LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Mike Woodson made a move Tuesday night that could cost Indiana a spot in the 2022 men’s basketball NCAA Tournament.
He held five players, including two starters, out of the most winnable road game remaining on the IU schedule. The Hoosiers, predictably, faded in the second half and lost to Northwestern, 59-51, in Evanston, Illinois.
It was not an insignificant decision. But it was the correct decision. In fact, it was the defining decision of Woodson’s nearly 11-month run as the IU coach — bigger than selecting his starting lineups, bigger than choosing his assistant coaches and bigger than deciding how Indiana will employ or defend the three-point shot.
This was a move to demonstrate that a culture of accountability will matter inside the Indiana program. This was a move that will also test how the five suspended players respond to a taste of being publicly disciplined.
Culture is an overused word coaches repeat at introductory press conferences and then stuff into their third desk drawer once the games start coming multiple times a week.
Photo courtesy Mike Woodson on Twitter.
Woodson did not do that. How could he, considering his background as a four-year player under Bob Knight at Indiana?
In Woodson’s third season as an IU player, the Hoosiers opened by losing two of three games at a tournament in Alaska. In early December 1978, several days after Indiana returned from that trip, Knight learned that seven players smoked marijuana.
Woodson was one of those players. Knight discussed the incident in the autobiography he wrote with Bob Hammel:
Knight handled it by dismissing three players from the program and putting the others (including Woodson) on probation.
IU finished the season 22-12. It was a different time. Only 40 teams — not 68 — made the NCAA Tournament, just two from the Big Ten. IU won the National Invitation Tournament.
Did he cost his team a spot in the tournament that mattered? Maybe.
On Tuesday at Northwestern, Woodson handled it by sitting five guys for 40 minutes in a game that Indiana needed to win.
It drew the applause from the parent of at least one Indiana recruit: Indianapolis guard C.J. Gunn.
One of the many reasons I’m so excited for @CJ_Gunn22 to play for @MikeWoodsonNBA . He sets high standards for his team and he holds his players accountable. It’s so much bigger than basketball! #iubb #BuildingMen https://t.co/bDKTf0FbX1
— Linda Gunn (@LindaAKA2000) February 9, 2022
“I’m building a culture here,” Woodson said after the game. “I’m not here to mess around with guys who don’t want to do what’s asked of them. And if they don’t, they gotta go.”
Gotta go.
You don’t hear those two words much during these days of empowered players. Not with an exciting, ego-stroking trip into the transfer portal one click of the mouse away.
With Name/Image/Likeness rewards flowing and the one-season-on-the-sidelines requirement waived by the NCAA, the power dynamic between coaches and players has shifted.
Woodson knows that. He also knows that Indiana plays its next three games against top-25 teams: No. 17 Michigan State No. 14 Wisconsin and No. 16 Ohio State. Only the Wisconsin game is booked for Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
The Hoosiers (16-7) could easily lose all three, stretching their current losing streak to five games. That would push Indiana into a position of genuine vulnerability to miss the NCAA Tournament — again.
That would create standing room only crowds inside IU fans' Panic Rooms.
Did not matter.
Starting point guard Xavier Johnson and Parker Stewart had to sit for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. So did Khristian Lander, the only other healthy point guard on the IU roster. Ditto for freshman Tamar Bates and center Michael Durr.
Without sufficient substitutes, the Hoosiers were outscored 31-16 over the final 17 1/2 minutes.
“You've got to do all the necessary things to win on and off the floor," Woodson said. "It doesn't start on the floor. You've got to do all the necessary things off the floor as well.
"We have rules. When you disobey those rules, things have got to happen.”
Once upon a time, Indiana had a coach who did not value those things. His name was Kelvin Sampson. In 2007 and 2008, Sampson helped to drive the Indiana basketball program into a ditch from which it has never completely recovered.
In addition to NCAA rules that Sampson broke at IU, there was a culture of no accountability that took Tom Crean three miserable seasons to fix.
Sampson moved to the NBA and now to the University of Houston. Sampson’s team made the Final Four last season and might make it again this season. There are people slapping Sampson on the back and telling him that he belongs in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Those are people who don’t care about the nonsense that went on inside his basketball program at Indiana.
That is not the way Woodson will build his program at Indiana. He proved Tuesday night at Northwestern that his promise to build a culture at Indiana was not an empty string of words uttered at an introductory press conference.
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