LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Dane Fife watched the Indiana University basketball team last season in his role as a Michigan State assistant coach.
Fife also watched the Hoosiers as a former IU player who was recruited by Bob Knight and played on the Hoosiers’ last Final Four team.
As Tom Izzo’s assistant, Fife studied strategy.
As a former player and IU alum, Fife noticed body language, atmosphere and results at a place he loved.
Why were the Hoosiers running on empty? What happened to Rob Phinisee’s defensive mojo? He should have been the best defender in the Big Ten.
What was deal with the ugly free throw shooting? How did a team with Trayce Jackson-Davis get booed off the court after its season-ending seventh consecutive defeat.
“That was an NCAA Tournament team,” Fife said about a 12-15 squad that finished several laps outside the NCAA field.
“Like my former boss, coach (Tom) Izzo always said, ‘The one thing you can’t get away with is (fooling) the Indiana fans and the Indiana media, because they know basketball.”
During his 45-minute introductory Zoom call with media members Tuesday, Fife (the former player) essentially said his questions about IU could be bundled into one:
Wasn’t it time for Indiana guys to fix Indiana basketball?
Yes, it is.
That’s what IU Athletic Director Scott Dolson, a former student manager under Knight, decided. He summoned Mike Woodson, Class of 1980, from the New York Knicks. Woodson recruited Fife, Class of 2002, from Michigan State, for an assistant coaching spot. Mike Roberts, Class of 2005, is likely to retain a role with the program.
“We need some stability here,” Fife said.
This better work, because Woodson is the fifth permanent head coach in the post-Knight Era. The four previous strategies failed:
The former Knight assistant (Mike Davis); the rising star (Kelvin Sampson); the Midwest guy who took a team to the Final Four (Tom Crean) and the hot mid-major wizard (Archie Miller).
Now it is Woodson, an NBA lifer. Woodson was the Big Ten player of the year, but he also experienced the fierce downside of Indiana basketball as a freshman when the Hoosiers missed the 1977 NCAA Tournament and five teammates transferred.
BLOOMINGTON, IN - MARCH 29, 2021 - Head Coach Mike Woodson of the Indiana Hoosiers and Indiana Hoosiers Vice President and Director of Athletics Scott Dolson during a press conference in Bloomington, IN. Photo by Missy Minear/Indiana Athletics
Ditto for Fife. He remembered being booed, because it happened. As a senior, Fife’s team was booed after it lost to Kentucky by 14 points at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
That was IU’s fourth loss in the first 10 games during the 2001-02 season. That was the game when Davis famously promised that “help was on the way” for the Indiana backcourt, with Bracey Wright, Marshall Strickland and Rod Wilmont recruited to replace Fife, Tom Coverdale and Kyle Hornsby in the IU backcourt. Let's be honest: Fife was being written off.
That was an Indiana team that rallied to beat six ranked teams, including No. 1 Duke, before losing to Maryland in the national final.
Fife is the son of a former Michigan basketball player who came to Indiana from Clarkston, Michigan, to play for Knight. He embraced Knight’s old school coaching style and blunt verbal feedback.
I could hear traces of Knight in Fife’s analysis of what the new IU staff must fix. Plenty of sarcasm with a willingness to go back and forth with the media.
“With coach Woodson, there’s just a little bit more passion when you’re trying to sell Indiana, when you’re selling Indiana to a family or a potential student athlete,” Fife said. “There’s a little bit more passion behind a loss at Purdue or a win at Purdue. That doesn’t discredit any of the coaches who have been here, because they’ve done a great job in their own right.
“But to me, Indiana is a really, really unique place. And it’s a place that requires somebody that understands the dynamic, the beast that it is.
“And it also needs somebody who understands the massive alumni base and the passion they have.
“I’ve always said that I wanted to come back and coach at Indiana. Why? Because of the passion for basketball. Why? Because people know basketball. It’s unlike any other place in the world.
“With that in mind, I’ve always felt the Indiana basketball job, by and large, should be coached by somebody who played or coached here or spent a lot of time here.
“I think Coach Woodson is perfect at this time. Coach Woodson had in mind that he was going to bring in others who had the same passion that he did. And I do believe this is the right move to, once again, bring everyone together. Because, as I said, the team was good enough last year to be in the NCAA Tournament — minimum.
“As much as we can all blame the staff and the players, everybody plays a role.
“What I saw was just people picking and picking and picking at our program, and everybody jumped on board, and it just created a giant snowball, an avalanche that couldn’t be stopped.”
This time, Indiana has turned to former players to stop the snowball.
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