Jordan Hulls Mike Woodson

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- There were nights when pockets of fans wore Texas Tech hats and T-shirts to Indiana University men’s basketball games. That was their protest because Bob Knight was no longer the Hoosiers’ coach.

Then the program bounced from Mike Davis to Kelvin Sampson to Dan Dakich to Tom Crean to Archie Miller. At Indiana, the only thing as elusive to achieve as championships has been program unity.

Less than 14 months into the job, head coach Mike Woodson, a former Knight player, remains determined to fix both issues. He led the Hoosiers to their first NCAA Tournament victory in six years in March. Woodson and his staff secured a four-player recruiting class with a pair of five-star prospects that registered as IU’s best group of signees in nearly a decade.

Then, earlier this week, Woodson demonstrated that players from the Crean era are just as welcome as players from the Knight era. As soon as the Bundesliga playoffs are finished in Germany, Jordan Hulls will end his nine-season overseas professional career to begin work as Indiana’s team and recruiting coordinator.

“If there was going to be anything make me retire early, it was going to be coming back and playing a role and being on the Indiana staff,” Hulls said Wednesday morning during an appearance on Jim Coyle’s radio show.

“For me, it’s an awesome opportunity. Even before all this stuff was happening in the last couple weeks, you could definitely see a trend and how the program was going.

“For me and my family to be a part of that and be part of a great staff, it’s something that I’ve always dreamt of doing, coming back home.

“There’s only a few things in the world that could make me retire early, and coming back to be on the Indiana staff is one of them.”

Hulls, remember, was an essential contributing part of a previous Indiana basketball rebuild more than a decade ago. Hulls, Christian Watford, Maurice Creek and Derek Elston were the headliners from Crean’s first major recruiting class, committing to IU before the 2009-10 season when the Hoosiers were a fix-win program and parked on NCAA probation.

By the time Hulls departed in 2013, Indiana spent several weeks ranked No. 1, made back-to-back Sweet Sixteens and earned an outright Big Ten title. The fingerprints of Hulls were everywhere: He played in 135 games, starting 121 while making better than 44% of his shots from distance and nearly 86% of his free throws. Considering the way Indiana has struggled to shoot the ball the last six seasons, Hulls has already heard all the cracks about how he can become the program’s Shot Doctor.

Only 6 feet tall, Hulls has been a solid overseas pro player for nine seasons. But the tug of returning to Bloomington has always been strong.

His grandfather, John, was a member of Knight’s original IU coaching staff in 1971. His father, J.C., trains athletes and coordinates events in Bloomington. And before Jordan made 254 three-point field goals for the Hoosiers, he excelled at Bloomington South High School.

“This is where everything started for me, my love of basketball,” Hulls said.

Coaching and working with young athletes percolates in Hulls’ DNA. Credit to Woodson for giving Hulls an opportunity — and connecting one era of former Indiana players with another.

That is the way the culture has been built at North Carolina and Duke. Does it guarantee success? No. But neither has the fussing that has surrounded IU basketball during the string of coaching changes since Knight departed in 2000.

With Woodson, who played for Knight from 1976-80, athletic director Scott Dolson, a student manager under Knight in the mid-1980s, and Quinn Buckner, point guard on the 1976 NCAA champs and current chairman of the IU board of trustees, guys from the Knight Era are entrusted with making IU basketball a force again. But it’s a wise move re-connecting the program with Hulls, a signature player from the Crean era.

“My earliest memory (of IU basketball)?” Hulls said. “I remember always going to Hoosier Hysteria (which signaled the start of practice every October). Whether I was 5 years old, I can’t remember the exact age. But I was definitely very young

“But we brought out cans for the food drive and we got to sit in the top balcony (at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall) and see it. And it was midnight at that time, actually midnight. So for us, it was like, ‘We get to stay out late and watch basketball with our buddies.

“Then when I was 12, they went to the (2002) Final Four. Watching that team go and shock the world, and Jared (Jeffries) being a Bloomington (North) kid. So looking up to him.

“To go down to Kirkwood (Avenue) and stuff like that, stayed in the car as a kid of course, but going down there to see the sea of people being so excited about the Hoosiers winning the basketball game that that was pretty crazy to see as a 12 year old.

“And for me to be able to actually get to get and go do that and be part of the reason why people went and celebrated in the streets as well. But it was pretty pretty special.”

Now, Hulls will work with Woodson to try to create another string of special moments for Indiana basketball.

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