Tom Crean has finally had it. He is mad as hell, and he is not going to take it anymore.

After watching a half dozen of his players get in some sort of legal trouble, and seeing one land in the hospital in serious condition, Crean is ready to lay down the law.

Sort of.

In a public address on Wednesday, Crean spent nearly an hour responding to questions about his ability to maintain a sense of control over his players. Without offering any specifics, he promised that he would be tougher and things would change.

"Sterner sometimes means we've got to take more away,” he said. “We've got to bring more to this that gets their attention. Sterner is how do we get their attention and how do we get it again, again and again? People can define it as you have to do this, you have to do that.”

The big question on many IU fans' and boosters’ minds is what “this” and “that” might be, exactly.

Since last winter, six Hoosiers have found themselves in trouble. In February, Hanner Mosquera-Perea was arrested on drunken driving charges. Then in April, Yogi Ferrell and Stanford Robinson were cited for illegal consumption of alcohol. Each of them entered a pretrial diversion program in September.

Earlier this week, news broke that Devin Davis was hospitalized with a serious head injury after being struck by a vehicle driven by teammate Emmitt Holt. Both players had been drinking, and Davis was later found to have been at fault. Holt was suspended by Crean for four games.

On Tuesday, Indiana announced that Robinson and Troy Williams were also suspended four games each. A source later revealed that both players had failed drug tests.

All of these occurrences led several Indians Basketball alumni, and a large battery of fans, to chime in on the lack of respect towards Hoosier Nation.

Former Indiana player and coach Dan Dakich laid the wood on Crean and the IU hoops program on his radio show Monday morning.

"Indiana fans, you stand for nothing," He said. "I'm so tired of hearing boys will be boys. I'm so tired of hearing, 'Well kids make mistakes.' No they don't. Not when they care about their program. Not when they care about being a basketball player more than anything else...These guys [Holt and Davis] decide it's more important to go out drinking than prepare for a scrimmage and compete for a job. Indiana basketball stands for nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Gregg Doyel, columnist for the Indy Star, has even called for Crean to resign to save the face of this once proud program.

“This isn't a problem. This is an epidemic. And it falls on Crean,” Doyel wrote on Tuesday. “One, he recruited these guys...Two, he's now their coach. Not their father, but something close to a father figure. As close as it gets on a college campus, honestly. He's their leader, mentor, role model. Or he should be. And if he's not? He's doing something wrong.”

Despite the harsh criticism, Crean’s job seems to be safe. For now. Indiana AD Fred Glass is giving him his full support.

"People are upset about it," Glass told the Indy Star. "I'm upset about it. I understand it. I'm upset about it. I don't like it. Tom doesn't like it. But I'm confident Tom is the solution, not even part of the problem."

For the time being, Crean is saying all of the expected things.

“We're going to continue to do everything we can do to get decision-making to improve, to get immaturity to become maturity,” he said. “Does that mean everybody's gonna make it here? Maybe not.

"The next stories that might be getting done now might be that he's a dictator and he's no fun to play with and anonymous sources that say he doesn't let us do this, he doesn't let us do that. I'd much rather deal with that than I would have to look at parents like I did the other night. We need to make the changes and make them better, make them sterner."

However, despite the largely canned rhetoric, Crean is facing a stark reality check that boils down to one word: winning.

It stands to reason that if he cannot compile victories with the Hoosiers, his days in Bloomington will be over. Considering that over the last two season Indiana has lost several players to either the NBA draft, transfers, or just plain quitting, this year’s squad would have struggled to keep up in the Big Ten.

Now with the four-game suspensions of Holt, Robinson, and Williams, and the likelihood of Davis being out long term, Indiana will be even more hard pressed to field a competitive team.

As a result, much Crean’s talk of being tougher on his troops falls on deaf ears when this point is considered: The four-game suspensions include two exhibition games and IU’s first two regular season contests against Mississippi Valley State and Texas Southern, both at home. It is comparable to grounding a child from playing four video games he does not like.

Conveniently, Crean’s roster will be mostly intact when nationally ranked SMU visits Assembly Hall in late November.

The message from Crean: We will be tough on our players at Indiana - unless there is a marquee game on our schedule.

Coming off a 17-15 record last season, Crean was likely fighting to keep his job at Indiana anyway. Recent events with his players seem to indicate that he is quite possibly less concerned about their health and more about his own backside.

Well, now, it appears that both are on the line.