• Thomas Aaron Crean, born in 1966 in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, is a basketball coach
• Currently head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs
• Inherited his interest in sports from his father, head coach of the basketball team at Western Kentucky University
• Worked as assistant coach at several universities, also head coach at Marquette University and Indiana University
• Named "National Coach of the Year" by ESPN in 2012, received the "Distinguished Alumni Award" in 2018

Who is Tom Crean?

Thomas Aaron Crean was born in Mount Pleasant, Michigan USA on 25 March 1966, under the zodiac sign of Aries. He is best known for his career of a basketball coach, and is currently head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs. You can say that he inherited his interest in sports from his father, who was head coach of the basketball team of Western Kentucky University. He has two older brothers named Jim and John. He graduated from Central Michigan University in 1989.

Personal life

Crean is a loyal husband to his wife Joani. He met her while he was working as assistant coach at WKU, when Ron Burns introduced the two at a gym where Joani was working as an aerobics instructor. Crean claims that he fell in love with her as soon as he saw her. The couple started dating almost instantly, and married a year later. Megan, Ainsley and Riley are their children.

Crean is working with a couple of charitable institutions in the US, mostly raising funds for handicapped children.

Career as assistant coach

Crean started playing basketball in his high school, for four years, and even then knew that he didn’t really want to play but to teach. He became coach’s assistant at his University, and that marked the beginning of his career.

He stayed as assistant coach of Michigan State University for two seasons, after which he switched to being assistant coach at Western Kentucky University, where he stayed for four years. Even though he was supposed to become head coach after Williard went to Pittsburgh to coach there, Crean decided to go with him and worked as his assistant for an additional year.

He left Pittsburgh in 1995 to be assistant coach at Michigan University. For the four years during which Tom worked there, his team’s total win count increased for which he took all the credit. He was honored in 2000 with the National Championship ring for those achievements, even though he had already moved on.

Moving on to being head coach

He first became head coach in 1999 at Marquette University, a place where he wanted to be because he thought this school was really focused on basketball. Immediately upon his arrival, he made some drastic changes, and the first class which he recruited was among the best twenty in the country, which was the first time it happened at Marquette.

He stayed at Marquette for nine years, during which he earned five NCAA Tournaments bids, reaching the 2003 quarter-finals. What’s amazing is that four other Marquette coaches together won one less bid than Crean in the 16 years before he became coach. Crean can be credited for the success of some of your favorite basketball players, including Dwyane Wade and Steve Novak.

After his huge success at Marquette, he was hired to be head coach of the basketball team called Indiana Hoosiers at Indiana University. Crean had some trouble during the first three seasons as he had constant losing records which happened to be the worst results in this school’s history, however, it seemed that everything that Clean did was worth it and it paid off during the 2011-2012 season; he was the first Indiana Coach to defeat the teams ranked number one and two, and  got to sweet 16 but lost in the fourth round to Kentucky, who actually won the championship.

Even though he had some amazing years with Indiana as they won their first Big Ten regular season title for the first time in 20 year, and also got a number one seed in the NCAA tournament (again for the first time in 20 years), Clean was fired on 16 March 2017 because his team missed the NCAA tournament five times in the nine years he was their head coach. Since March 2018, he has been working as the Georgia Bulldogs’ head coach.

A great day before Christmas experience at ⁦@BestBuy⁩ in Athens. Thanks to Marcus, a huge Dawg fan , for all the help. pic.twitter.com/uGvipZoNyz

— Tom Crean (@TomCrean) December 24, 2018

Appearance and net worth

Even though he is 53 years old, he is still looking well thanks to being physically active. Tom has short black hair and black eyes, but wears glasses. He is 5ft 8ins (1.73m) tall and weighs around 154lbs (70kg).

According to authoritative sources, Tom has an estimated net worth of over $9 million. In his current job, he makes about $3 million per year.

Trivia

He is currently living in Bloomington, where his house has several pools, saunas, kitchens and of course, a basketball court in the back of his house. There was another Tom Crean who was an explorer – people tend to mix these two. This Tom was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer, who died from an infection after an appendectomy. Fun fact – even though he is no longer working for the state of Indiana, he is still the highest paid state employee there as he made about $3.1 million in 2017 which made him the eighth highest paid basketball coach in Indiana. He is current contract at Georgia, is worth $3.2 million per year six years.

‘Tom Crean is one of the most successful coaches in college basketball over the past two decades” – Greg McGarity, UGA’s J. Crean coached eight players who have ultimately won All-America honors. In 2012, Tom was named “The national coach of the year” by ESPN. He also received the “Distinguished Alumni Award” in September, 2018. An unknown perpetrator edited Tom’s Wiki page and wrote how Tom is going to replace Rick Pitino, the fired coach of the University of Louisville, but this was soon fixed. He has a Twitter account with 10,000 tweets and 165,000 followers.