The athletic director of West Virginia University has not contacted Jim Crutchfield, and Crutchfield doesn’t care.
That’s because the eighth-year head coach of the Nova Southeastern basketball team is scheduled to battle Assumption University in the NCAA Division II Elite 8 tournament this evening at 7 p.m. in Evansville, Ind. Crutchfield’s squad has posted yet another impressive record (33-1) and is back in the Elite 8 for the fifth time since he was hired in 2017.
UPDATE: Crutchfield and the Sharks defeated Assumption, 102-93, to advance to the Final Four.
Following a 2022-23 undefeated regular season, “Coach Crutch” and his Sharks were national champions, a crown he sought for 13 years at West Liberty University on his way to a 359-61 record as a Hilltopper. But even though Crutchfield possesses the highest winning percentage among coaches on any level in NCAA history, WVU AD Wren Baker has yet to dial his digits.
“I have not been contacted about the WVU basketball job, and I doubt I’m even a candidate, but I am 100 percent sure this style of play would work at West Virginia just like it would work anywhere. But you need the horses,” Crutchfield said. “You need the guys to make it work like we had at West Liberty and like I now have here at Nova. If you have the players, the style of play would work anywhere.
“But I’ve not talked with anyone from Morgantown. I’ve been focusing only on Assumption and what they do on a basketball court,” he said. “If we get to the Final Four, the same will be true about the next opponent.”
Crutchfield explains his selected system is based on effort and intensity, and it’s not just about full-court pressing the entire game.
“What we do here at Nova is absolutely the same thing we did at West Liberty. Zero change. The system I coach here is exactly the same as what we used at West Liberty, but there was a day when I realized I had coached at only one place, and I thought it would be interesting to try this system somewhere else,” Crutchfield explained. “So, that’s what I did. I wanted to go to a program that was losing to see if I could turn it around. I wanted to see if that system could work here, and it sure has worked here at Nova.
“This is our fifth straight Elite Eight, and we’ve been to two championship games, so it is working here,” he said. “You have to have the players who will work harder on a basketball court than they ever have, and we had those players at West Liberty, and we’ve had them here at Nova, too.”
Familiar Faces
Along with Assumption and Crutchfield’s Nova Southeastern squad, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Dallas Baptist, Lake Superior State, Lenoir-Rhyne, Washburn, and a team named West Liberty all advanced to the D-II Elite 8 inside the Ford Center, and the #2 seed Hilltoppers faced off against #7 Cal State Dom. Hills and were defeated 86-84.
“It’s so good to see West Liberty here. They just keep winning, and they keep scoring a ton of points because they work hard under (coach) Ben (Howlett). I love it,” Crutchfield said before the ‘Toppers’ season-ending defeat. “They’re out-working people out; out-hustling people, and they’re pressing and doing what they do best, and that’s why they’re here. Ben and I implemented that program when I was at West Liberty, and he played in it as a player (2005-09) and was a leader on those teams.
“That’s why their continued success hasn’t surprised me,” he said. “Ben is one of the rare guys who played in the system first before coaching it. It’s suited him well as a player and as a coach, and I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s a terrific coach and an even better person, and I hope they do well here (in Evansville). I’d love to play them in the Finals. That’d be classic for sure.”
Crutchfield’s Sharks are exactly what one would expect. They full-court press often, they shoot very well, they were a conference leader in both offensive and defensive rebounding, and Nova has shot 52 percent from the field and .365 from three-point range this season.
“Statistically, we finished as the number one team in the country, and we only dropped one game back in January to a team in our conference,” Crutchfield explained. “Our (Sunshine State) conference is a really strong conference every year, and we played a lot of great teams during the course of our season that got us ready for where we are now. But all it takes is a bad shooting day for bad things to happen.
“If we shoot well, we can play with anyone, and we’ve proven that here at Nova,” he said. “We’re the number one in the tournament, and we’ve had the largest margin of victory (23.3 points) after a couple of players returned from last year, and we got a couple of players through the portal. And here we are again,n and we feel we have a shot to win this.
“But I’m sure the other seven teams that are here feel the same way.”
