Alex Bozich 06/30/2015 4:04 pm in Media

Indiana coach Tom Crean was a guest on ESPNU’s college basketball podcast earlier today where he primarily discussed the legacy of Bo Ryan following yesterday’s news that the Wisconsin coach will retire after the 2015-2016 season.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

Crean also discussed a couple of topics pertinent to next season and here are some highlights:

On Thomas Bryant: “We’ve had four different individual workouts with him now and every time I walk out of one there, there’s something that I really didn’t realize he has. Right away, I thought, ‘We’re going to have to do a lot more with his left hand this summer,’ though his left hand is pretty good. His shooting is coming, he’s got to learn to shoot off the move, and all of a sudden, he rings off five 3s in a row the other night in drills. To me, when you’ve got someone who can space like that — and that’s what we’ve got to get to as a team, is that you’ve got to guard us in the paint, you’ve got to guard us at the 3-point line and everywhere in-between, especially in transition and in the shot clock.”

On Troy Williams: “When Troy develops a day-in, day-out ‘I’m gonna do extra’ mindset, he’s gonna play for a decade-plus at the next level because he’s gaining all the tools to go with it.”

On the offseason thus far: “We had a great spring, and obviously when Devin Davis and Hanner Perea had to leave, that wasn’t a good time. As far as an improvement time and academically, the whole deal, we had an excellent spring and we started off that way. The whole think was, ‘OK, we’ve had a great spring, now we’ve got to have an excellent summer.’ We’re in our fourth week of the offseason workouts, the freshmen are in their second full week and I think we’re going to give ourselves different opportunities.”

On how improving the defense should help the offense: “We’ve got to be a lot harder to score against, because we haven’t been. If we can improve our defense, get to the foul line even more, go through the post even more, I think it’s going to enhance our ability to shoot the ball better.”

On what he’s looking for out of next season’s team in terms of style of play: “The three-guard offense this year could be a lot more of weapon than a necessity because we’ve got to be bigger, we’ve got to be more physical, we’ve got to defend better. This league has got a lot of big threes and things of that nature. When we played against some of the more physical teams in our league, we didn’t do well, and we’ve got to be able to be a team that can play in a lot of different ways, so the more we can play two-deep, the more we can get Yogi (Ferrell) to play on and off the ball, the more we can put it in (James) Blackmon’s hands, the more that Rob Johnson continues to understand his strengths, the list goes on and on, then I think we’ll be a lot better.”

Filed to: Thomas Bryant, Tom Crean, Troy Williams