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Last updated on Sunday, August 5, 2012
(INDIANAPOLIS) - IU’s Tom Crean had the twittersphere buzzing Friday with a strange tweet he claims was meant as a private message to a recruit.
The IU basketball coach and avid tweeter sent a cryptic message Friday afternoon to his 81,000 followers -- "I am doing great. I have been thinking about you alot since last weekend. A whole lot. How are you doing?"
The tweet was quickly deleted and followed up by two messages meant to quell any rumors.
"Sorry. That was to a new recruit. Wish I could tell you who. Sent it by mistake. Don't panic. Lol," he tweeted. "My wife and daughter are laughing at my lack of ability to use technology. Sorry purdue fans, it's not what you want to think."
College coaches are allowed to message recruits on Twitter, but they can't interact with them on the service's public feed.
News of Crean's foul-up quickly spread online, drawing questions from the blogosphere.
"Basically, Tom Crean either got caught cyber flirting with someone or he is the creepiest recruiter of all-time. Honestly, I hope it's the former," wrote Mike Rutherford, the college basketball editor at SBNation.com.
Jeff Eisenberg, a college basketball blogger for Yahoo! Sports, noted that last weekend marked the end of the July evaluation period, but still called the post "creepy."
"I fully believe this was a note from Crean to a recruit," he wrote. "(But) what coach tells a 16-year-old boy he's been thinking about him a whole lot? If I were the unnamed prospect in question, that would be unnerving to say the least."
Crean is married to Joani Harbaugh, the daughter of Jack Harbaugh, who was the head football coach at Western Kentucky University when Crean was an assistant basketball coach there. Her brothers are John and Jim Harbaugh, the first pair of sibling head coaches in NFL history.
Crean and his wife have three daughters.
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