This season has not gone according to plan for the Indiana basketball program. And a lot of the topic of conversation has turned from building for 2024 and 2025 to, does Mike Woodson get another year in Bloomington.
After taking Indiana to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances in his first two seasons, a barely above .500 record overall with just two games remaining has fans shifting their support elsewhere.
But, is it all too quick to do that?
Here are some key questions answered in the this installment of HoosierIllustrated.com’s Indiana basketball mailbag.
We’ll start here — my thoughts on Mike Woodson getting another season at Indiana. To be blunt, this year has been a near failure on many levels, and I’ve been extremely vocal about the shortcomings, especially over the last month. All of that is to say — I do think Mike Woodson should get one more year. After losing critical pieces to the program in Trayce Jackson-Davis, Jalen Hood-Schifino and then two underrated veterans in Race Thompson and Miller Kopp, a lot needed to be done in order to continue to success he started to build at Indiana. Roster construction and an inability to recruit key pieces this past offseason is the reason for the struggles this year. It’s clear — no shooting or real roster cohesiveness.
After it looked like part of the team had quit on him and the rest of the roster, a two game winning streak and a team that does look much more together than it had just a few weeks ago shows that it hasn’t quit — and that’s a very positive sign. After all of the struggles this season, especially since January, it would have been extremely easy to pack it in.
“It shows our toughness and resilience,” Mackenzie Mgbako said on Sunday. “We’ve been in positions like that before so it’s good to be able to climb back and fight for the dub.”
So that leads me to this — Mike Woodson must take this year as a learning year and do things vasty different next year or else it’ll be likely the same outcome. He needs to hit some home runs in the portal and re-think the way he puts together his roster. If he does the same as he did this past year, results will be the same and then it’s time to move on.
At this point it’s just a matter of if Mike Woodson can overcome his stubbornness and see the shift to modern day basketball. If not, that’ll be his downfall next year.
This goes side by side with the first answer I gave, too. Not only the Wisconsin win but I think even more so the Maryland win show a lot about what Mike Woodson has been able to do to right the ship.
It was a 4-10 stretch in 2024 before the recent two-game winning streak, its first winning streak since Dec. 19 – 29th. That does wonders for some of the doubters. But, you can’t take a small sample size and have it erase the rest of the season.
The conversations over the next few weeks will be around his vision for next year and what will change. It’s clear that he hasn’t lost the team and guys aren’t giving up. It’s also clear that his development around certain players and positions is much better than some others around the country. But, it’s also evident that what he did this year didn’t work. I don’t necessarily think that these two games ‘saved’ Mike Woodson but I think it showed the bigger picture that it’s not so much an effort and quitting conversation but more so revolving around a his system.
Everyone has to adapt in order to be successful. Some are proactive and some are reactive. While Mike Woodson is clearly reactive right now, that doesn’t mean things can’t change if the right conversations are had.
Roster construction and stubbornness. Look, his roster worked the first two years because he had an All-American forward who you could run your offense through and watch him make plays by passing the ball as well. You also had players who knew exactly what their role was and played it perfectly. And, you had a dynamic guard who could create off of the dribble.
Last week it hit its peak, however, when Mike Woodson said as a whole, he’s been able to win with two bigs on the floor.
“Well, when we won, we won with both of our bigs on the floor. You know, that’s what I look at,” Woodson said. “You look at analytics based on we haven’t played a lot (of minutes) where we played four around one this year. So you’re looking at short stats basically.
“We basically have played with two bigs on the floor most of the season,” Woodsons continued. “The games that we have won and played well, they’ve been in and out of the game. So I don’t look at — I look what the we’ve done as whole.”
As a whole? At the time he said that Indiana was 14-13 and had an offensive efficiency rating of 11th in conference play and 112th in the country. That isn’t successful for any team, let alone Indiana basketball.
Related: After missing out on Derik Queen, what’s next for Indiana basketball and where does it turn? Here’s how it could force Mike Woodson’s hand
Woodson later went on to talk about the different styles of basketball from when he played to now.
“The game is played differently than when I played. We didn’t shoot threes,” Woodson said. “The three-ball wasn’t a play when I played in college, and even when I went to the NBA, you only shot a three as a necessity when you needed a three … but it’s not going away (now).”
Mike Woodson can’t keep his stubborn attitude if he wants to maintain the level of success he wants for the Indiana basketball program. Because, this year hasn’t been successful.
He even said it, ‘the game is played differently than when I played’.
Yeah – guards, guards, guards. But, no – guards are extremely important to the success of any college basketball program and Indiana has struggled with consistent production from its guards for much of the last decade.
Indiana needs a dynamic point guard — someone who can score and create. While getting a legit threat from three is key at that position too, Indiana just needs someone at the lead guard spot that can score — whatever way that may be. If you can get a point guard who can be an average shooter from deep but is a heavy driver, that’s fine. Ideally, though, it’s a score-first type of player that when the offensive possession goes rogue, he can save it.
Second is clearly wing shooting. Indiana needs to find at least two consistent shooters in this portal cycle. One starter and one coming from the bench — and both who know exactly what their roles are. While Mike Woodson hasn’t shown it to be a priority, finding someone who is terrific off of the ball and can use screens and cuts to get open is ideal, especially if you’re going with a ball dominant lead guard. But, that means you have to be able to run some plays for him too. The best teams have players who are dynamic off of catch and shoot opportunities. Indiana needs to be able to find that. Then, the shooter off the bench is to make sure there is at a minimum, one big time floor spacer on the perimeter at all times, if not more.
Finally, you’ll need to go get a rim protector. This doesn’t necessarily need to be a 30+ minute per game guy like Kel’el Ware. If it were me, I would prioritize trying to keep Mackenzie Mgbako and playing him at the 4 while shifting Malik Reneau to the 5 — both more of their traditional positions. Go with a quicker and more athletic lineup that has numerous matchup problems for opposing teams.
Final Thoughts:
I am writing this on Tuesday morning after Mike Woodson made some interesting comments during his radio show on Monday night. The main portion of his quote was – “I still think the college game is played inside-out”. While, in theory, he’s not entirely wrong, it’s a concern that he is now tripling-down on his desired system that has clearly not worked. The only way you can play inside-out is if you have a dominant big man and dynamic shooters on the perimeter — neither of which Indiana truly has.
UConn, Kansas, Baylor, Villanova — the last four National Champions. What do they all have in common? A smaller, more versatile and guard heavy lineup. While they all had a traditional big man on the floor, they spaced it out with four shooters, including a stretch 4. Mike Woodson has now made it quite evident that he is not going to change his offensive system moving forward and two bigs will be on the floor. If Indiana can’t land shooters in the portal — with the assumption Woodson is still here next year — the same old fashioned and outdated style of basketball will be played.
When I wrote my answers above, a lot of the assumption was surrounding a change in tune from Woodson and his stubbornness. It’s clear that isn’t going to happen after Monday and that is a massive concern of mine if he is back on the sidelines next year. Adaptation is key and as mentioned above, Woodson is not doing that. If that message doesn’t change — which it clearly now appears it won’t — then, I’m not sure he’s the right guy moving forward in the every-changing landscape of college basketball.
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