LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — At Indiana basketball, this is a mess that didn't have to happen.
It should have been fixed last March. When Mike Woodson got himself thrown out of the Big Ten Tournament following another colossal beatdown, he should've walked off the floor into an encouraged retirement, his legacy as a former Hoosier great player relatively intact.
Dusty May, another IU alum, was primed to move from Florida Atlantic to cleanse Woodson’s mess. A formidable transfer portal class would have followed. A healthy pocket of Top 100 in-state prospects were in place to sign with Indiana, not UConn or Notre Dame.
And Indiana could have had a men’s basketball team that its football and women’s basketball teams would be proud of.
That did not happen.
Somebody, likely not athletic director Scott Dolson, decided to prop up Woodson. He was given what insiders say was an “unlimited” Name/Image/Likeness recruiting budget and sent back for Year Four.
Scoreboard Alert: Year Four has been worse than Year Three, which was worse than Year Two.
Google it.
Now, Dusty May has an excellent team that is leading the Big Ten at Michigan. May is in the discussion with Louisville coach Pat Kelsey for national coach of the year.
All but one of the top in-state recruits wanted no part of Woodson’s confused operation.
And the Hoosiers (13-5) have lost games by 28, 16, 17, 25 and 25, trailing by as many as 30 points in two of them.
Now Indiana has A MESS that didn’t need to happen and is deteriorating toward toxic status. It will require an industrial strength clean up on aisles one (the basketball court), two (the recruiting world) and three (the perturbed paying customers).
As the Hoosiers gave up 60 first-half points and White Flagged it against Illinois, 94-69, Tuesday night, the scene at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall flickered between hostile (students chanted “Fire Woodson,” while boooooooing the team multiple times) and unplugged (the place was close to empty by game’s end).
Real fans. Fake fans. Disbelieving fans. Fatigued fans. Pick your adjective. Who can blame them?
Woodson came to town promising Big Ten titles and a run toward the national championship. This team, the one that Ken Pomeroy’s analytics site projects to be an underdog in 10 of its last 13 games, could flirt with missing the Big Ten Tournament.
I’ll limit the brutal statistics to this alarming comparison:
In the 2008-09 season, when Tom Crean put his first IU team together with pipe cleaners, Gorilla glue and a string of guys no other Big Ten program wanted, Indiana lost 17 of 18 conference games. Precisely two of those losses were by 25 or more points — one on Jan. 10, the other on Feb. 7.
In the 2024-25 season, when Woodson put his fourth IU team together with robust NIL checks, a former Pac-12 freshman of the year, a sophomore ranked as a Top 10 high school recruit, a former first-team all Pac-12 center and other talented, experienced pieces, the Hoosiers have lost back-to-back conference games by 25 points.
Back-to-back 25-point conference losses did not happen to Verdell Jones, Kyle Taber, Tom Pritchard, Matt Roth and the rest of Crean’s overmatched team. They played too much defense, pursued too many rebounds and competed with too much of an edge to allow that.
Back-to-back 25-point league losses have already happened to a Woodson team that some picked as the second- or third-best in the Big Ten prior to the season.
Edge?
The edge they show comes out when they complain about their unhappiness with social media criticism (which, believe it or not, is not an Indiana-only thing in today’s environment).
Big picture, this is no longer a situation for Mike Woodson to fix. He couldn’t even answer the question about why his team gave up an Assembly Hall record 60 first-half points to Illinois.
“I wish I knew,” Woodson said.
Actually, I think everybody knows.
This has moved to the administrative level. Start to fix it now. Or start to fix it in March. That’s the first question that should be discussed today in Bloomington.
Scott Dolson is capable. IU’s other legacy programs — men’s soccer and both swimming programs — remain nationally relevant.
Roll video from the weekend. On Saturday, Woodson took the men’s basketball team into Iowa and lost to an unranked Hawkeyes team, 85-60. The next day Teri Moren took the women’s team into the same building and beat a ranked Iowa team, 74-67, in front of a full house.
And remember, Dolson fixed a considerably more daunting problem in 2023.
IU football had long been the most unmovable of unmovable objects. Football was the Indiana program most likely to lose back-to-back Big Ten games by 25 points.
The administration surprisingly gave Dolson the all-clear to buy out Tom Allen’s contract and recruit a coach who had no interest in celebrating participation trophies.
On Saturday, Dolson figures to be in Atlanta. IU football coach Curt Cignetti, the guy Dolson identified, recruited, hired and supported, will accept the Eddie Robinson Award from Football Writers Association of America.
Add it to Cignetti’s resume as his sixth, and most prestigious, national coach of the award. Add it to the list of reasons Scott Dolson has earned his shot to hire his basketball coach.
It is the latest exclamation point for a remarkable season that saw Indiana win 11 times and lose only to Ohio State and Notre Dame, the teams that will play for the national title Monday night.
Big picture, Cignetti showed precisely how much coaching matters. Indiana pretended it didn’t have a mess to clean up in men’s basketball last March. It can’t pretend any longer.
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