BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The last time Mike Woodson saw his mentor, he barely recognized him.
The setting, at least, was like a scene out of the wayback machine: Bob Knight sat squarely on the sideline inside Assembly Hall. Balls bounced. Whistles blew. And high above the northern baseline, Indiana’s five national championship banners — the last three of which Knight hung during his 29-year tenure — cast long shadows across the court, and what otherwise was an ordinary preseason practice.
Only, it wasn’t ordinary.
Because the man Woodson saw that afternoon died weeks later, on Nov. 1, 2023. Lost to Alzheimer’s. Gone was the polarizing patriarch who lifted the Hoosiers to college hoops’ highest heights — and whose infamous ire eventually cost him his job.
“He would come over and sit in practice,” Woodson remembers, “and didn’t realize the banners that he had hung in Assembly Hall. That was the sad part about his decline.”
Woodson’s return to his alma mater in 2021 helped mend bitter divisions from the Knight era, but by then, his mentor was already too far gone to offer much advice. Woodson, 66, said he wishes that wasn’t the case. But it was — and now, midway through his fourth season leading the Hoosiers, Woodson finds himself in the same position as every other post-Knight coach at Indiana: still searching for answers.
Here’s the cream-and-crimson reality: It has been 37 years since Indiana, and Knight, last won the national championship. Ever since Knight was unceremoniously fired 24 years ago, on the eve of the 2000 season, the Hoosiers have seen five coaches come and go, none of them permanently restoring the program to college basketball’s penthouse.
Mike Woodson’s fourth season has already hit some bumps against higher level competition. (Rich Janzaruk / Herald-Times / USA Today via Imagn Images)
Indiana missed the NCAA Tournament last season in Woodson’s third campaign, inspiring doubt both in Bloomington and beyond. And despite an offseason roster makeover, the Hoosiers were practically run off the hardwood in the Battle 4 Atlantis, their first showing this season against quality competition. Entering Big Ten play on Monday, IU sits at 7-2 overall, but that record is surface-level. Not only does Woodson’s team struggle with the subjective eye test, but it sits outside KenPom’s top 40, with no wins over expected NCAA Tournament teams, and is still reeling from consecutive double-digit defeats in the Bahamas.
Woodson’s team is talented enough to salvage the season. But in what is basically a make-or-break campaign, are the Hoosiers simply destined to climb back on the coaching carousel next spring?
“He figured it out,” Woodson said before the season of Knight. “All the other coaches that have come through — even myself — we’re still trying.”
Woodson’s tenure started out respectably: consecutive NCAA Tournament berths his first two seasons — the program’s first back-to-back trips since 2015-16 — and two NBA Draft picks. But one win combined in those appearances is not what Hoosiers fans get up for.
And then came last season. Train fully off the tracks. Injuries. Not enough depth. A team-wide allergy to free throws. (Indiana was 333rd nationally from the charity stripe.) Definitely not enough 3-pointers. Put it all together, and you get a team that started the calendar year 4-10, with all but one of those losses by at least nine points.
Whispers about Woodson’s job security grew progressively louder. After Indiana beat Michigan State in its regular-season finale, even Spartans coach Tom Izzo chimed in: “Somebody’s got to stick up for him coming back next year? What a joke.” Athletic director Scott Dolson, an IU student manager in the mid-1980s, said he never considered making a change, but he also didn’t want to set the precedent of commenting publicly about his coaches after every down season.
“I feel like if you respond every time someone has a negative question,” Dolson said, “if there’s some point you don’t respond, then people can twist everything you say.”
Even a five-game winning streak into the Big Ten tournament wasn’t enough to pull the Hoosiers out of the deep hole they dug. Financially, it behooved Indiana to bring Woodson back; he was also only halfway through his six-year contract, with a roughly $12.6 million buyout. It has since decreased to about $8.4 million, should the Hoosiers move on after this season.
Woodson ignored the noise and focused on his job: specifically, retooling his team.
“I made it clear to the players once we didn’t make the tournament,” he said, “that changes had to be made.”
Some were made for him. Three of Indiana’s top seven minutes-getters, including center Kel’el Ware, who was drafted 15th by the Miami Heat, left in the offseason. Others could have followed, but Woodson crucially retained the likes of top-scorer Malik Reneau and Mackenzie Mgbako, his top-ranked recruit. But more reinforcements were necessary.
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One of the reasons Dolson initially hired Woodson — considered an “out of left field” move by some in the basketball industry — was because of his pro experience, as head coach of both the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks. And while the college game still differs dramatically from the NBA, the infrastructure required for success in either increasingly looks the same. In the pros, Woodson was forced to self-scout his team’s deficiencies, build a big board for free agency, sift through the pool of draft-eligible players — and then fill holes as best he could. Pure talent evaluation was never his issue. Woodson drafted Josh Smith and Marvin Williams, Al Horford and Tim Hardaway Jr.: all longtime NBA difference-makers he bet on before they blossomed.
“His NBA experience,” Dolson said of the team’s offseason strategy, “was really, really helpful.”
So Woodson tapped back into that mindset (and IU’s deep NIL coffers), with a particular priority on adding backcourt talent. Two portal prospects immediately stood out: Washington State guard Myles Rice, and Stanford guard Kanaan Carlyle.
Rice was the 6-foot-3 point Woodson knew he needed, a table-setter who could also score. As a freshman last season, Rice posted the Pac-12’s fifth-best assist rate and led Wazzu to its first NCAA Tournament in 16 years. Then there was Carlyle, a combo who shot 37.8 percent on spot-up 3s, per Synergy, and whose KenPom comparison for his freshman season was Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star Darius Garland.
Their connection to IU? Associate head coach Yasir Rosemond, originally from the Atlanta area. Rice played AAU ball with the Atlanta Celtics, and Carlyle — originally from Milton, 30 miles north of Atlanta — spent his senior year of high school at Overtime Elite, right downtown.
“(Rosemond) called me as soon as I got in the portal,” Carlyle said, “so it was kind of like, yeah, OK, I want to see where this goes.”
Then there was Oumar Ballo, who Woodson acknowledged “we just kind of stumbled on.” It didn’t seem like Ballo, who averaged a double-double at Arizona last season, would end up in Bloomington. Woodson was at the Final Four in Phoenix when Ballo officially entered his name into the portal and volunteered to drive to Tucson to meet the big man … but was told not to.
“So I just told him, hey, man, before you make a decision,” Woodson remembers, “give us a shot. Come to Indiana and see what it’s all about.”
Ballo obliged, paid a visit and never left. Through nine games, the 7-footer is averaging a team-best 9.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game, plus 12.7 points.
From a sheer talent perspective, all three ranked among The Athletic’s top-50 best available transfers. But none arrived with much — if any — understanding of Indiana’s history.
And that was perfectly OK.
“The most I knew about it,” Rice acknowledged, “was probably Victor Oladipo, and the shot — I can’t remember his name (Christian Watford), but he hit it against Kentucky.”
Inside Indiana’s locker room, Rice paused for a second, and tapped his red-and-white fingernails on a countertop.
“Oh yeah. They told me I’ve got to watch the movie ‘Hoosiers,’” he added. “I still haven’t watched it yet, but I’ve gotta lock in.”
The best indication of how long it’s been since Indiana was an established basketball power?
The unthinkable happened: IU became a football school.
In Curt Cignetti’s first season in Bloomington, he led the Hoosiers to their first 10-0 start in program history. And despite a lopsided loss to Ohio State that buffed off some of the shine, on Sunday, IU officially made the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff as the 10-seed. Indiana will play in-state blue blood Notre Dame in the first round.
“As football rises, as women’s basketball (rises),” Dolson said, “the rising tide rises all boats, right? So I believe in that, the culture of winning.”
Dolson’s not wrong. But oh, the irony. The relative standing of Indiana’s two most profitable programs was never supposed to invert like this. Inside his office overlooking Memorial Stadium, Dolson was asked about IU’s hoops history and how the school tries to balance its prestigious past with the present day. He said student-athletes aren’t going to show up just to wear the jersey like they used to.
“We are extremely proud of our history, really proud of it, and we want to build on it,” Dolson said. “But it’s balancing that it’s a new day, as well, and we can’t live in the past.”
Dolson has a unique perspective there. His freshman year at IU ended in 1985 — exactly two decades after Branch McCracken, who led the Hoosiers to their first two national titles, retired. But as a student, Dolson didn’t have the same reverence for McCracken’s era as he does now.
“I’d think that was, like, with James Naismith,” Dolson joked. “Those are black-and-white pictures, olden days.”
He paused. Mental math. Then the realization.
“Bob Knight’s been gone longer than Branch McCracken was when I started here. So I do kind of relate to that,” Dolson said. “That’s what (players today) think about the Bob Knight years.”
What does that say about Woodson, then, the walking embodiment of that era? He arrived at Indiana the year after Knight’s undefeated 1975-76 season — the last such campaign in college basketball history — and the Hoosiers won it all again immediately after he graduated. “I sweated and slept and ate this s— for four years, man,” Woodson said. “I remember the good times.”
But therein lies Indiana’s plight: How long has it been since “the good times” were anything but a memory? Woodson’s players have surely been given a crash course on the program’s prior peaks, but those might as well be ancient fables to a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings. Even as outside witnesses, they haven’t seen any such highlights in their lifetimes. IU has had its moments — a surprise run to the national championship game in 2002, under former Knight assistant Mike Davis; the Wat Shot in 2011; a No. 1 seed and Big Ten title in 2013, and another conference championship three years later — but all were fleeting.
Dolson hopes that Woodson is the answer: the “bridge” from IU’s past to future. Someone who can modernize the older generation’s rosy memories, and create new ones for the latest crop of faithful Hoosiers.
“Media people, they might point at the money and all of that, but s—, I’ve always made money. It was never money-driven,” Woodson said of why he returned in the first place. “It was the fact that I spent four of my years here, under who I think was one of the greatest coaches who ever graced the college floor. … I have no hidden agendas. I’m trying to get IU back on top.”
The whiteboard was a mess of scribbles, different colored lists hugging the edges and corners.
Except for the center. That was blank. Totally untouched. Woodson’s non-negotiable workspace.
“They think I’m a mad scientist,” Woodson joked, grabbing a green marker. “This is what I love. … All I know, really.”
Then the diagramming began. A cut here, pivot there, then a back screen. A lob pass at the end of all the actions served as the exclamation point. Woodson stared at the set for a second, before re-capping the marker and copying it all onto a sheet of paper. He planned to test the play in practice later, and if it worked, maybe it would wind up in his offensive “book,” the literal paper file of notes and schemes Woodson has amassed from all his previous coaching stops.
If this is the season Woodson, and Indiana, finally figure it out — and eventually emerge as the barometer in a supersized Big Ten — then moments like this will be why: because they’re predicated on basketball, first and foremost.
History, and some outdated sense of what the program should be, have bogged Indiana down for 24 years now, the program perpetually spinning in a post-Knight hamster wheel. And while IU has finally put on blinders and drilled down on its on-court product, that sentiment does not guarantee success.
Nor does it guarantee that Woodson — who is 21-34 against top-50 opponents during his tenure — is the coach who will usher it in.
Woodson, for example, hears the fan base’s criticisms about IU’s shooting and spacing (or lack thereof). He’s quick to point out how, as head coach of the Knicks back in 2013, New York actually led the NBA in 3-point attempts (and makes) at just under 30 treys per game. But he won’t let style supersede personnel.
“I’m not going to put up 30 3s,” Woodson said, “(if) we can’t make them. I mean, that’s foolishness to me. Ridiculous basketball.”
Which is partially why he signed Rice and former Illinois sharpshooter Luke Goode and Carlyle — who has missed IU’s past three games with an undisclosed injury — over the summer.
“We’re still working on finding the open man,” Mgbako said. “Making the extra pass, (turning) a good shot to a great shot. … I feel like once we get that in our bag, we’ll be set.”
Oumar Ballo (11), Trey Galloway and Indiana open Big Ten play Monday at home against Minnesota. (Robert Goddin / Imagn Images)
Well, voila: Rice and Goode have combined to make 22 of their 56 3-point attempts this season (39.9 percent), which — along with Mgbako and Trey Galloway’s contributions from deep — has IU sitting in the top-75 nationally in 3-point shooting.
But how all the puzzle pieces fit remains a work in progress. Woodson has not sorted out his Reneau-Ballo frontcourt, to the frustration of both fans and casual observers. Per CBB Analytics, Indiana’s offense is significantly better — between 8.1 and 15.7 points per 100 possessions — with only one of Ballo or Reneau on the court, rather than both. But Woodson starts both, and plays them together for an average of 19.9 minutes per night, anyway.
Beyond the frontcourt, despite adding multiple ballhandlers like Rice and Carlyle, the Hoosiers are also on track to post their worst turnover rate of the Woodson era; they’re sub-275th nationally, giving the ball away on essentially one of every five possessions. In those back-to-back losses in the Bahamas, Indiana had a whopping 35 turnovers — including the first possession of its opener vs. Louisville.
Where does that all leave the Hoosiers, in a cutthroat conference that features 12 of KenPom’s top-50 teams?
Well, still searching.
Maybe Woodson can still be the coach who honors the program’s past through achievement. He has the requisite talent at hand. But if Woodson isn’t that guy — if his roster-building skills and on-court schemes don’t get the job done — then his history as a Hoosier is no longer reason enough to spare him.
“At the end of the day, these banners are not going anywhere,” Woodson said. “So it puts you in a unique setting. It’s different times. You’ve got to make your own statement.”
