It was inevitable.
Matt Crenshaw, the fifth coach for the soon-to-be-renamed IU Indianapolis Jaguars at the Division I level was terminated from his contract on March 6, 2024, sporting the worst record in program history at 14-79. Like the previous coach, the forever Interim-tagged head coach, Byron Rimm, he leaves with a losing record, as did the previous coach, Jason Gardner, who was terminated following an OWI incident (it’s a Midwestern thing for the rest of you DUI types), as did Todd Howard (who did not create Skyrim), who was sacked after back-to-back 6-win seasons… not unlike Crenshaw.
Matt Crenshaw will always remain one of IUPUI’s brightest stars in the program’s rather dismal history. He was on the team’s only NCAA Tournament appearance, his jersey number one of three that is retired, and he’s in the school’s record books. These accomplishments are those that you cannot take away. Not even George Hill was able to bring the Jaguars to the Big Dance; this is something that he was say proudly.
However, when IUPUI brought him in, there were expectations placed upon him to develop the program. Not impossible expectations, mind you. I don’t believe they were hoping to have him turn them into a 20 win team in two years or else he was going to be in front of a firing squad; this isn’t one of those blue blood institutions like UConn or Duke that have those kinds of gargantuan demands placed upon successors to the throne. This is a school that occasionally still plays out of a 1,000 seat gymnasium that is dwarfed by dozens of high school arenas in its own state. I’m surprised the LinkedIn description doesn’t say “don’t fall on your ass on television” and “bring your own tie to work.”
For each of his seasons, there was some improvement in terms of the record, but that would be like marking the achievements of a newborn learning how to breathe the moment the doctor smacked it on the behind, and when you factored in even Rimm’s filler teams, all three of Crenshaw’s squads were worse in some way.
Each of these seasons shall be looked at using the website Sports Reference as a guidebook, so you’re free to chronicle them from an analytical perspective. For the first season, I’ve allowed the acronyms to be expanded to explain what they mean outside of their website, but I’m also explaining them from a recruitment perspective as to how Crenshaw scouted his talent, which was undoubtedly a challenge if you’re at a school that, besides their announcement in 2022 with Opendorse, went “we ain’t going in any deeper than that” and, based on my first ever blog post, doesn’t exactly have opulent resources for its student body.
2021-22: The Year The Jaguars Got Hurt, a Lot
Record: 3-26 (1-16, 12th in Horizon MBB)
Points Scored/Game: 52.4 (358th of 358)
Points Allowed/G: 67.1 (114th of 358)
Simple Ratings System (Sports Reference’s way of showing whether or not a school fought all comers and slaughtered them like Mike Tyson in 1987 or tried to schedule a bunch of weak opponents and even then, struggled like Glass Joe in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!… released in 1987): -23.61 (358th of 358)
Strength Of Schedule: -6.50 (321st of 358)
Offensive Rating: 82.7 (358th of 358)
Defensive Rating: 105.9 (300th of 358)
For the 2021-22 season, you could likely consider that a wash, given that most of Rimm’s guys were likely themselves holdovers from Gardner who managed to stick it out and when Rimm himself left, Crenshaw was forced to start fresh. Unfortunately for him, this was also the season where IUPUI was so battered by injuries that the team looked more and more like a trauma unit and they ended up getting attention on social media for the first time in ages besides the school’s marble mouthed acronym. It got the attention of Sickos; people who find all sorts of fascination with the worst in sports, but also those who took pity in seeing a team struggle with insurmountable odds, and were thrilled at IUPUI’s upset of Robert Morris on the road that season.
For the team, BJ Maxwell carried the squad as a graduate transfer, albeit limited to 12.5 points per game on average. None of the other players broke 10 PPG. This is a trend that should be paid attention to considering Crenshaw’s coaching and recruitment; you’re highly unlikely to get a four star recruit going to IUPUI due to the lack of proper facilities, as the students have to train at the National Institute for Fitness & Sports, meaning they must share it with average joes and people training for the Mini Marathon all the while practicing on the old Market Square Arena court. But… you at least could get somebody, right?
Another key problem for the team was shooting efficiency. The team was ranked 349th in 3 points made, which is often what makes or breaks smaller programs. For the past few years on this blog, whenever IUPUI was previewed in weekly previews, the lack of a 3 point game was presented as a key reason why they would big underdogs. It made me wonder whether or not Crenshaw didn’t prioritize the long range, or he wasn’t recruiting players who were reliable from a distance. But even then, the team could still try to make efforts at short-range baskets, which they often failed to do; the team was dead last in points all season and only one player averaged above 10 PPG. Meanwhile, they allowed only 51.5% attempts on field goals this season; surprisingly 11th best in the country, which indicated that Crenshaw’s mindset was that defense was going to be the motivation for his squads moving forward. Well, playing defense is awesome, but not so much when you finish in last place.
2022-23: Line Goes Up
Record: 5-27 (2-18, 10th in Horizon MBB)
PS/G: 65.3 (330th of 363)
PA/G: 76.8 (338th of 363)
SRS: -19.00 (360th of 363)
SOS: -5.57 (308th of 363)
ORtg: 96.0 (338th of 363)
DRtg: 112.9 (359th of 363)
So… good news; they didn’t finish in last place! That’s a cause for celebration. Also, not once in those stats, they are dead last. That’s also worth heading on out to Walmart and purchasing a bakery set of cookies for.
But this is where the optimism dies and the realism sets in.
For starters, after the previous season’s infirmary squadron with no local talent to drive in dozens of fans (many of whom graduated, left, or in the case of Zach Gunn, too injured to leave the bench), Crenshaw was able to cobble together a handful of local players, such as Vincent Brady II out of Cathedral High School, the Amazing Talented Redshirt Jarrard Brothers, and Superglue Spokesperson Derek Petersen. Yes, Brady has been the only local guy to matter of the bunch, but his real shining star out of the recruitment drive was Jlynn Counter out of Oklahoma City, who gets 14.5 PPG to Brady’s 10.9 (Chris Osten led the team in rebounds at 5.3, for those keeping track). By nabbing this JUCO transfer, Crenshaw effectively gained a cornerstone of his roster and easily his top talent. However, on a better, more efficient team, Counter would probably struggle to get minutes, which presented once more the difficulties of landing adequate talent at a school like IUPUI which, again; is large but has awful resources for its sports.
I actually attended my first IUPUI game at the preseason warmup (yes, IUPUI actually had one that season) when they took on Brescia. The team was coached by a female coach, and not once did it look like it was close, which was probably the bar of IUPUI’s strength, sadly; they would be world beaters against NAIA opponents, but helpless against their regular, non-JUCO peers. In fact, two of their wins were against Division III schools, and they lost to a first-year Southern Indiana, though they somehow squeaked a victory out against Texas A&M Commerce, which was also in their first year of Division I transfer protocol.
I’m still relatively new at writing these blogs, so at the risk of sounding like I’m writing short stories or shaggy dog tales, I feel compelled to explain a lot about a subject matter that features a dearth of information, yet I got to address another elephant in a room filled with elephants; IUPUI’s overall performance in the Horizon League. Whenever I get back to my history of IUPUI, I have to discuss their performance in both the Mid-Continent Conference/Summit League as well as the Horizon League, and (spoiler warning), their time in the Horizon hasn’t exactly been to rave reviews. They’ve yet to win a postseason tournament game, nor have they yielded a winning season in conference play. They came close on several occasions under Gardner with back-to-back 8-10 campaigns but have yet to come remotely close; as such, this has nestled them comfortably at the bottom of the standings. It hadn’t helped matters that Crenshaw’s emphasis on defense saw them the victim of 49-, 31-, and 30-point defeats throughout the year.
2023-24: The heck happened, man?
Record: 6-26 (2-18, 10th in Horizon MBB)
PS/G: 65.9 (341st of 362)
PA/G: 79.8 (345th of 362)
SRS: -20.91 (361st of 362)
SOS: -4.22 (264th of 362)
ORtg: 95.3 (343rd of 362)
DRtg: 115.5 (359th of 362)
Ideally, under the third year of a coach, you expect exponential growth with the players that you hand-selected and fostered development, yet… that didn’t happen under Crenshaw. Even with the removal of Hartford from the equation, IUPUI went down on Points Scored per Game while allowing more points. IUPUI was always going to have a chicken schedule and even then, they struggled with that, given they scheduled three non-Division I opponents: nearly losing to Cleary University in overtime. The NCAA strongly frowns upon excessive non-D1 opponents, as they don’t count towards NET rankings; this meant IUPUI finished 361st out of 362 teams this season, with only one win Mississippi Valley State being behind them.
What also crumbled was our scoring. Bryce Monroe was brought in as our newest recruit, but he only managed a 11.0 PPG average while Vincent Brady stepped back a bit due to injuries, going under the 10-point average. The fact that nobody was able to go towards a 15-point average while 9 other Horizon League schools had at least one player average that is telling. I’m not demanding a blind shooting bonanza, but when your point totals go from 14 to 11 and then nobody comes close after that, you have to raise some red flags, especially given how paltry rebounds and assists were. Not to mention the team finished dead last in 3 points made per game.
Weaksauce scheduling and tossing bricks aside, another foible developed this season, which was the dilution of team chemistry. In 2022, the problem was injuries. In 2023, the problem was the team wasn’t talented. In 2024, the problem, at least I can ascertain, was… the team just wasn’t motivated anymore. You can only take so many beatings until morale doesn’t improve in spite of them, and Crenshaw was unable to develop the fortitude to guide his young prospects through the turbulent periods where every night, they had to come to an empty Coliseum in front of an indifferent audience and lose by 20.
It’s very difficult for a coach to be in this kind of position to be thrown to the wolves by a school that offers little money, practically no resources, and unless they announce sweeping changes with the rebranding, has the athletes share a facility with people who are recovering from knee replacement surgery, and on the blog’s Discord, I do occasionally adopt a position of being a smart aleck towards the program. Yet, I also am quite rational and human about the challenges this program faces.
I just know that… whoever comes in, there’s just one number that has to hang over them, and that’s “14,” which is the number of victories necessary. As long as they can pass that number during their time at IUPUI, they’ll know they aren’t the worst coach in program history.
… preferably in one season.
