“We are not going to be overwhelmed by the challenges, we are going to have to embrace them,” Crean said at a news conference Wednesday.

Crean served on MSU’s basketball staff from 1995-99, and was associate head coach for his final two seasons, including during the team’s 1999 trip to the Final Four. As MSU’s recruiting coordinator, Crean played a key role in bringing former Spartans Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson to MSU.

MSU head coach Tom Izzo said Indiana made a terrific choice with Crean.

“Tom Crean is one of the great young coaches in the country and did an incredible job at Marquette, going to a Final Four and establishing it as one of the top programs in the Big East,” Izzo said. “He’s been in the Big Ten and understands how important the basketball program is to the university and its fans. He will fit in very well at Indiana and continue their great basketball tradition.”

At his conference, Crean held a T-shirt that read “Crean & Crimson,” a play on the team’s colors of cream and crimson.

He will try to restore the reputation of a team that changed coaches three times since Bob Knight’s firing in 2000.

He acknowledged it won’t be a quick fix.

“We need everyone to understand that this is going to take some time,” he said.

The university seems ready to give him time — an eight-year contract — with an average salary of more than $2 million.

Crean grew up a Hoosiers fan and attended one of Knight’s clinics as a boy. He embraces the university’s basketball tradition.

“It’s Indiana,” he said.

“That is the bottom line, that is the premise that we are going to work under here.”

Crean was 190-96 in nine seasons at Marquette and led the Golden Eagles to an NCAA Final Four appearance in 2003.

He accepted the Hoosiers job Tuesday, jumping into the tumultuous environment of player dissatisfaction and uncertain future because of possible NCAA sanctions that occurred before Sampson’s resignation. Last season was one of the darkest in Hoosiers history, despite their 25-8 record.

The Hoosiers’ promising start got lost in the undercurrent of Sampson’s phone-call scandal, which led to NCAA allegations of five major infractions and his Feb. 22 resignation.

It got even worse.

Six players skipped interim coach Dan Dakich’s first practice and there was the threat of a player boycott. When that didn’t happen, the Hoosiers lost their zeal to play, dropping four of their last seven games, including a first-round game to Arkansas in the NCAA Tournament.