I’d like to think that I know a thing or two about Tom Crean.

My opinion has nothing to do with what fans or talking heads tweeted after it was reported that Crean would be Georgia’s next basketball coach. My opinion isn’t even based on what I saw from Crean as a remarkable ESPN analyst for the last year.

My connection to the new Georgia coach dates back much farther than that. It goes all the way back to 2008 when I was a college freshman who arrived the Indiana University campus excited for the new era of Hoosier basketball. Crean began at Indiana when I did. Needless to say, his arrival brought a bit more hype than mine.

Crean has gone to the NCAA Tournament 9 times as a head coach, including a trip to the Final Four in 2003.

Crean was billed as the savior after Kelvin Sampson-era sanctions dismantled the proud program. For IU students, fans and media members, it seemed like a pretty cut and dry thing. Crean was the high-energy, Diet Coke-guzzling maniac of a coach who was going to bring IU back to its rightful place atop the college basketball world.

Fast forward to today when Georgia fans were thrilled to have arguably their most accomplished coach in program history. They had every right to be thrilled. Crean did save Indiana from being a doormat, and he was as respected as any coach on the market.

Naturally, I saw some Georgia fans on Twitter who wanted to know what they were getting in their new coach, who hasn’t lived south of the Mason-Dixon line since he was an assistant at Western Kentucky in the early 1990s. I’d tell Georgia fans that they got the right man for the job.

But that’s just the short version of it. One tweet is far too brief to describe Crean.

As a former Indiana beat reporter tweeted last night, “call me and pour a drink. 280 ain’t gonna cut it.”

Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

For 9 of the past 10 years of my life, I experienced Crean in a variety of phases. From 2008-11, I was the student season-ticket holder who was sold on Crean’s politician-like way of promoting progress. Believe me, there was plenty of selling to do after he started off 24-66.

During the 2011-12 season, I was the media member who covered Crean and dealt with him on almost a daily basis. I was sitting behind the south basket on press row when Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer took down No. 1 Kentucky. I was the student newspaper reporter who Crean would cut off mid-question because he either didn’t like the direction it was going, or he wanted to show that he was the smartest guy in the room.

Crean, in my opinion, struggled with that a lot at a blue blood program like Indiana. In every dealing I ever had with him, I always felt like he was trying to prove that he belonged. In a state that knows hoops like the clergy knows the Bible — “in 49 states it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana” — Crean was so defensive any time his decision-making was ever in question.

From 2012-17, I went back to just being a fan of Indiana basketball albeit with a different perspective as an alum. I watched Crean assemble the preseason No. 1 team in America in 2012-13. He built a roster with future top-5 NBA draft picks like Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller, as well as experienced seniors like Jordan Hulls and Watford. I then watched Crean’s No. 1-seeded Hoosiers act like Syracuse’s historic zone was a stunning revelation, and ultimately they were ousted in the Sweet 16.

As I learned the past 10 years, for every argument in Crean’s favor, there’s one against him.

That 2012-13 team ended up being a demerit against Crean, yet it took a whale of a recruiting battle to land Zeller while Oladipo was his diamond in the rough (get ready to hear a TON of Oladipo and Dwyane Wade stories, Georgia fans).

Crean’s 2012 recruiting class was supposed to be the best in Indiana history. Instead, only one player from that group graduated from IU. One of the players in that class was Peter Jurkin, a promising 7-footer who struggled with injuries in his first two seasons. When Jurkin returned to campus for his junior year, Crean tried to convince him to be a manager (Jurkin recently detailed that encounter in a story with The Athletic).

It’s funny because whenever a media member asked Crean about a possible shortage of scholarships, he would say “these things tend to work themselves out.” He was notorious for things like that, or waiting 45 minutes after a game ended to talk with the media after a loss. Those who didn’t like Crean would often reference stories like that as to why he was slimy and untrustworthy.

Those who knew the other side of Crean would reference how he would buy food for random homeless people at a nearby McDonald’s. There was the time that Crean helped pull a random student’s car out of a snow-filled ditch after he was stranded. Crean’s random acts of kindness, as the Indianapolis Star’s Zach Osterman wrote, were mostly documented after he was fired at Indiana in 2017. And in the rare instance when Crean was asked about those instances publicly during his time at Indiana, he didn’t want to talk about them.

Georgia hasn't been to the Final Four since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

I believe that Georgia got a good man in Crean. I believe they got someone who, over the years, learned how to mellow. Perhaps he finally learned how to deal with the pressure. Including his days at Marquette, Crean spent 18 years as the head coach of the top revenue-driving sport on campus.

That’ll be a different story at Georgia. I think that could actually benefit Crean. The spotlight on Georgia basketball is much smaller than the one that burned him out at Indiana. Crean shouldn’t feel the same pressure to prove that he’s the smartest guy in the room.

Watching Crean’s development as an analyst the last year, I did believe he was the smartest guy in the room. He can break down a team and an in-game situation like few I’ve seen. ESPN certainly was sad to see him go.

I’m still not convinced that Crean’s game-planning is at an elite level (it’s really hard to forget how lost that 2013 squad looked with 5 days to prepare for that Sweet 16 matchup against Syracuse’s zone). I’m also still not convinced that Crean knows how to use his timeouts or that he can make defensive adjustments.

But I am convinced that he was the perfect guy for Georgia to hire. I’m convinced that year off will give him the energy he needs to attack this job and help change the national narrative about Bulldogs hoops. I’m also convinced that he’s going to do great things in the Athens community, some of which you’ll hear about and some of which you won’t.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out. Maybe Crean can do what Rick Barnes did at Tennessee. Perhaps in a few years, we’ll be talking about Georgia as having the top football-basketball combination in the country. That’s setting the bar high, but that’s what Crean does.

If I learned one thing about the complicated ways of Crean the last 10 years, that’s it. His passion is undeniable. He’ll be relentless — and also stubborn — in his pursuit of greatness.

Something tells me that 280 characters won’t be enough to sum up the next chapter of Crean’s coaching journey.

And it’ll definitely take more than one drink.