t help but feel, you feel how special they are when you’re there. That’s all. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t, I don’t know that, again, they’re not, they’re not for everybody, but I think for the people that, no, for the people that they’re a good fit for, I don’t, I don’t think that there’s, you’re not going to come out of it with a, it is just, you’re going to come out of it with everything that you could ever hope for, if it’s the right place for you, let’s put it that way.

[01:23:49] Jim Crews: You just made an interesting thing at this point. It’s not for everybody. That’s how all, we always recruit every kid that way. Our place is not for everybody and we don’t want it to be for everybody. Right? Yeah, exactly. These are the standards is what we believe in. We’re not saying we’re better than, we’re just saying this is what we believe in and this is what we’re going to do and this is what we’re going to demand.

And yeah, and, and with West Point too, I mean, you, you need go up there just because, I mean, it’s beautiful up there. It’s on the Hudson River, it’s kind of in the mountains a little bit. And, but they have a saying there. The history department has a saying. The saying is, the history we teach is about the people we taught.

Nothing about that. Wow. The history we teach is about the people we talk because though all those guys, George War, Abraham Link, every president’s been through, I’m not saying they went to school there, but they’ve been through there, everything’s been through there. I mean, we’re a practice and. You know, the superintendent who’s the president, he comes to practice and he got some king from some country.

I mean, it’s like there’s the Supreme Court judge, right, the president states. There and speaks every four or every other year there basically, or every three years I think it is, speaks at graduation. So yeah, it’s a fantastic place. I loved West Point. That’s good stuff.

[01:25:11] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s, let’s finish up here. We’re going up on an hour and a half. Let’s finish up with some Rick Majerus talk. Tell me about your relationship with Coach Majerus and how you end up being his assistant at St. Louis, and then obviously with his illness and then passing away, and then you take over the job.

But just tell me a little bit about your relationship with Coach Majerus and just what made him such a special guy, such a great coach.

[01:25:31] Jim Crews: Well, I kind of met Rick early our freshman year we played Marquette in the regional down at Vanderbilt, and Rick was an assistant coach then. And then our senior year, the game I talked about earlier, down in Baton Rouge in the Final Eight or Elite eight, I guess they call it Elite Eight.

He was an assistant coach and then he would come down work camp. I never worked with him when. He worked coach nice camps, but during recruiting and everything. And because he is a big admirer of coach Knight just met him through the recruiting. So we we’d go to the Eater, we’d sit together at a thing and we just kind of and we’re kind of kind completely different guys, but he liked ball and I like ball and we just, we always kind of clicked, I don’t know, why tell you the truth and so forth.

And so and he’d come down, he’d come down to Evansville a few days when we were coaching down there and we’d just have a good time and everything. So what happened real quickly is He, I was out of coaching, we’d, we were out West Point and we’re just living down in Kentucky. And I’ll tell you one thing, it was really good a lot of guys, and this is a good thing guys will reach out when things don’t go well.

So if you get fired it doesn’t go well. So people reach out. But Rick would continue to reach out he just won a one time shot. He’d keep reaching out and say how you’re doing or ask if you need anything or invite you or he got his tickets to a Cardinal. He knew I was a Cardinal fan and so Kim, my wife and I would go up there and watch a Cardinal game and go to, anyway, he, he was great that way and so I really wasn’t looking to get back into coaching.

You know, the good Lord kind of takes you in funny place. You know, one number West Point of all the places to move. We said we’d never move east. So where, where are we? We’re out East and actually loved it. I actually loved it out east. But we we can live in the south. We out north. We live out west.

We don’t want to to go east. Well, we’re east, so I’m of coaching and don’t to it. Coaching was talking me and he’s trying get me come and I all of sudden it’s the season. Oh, it’s probably 2012, maybe 2011. One of his guys who I knew, he went to the pros and it was like three days before practice starts. So he calls me up, he goes, Hey, just come here for four months.

And he’s lying about, he’s breaks it down in the days and he’s he, he, he’s got about 30 days less than it really is. And he goes, anyway, he, he goes, just come over here and do this. He goes, just coach. And, and he goes he goes, we’re we’ll, he goes, he goes, I promise you goes, we’re going to knows I like to eat, but goes we’ll knew you’re eat so you’re goes, we’re a lot and goes, I, we’ll, pretty good.

So anyway, I go over there and I’m kind of blind man going over, I don’t know what I’m getting into, but I can take anything for four or five months I think. And go over there and it was absolutely fantastic experience working for him. He was, He was great, but it was a tough situation from his health. He had had some kind of heart issue.

He had seven bypasses when he was about 40. So now he’s 63 years old and he had some heart issue in the swimming pool. He liked to swim in August, and so he’s kind of telling me about it. And they had a foreign trip to Canada, which I did not. I wasn’t on the staff then. And they went there, but he didn’t coach.

And then he comes back and he’s talking to me about it. He goes, yeah, I’m going to get healthier here. Guy said, my doctor says I’m going to get healthier in next two or three. Well, and I go and I looked at him. I go, Rick, How many coaches do you know get healthier during the season? And he looks at me, he goes, oh, that’s a good point.

And so anyway, very quickly, the staff, which was tremendous. Jim Whites the coach at head coach at Buffalo Tanner, Bronson’s assistant at North Carolina, not North Carolina State, South Carolina right now. And Jim Pla, who is our staff, just retired. But anyway, we decided very quickly that Rick was great in practice, but he would wear out.

So we went to him and said, Rick, he goes, this is what we need to do. We think this, we want, think about this. You don’t even come into the office. Don’t even come in. He goes, we’ll take care of everything. He goes, you just be you at practice. Just be you at practice. That’s it. And he kind of bought into it.

Now he’d come in and he’d do a practice plan a little bit like noon or one sometimes, or he’d come right before. But he did that and he is a tremendous, I’ll get to heed coaches a the little bit different in some ways. But I coach group Dave the other night I said, Wells interesting. Cause Rick is a ball guy.

I mean, he talks, he ball, I mean ball. He’s a baller. He, you he’ll drive four hours here just to, well now how do you change that, that one question. So he always, in all his life, he I think he is married once for 10 months or a year or something like that. So he is been single. So he lived in a hotel.

So he goes out to eat days a year. I mean, literally days he eats out. I mean, so, so I told the other guys on the staff, I said, Hey, my wife’s not coming over here that much because I don’t know what I’m into right now, so you guys can go home. I’ll go. So Rick and I would eat five, six nights a week together all year.

Never. Mikey never talked once. And the reason I’m trying to be Dr. Phil here a little bit, but I think he, that would stress him out and he knew he could only take so much stress. Yeah. The practice and the, and it worked. He was tremendous. And the difference was interesting. Coach Knight and Rick are two just incredible teachers. I mean, I really can’t imagine any teachers better than those two. I really can’t, and I’m talking about any subject, any, I’ve had a lot of teachers, not just in sports, I’ve had a lot of, any subject. I mean, they are really, they, they knew the details. They’re both detail oriented.

They were very fundamental detail oriented. They were very team oriented everything intelligent in terms of thinking the game on the, on the, for the players to have off the chart. But as I mentioned earlier, coach, his practice would go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, from one drill to the next, drill to the next drill.

Rick was like a clinic. He would’ve two guys out there talking about, let’s say, contesting. And first of all, he’d say, I was telling Dave this the other day. I. He’d say, okay, Hey Mike and Jason, or, or no, I need two guy. I need two guys. I need, I need a guy with the ball on the wing and I need defensive. Well, maybe one of ’em, or maybe both of them wouldn’t go out there fast and he just kick, get out of here, gimme two guys that play.

Guys would sprint out there, they’d sprint. Well, the guy have a ball, and he’d be in a stance with the ball and he’d be ball strong. And the other guy would be at a, well, he wouldn’t have a ball. Let’s, let’s, it’s, and the other guy would be like, contesting like he’d be arm out, thumb down for right forearm to the, to the eyes over your shoulder ball.

See, would talk for 5, 10, 15 minutes. That guy would never get out of his stance. Never . And he would do things like Clint, like, it just wasn’t very many physical things. It was just teach and teach and teach and teach and teach. But it was not very physical and like, We might do a drill for, let’s say eight minutes at Indiana or Evan, where I coach Evansville or West Point or Coach Knight, eight minutes like it might be helping recover.

Rick would spend 40 minutes on it and then he’d go, man, that’s not enough time. Let’s go 10 more minutes on it. And so completely different format. But then one thing he would do, as I mentioned it would be opposite coach tonight. We really didn’t sprints at Indiana. Rick would have it where one of the funniest things, and this was not at St. Louis this was when I was assistant.

22 and world. So we’re in Australia, so something happens in practice and they’re kind of scrimmaging a little bit and Rick goes he goes, Marcus, that was unbelievable. He goes, the shot goes. You yell shot, you immediately go to the body and get a body on the offensive player. Then you turn, you got your elbows up, hands up.

You got your eyes on the rim, and at the right exact time you release, go get the ball. You jump, you rip the ball down. You turn halfway in the air, you hear Joe call for the ball. You give a perfect outlet. You sprint to the side and you’re 18 inches from the sideline and you’re running and looking over your inside shoulders and you come down the floor and you stop at some point.

So he goes on for five minutes telling how good this guy is and he goes, but you stopped a foot too close to the elbow. He goes, gimme 20 laps.

compliment, gimme . So they would, they’d get in shape that way, but it was, it was just amazing thing how he would do it like a clinic almost. And he couldn’t stop himself. I mean, in terms of some things, like, we’d say, okay, coach we a game in like five days. We got scrimmage once we go up and and, and.

He said, well, I’ll just go over there and sit. I said, yeah, you go over there. Because we couldn’t get across half court. Cause he’d stop and say, this guy’s, here’s here. You’re not here. So he was, he was absolutely fantastic. Like coach was. Coach Knight was in teaching, but completely opposite practices.

Completely opposite. I always heard John Cheney did it. Like Rick, I never saw Coach Cheney. Have a coach see his practice. But I always heard that he did it that way too. But that was that was a lot of fun. That was, that was a lot of fun. He was really, really, he, those players were very cerebral.

They, they knew, and Rick would do different things too. He would, he would rarely travel with the team. Rarely. He, he’d, yeah, he would just fly on a different flight. He would take a different car, take a different bus or whatever. He would rarely do that. Another thing. He would have. So the first is probably an exhibition game maybe.

So I’m the assistant coach there. Oh, Mike. And go out there and the team’s warming up. Well, first of all and I know it’s a different day and age, but I mean, they don’t even have their game jersey on. They got like t-shirts on, like those, those, whatever they call those t-shirts, you know what I’m talking about?

Those like a shooting wife beaters or whatever. And so I lasted about a game, maybe two games. Then I just, I couldn’t go out there. I just like, this is like embarrassing. I mean, they’re just, they’re, they’re, there’s nothing organized. They’re, they’re just, they’re just screwing around. Well, I do enough research and little investigation, well, I guess, I don’t know if it’s brainwashing or what, but Rick had convinced these guys throughout, he was there five years before I got there that he goes, these other teams are going to come out there and they’re going to have this they’re going to slide here and slide there, and then they’re going to have their little shot fake here and they’re going to have their little lay here and some of ’em are going to act like they’re on the, and all this.

And they’re, and he goes and just convinced that was just a of goes when they, they it up, it’s time to let’s rock roll . And I mean, it was like a, like they thought they were getting the psychological edge on these other guys. These guys are wasting their energy goes, it’s time. And they did when it’s time.

Oh, they played hard.

[01:38:24] Mike Klinzing:  You have to coach to who you are. Right. You have to coach to your

[01:38:26] Jim Crews: personality. That’s what it’s about too.  So that was fun how he did it.

[01:38:33] Mike Klinzing: That’s great stuff, Jim. We are Pat, well passed an hour and a half. This has been awesome. It’s been so much fun.

I just want to say thanks to you for, for being willing to jump on and shout out to Coach Grube

[01:38:48] Jim Crews: we’ll put them to sleep, but I’ll tell you what, you played for one of the finest. He’s one of my favorite guys.

He could coach that game. He loved ball. Tremendous teacher and really cared about the players. And I’ve met a lot of guys over the year, but he’s one of the best, I’ll tell you that. I love Vic. He’s been a, yeah,

[01:39:04] Mike Klinzing: Definitely been, definitely been a guy that you know, has had an influence on me. And like I told you in our conversation, it was great to be, for me to be able to reconnect with him recently and, and kind of get back on one another’s radar and we’ve been able to see each other a few times over the last year or two.

So that’s been, that’s been really cool and, and I’m really thankful to him for, for connecting me to you. And again, I just want to say thanks for taking the time out of your schedule and being a part of the Hooped podcast and joining us and jumping on and been, been a lot of fun. So thank you.

[01:39:30] Jim Crews: Well, I appreciate it.  I appreciate it and good luck to you and Jason. And I know Jason’s in that bed with that daughter. His, they called him, so that’s good. . That’s good stuff. Good luck to you Mike. Absolutely. Thank you. We appreciate

[01:39:43] Mike Klinzing: it. And everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.