Indiana head coach Tom Crean called a postgame altercation with Michigan assistant Jeff Meyer a “professional misunderstanding,” and told reporters that he apologized to Meyer shortly after the incident took place.
Tom Crean apologizes to Michigan assistant Jerry Meyer for postgame altercation
Indiana head coach Tom Crean got into it with Michigan assistant Jerry Meyer on Sunday after the Hoosiers’ 72-71 win in Ann Arbor, an incident for which Crean said on Monday that he has apologized for.
“The one thing I want to get out of the way, because I don’t want it to take away from the game at all is a professional misunderstanding I had with coach Jeff Meyer after the game,” Crean said during Monday’s Big Ten coaches teleconference. “Later that night, on the way to the plane actually, I talked to him on the telephone. We discussed a couple things, I apologized for that.
“In retrospect, I wish I never would have addressed anything after the heat of battle in a game. But, we move on. That’s what I’ve done in that situation. End of story. Now our focus is completely on helping our team improve this week.”
During the celebration following Indiana’s 72-71 victory in Ann Arbor, Crean ran up to Meyer and began shouting, “You know what you did? You helped wreck our program. You helped wreck our program.”
The incident was captured on video by an Indianapolis ABC affiliate.
Though the NCAA cleared him of any individual wrongdoing, Meyer was an assistant at IU from 2006-08 when head coach Kelvin Sampson was caught making impermissible phone calls to recruits. The Sampson era left Indiana crippled by NCAA sanctions, at which point Crean arrived in Bloomington to pick up the pieces.
Indiana and Michigan could meet again in the semifinals of this week’s Big Ten Tournament, where the Hoosiers will be the No. 1 seed and the Wolverines the No. 5 seed.
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