On Mike Woodson and Indiana men’s basketball.
After losing the last two games in heartbreaking fashion, Indiana men’s basketball has found itself in one of the least enviable positions in all of sports: being Bad in a way that is not interesting.
College sports, especially football and basketball, with postseasons featuring large bracketed events, have plenty of room for teams that are mediocre or even just kind of bad.
A good example might be Mike Woodson’s firstteam at Indiana, which squeaked into the First Four to beat a Graham Ike-led Wyoming team before getting blown out by St. Mary’s two days later.
However fun that team was to watch for points that year, it was not the most impressive season, statistically.
Entering the Big Ten tournament, the Hoosiers only had one win over a team in KenPom’s final top 20 for the year – the home win against Purdue on Rob Phinisee’s late game heroics. The team would get blown out at home by Michigan in the next game, then go on a five-game losing streak just two weeks after the huge win over the Boilermakers.
That team was far from great, but behind Trayce Jackson-Davis’ emergence as one of the most dominant players in the country, his chemistry with Xavier Johnson and an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time in years, Mike Woodson had enough to earn himself some good will.
TJD’s dominance carried Indiana to another fun, if not wholly successful season in 2022-23 that culminated in a season sweep of Purdue and 4-seed in the Big Dance.
Even in Woodson’s best year though, there were signs that things were amiss. Losses tended to be lopsided even against inferior opponents like Rutgers. The season-ending blowout to Miami wasn’t how TJD’s career should’ve ended either.
In hindsight, the NBA players that Trayce and now Kel’el Ware have become makes clear that Indiana had probably been underperforming in each of the last three seasons, but their talent and the way their teams fought made them compelling watches.
The main problem with Woodson’s 2024-25 Indiana team is that it’s not interesting or fun to see the ways in which this group continues to fall short of expectations. And it’s not for lack of talent or effort.
This has really been crystallized in the last two games, in which Indiana fought well against good teams and still came up short.
Woodson earned his ‘prove it’ year by eking out a few wins in these types of games in each of his first three seasons. Last season was more of an objective failure than his first two, but ended on a five-game win streak that showed a team improving and gelling as a group.
In recent Indiana history, a more apt comparison for Woodson’s group this year is probably Tom Allen’s last two football teams. The talent and effort from the players was there, but the coaching staff could not bring them to play in a way that justified Allen’s continued employment.
The stats were bad on a macro and micro level. The team was hard to watch most games, and still found ways to lose the games in which they appeared more organized and spirited. Losses felt preordained – we just had to wait for the final score.
While we don’t know how this season will end, we do know how the Allen tenure ended. The good news for Indiana fans is that we’ve also been lucky enough to see how quickly a guy like Curt Cignetti can raise the bar for a program.
There aren’t a ton of Cignettis out there and we would all do well to not hold Indiana’s next basketball coach to that standard, but that doesn’t mean things can’t get better in a hurry.
Louisville and Kentucky – two programs with comparable resources to Indiana – are experiencing their most successful seasons in years after making hires that were not necessarily viewed as top options at the time.
More than anything, I’d love the 2024-25 Indiana men’s basketball team to tap into something magical and prove me completely wrong. Until then though, it might be time to turn off the expectations and emotional investment in this group.