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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Few thinks IU will be better in time

But Gonzaga coach hopes that time is after today’s contest

Gonzaga’s Mark Few has no doubt that friend and coaching counterpart Tom Crean will turn around Indiana basketball.

But Few cautions Hoosiers followers not to expect a quick fix for the rebuilding program.

“It’s a huge challenge, but they’ve got the right guy,” Few said of Crean, whose Hoosiers take on the fifth-ranked Bulldogs at 10:30 PST this morning in the first game of the Hartford Hall of Fame Showcase at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Notre Dame and Ohio State clash in the second game.

“Tom is incredibly energetic and he’s a relentless worker,” Few said. “He totally understands the culture there and how it means so much to people. I think it’s really important everyone understands where they’re at and give him some time.”

There is no coaching manual for the challenge Crean faces in his first season. He inherited a program in the NCAA doghouse for transgressions that occurred under former head coach Kelvin Sampson. Crean has two returning players from last year’s team that went 25-8 and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament. One of those two, Brett Finkelmeier, played 11 minutes and scored two points. The other, Kyle Taber, averaged just 11 minutes per game and scored a grand total of 28 points.

Of the 16 players on IU’s roster, only four had played in a Division I game prior to this season. There are seven new scholarship players, four walk-ons (including Finkelmeier) and Kipp Schutz, an outfielder on Indiana’s baseball team who was the first player off the bench in IU’s loss to No. 15 Wake Forest on Wednesday. Schutz was invited to join the team after standing out in a 3-point shooting contest against the basketball team.

“A lot of things that we’re not so good at right now we can change with better technique, with better angles, with better execution,” Crean said. “There are certain things physically we’re not going to be able to change, that’s probably pretty obvious to everyone, but the bottom line is there are things we can change.”

Indiana is 4-3, with losses by 38 to Notre Dame, 26 to Saint Joseph’s and 25 to Wake Forest. True freshman center Tom Pritchard (6-foot-9, 242 pounds) is averaging 14.1 points and 7.6 rebounds. JC transfer Devan Dumes is the second-leading scorer at 11.7.

True freshmen Nick Williams (9.6 ppg, 5.1 rebounds), Malik Story (6.4 ppg) and Verdell Jones III (8.2 ppg) are contributors. Jones missed the Wake Forest game after a nasty collision against Cornell. It wasn’t known if he will play today.

Help is on the way. Indiana’s 2009 recruiting class has been rated as high as fifth nationally.

“I know Tom very well and his teams are very hard to prepare for because they run a lot of different sets from game to game,” Few said. “We’re coming off a great weekend in Orlando, but that was last week. We start a new week and (last week) doesn’t mean much.”

Gonzaga is shooting for its first 6-0 start in Few’s decade as head coach. The Zags were 5-0 in 2006-07 before falling to Butler in the title game of the NIT. Jeremy Pargo is eight assists from passing John Stockton (554) for third on the school’s all-time list. The senior guard is averaging seven assists per game, eighth in the nation, and his 4.38 assists-to-turnover ratio is 14th nationally.

Rebounding, however, is foremost on the Bulldogs’ minds. GU was outboarded 50-26 by Tennessee in the Old Spice Classic championship.

“That’s something we’ve been inconsistent with and it showed against Tennessee,” senior guard Micah Downs said. “We were actually lucky we got away with a win getting beat that bad on the glass.”

Still, Gonzaga’s size, experience and depth should pose problems for the Hoosiers.

“There’s really not anything that doesn’t concern us,” Crean said. “They’re above average or great at every position.”