Indiana basketball can be fixed

Almost everything is in place for the Hoosiers to excel once Mike Woodson is gone. It just needs to finally capitalize on the moment.

Indiana men’s basketball’s game last Saturday against Michigan was less a chance to turn around its season than it was an awkward and potentially embarrassing powder-keg of a situation.

The Hoosiers, languishing with a 13-9 record in coach Mike Woodson’s fourth season, were set to play host to the Wolverines and first-year head coach Dusty May, an Indiana native and a former student manager under Bob Knight.

As May built an unlikely upstart at Florida Atlantic, climaxing with a Final Four run in 2023, Indiana fans longed for him, imagining him one day roaming the Assembly Hall sidelines in a red sweater and leading the Hoosiers back to greatness. Instead, Indiana held on to Woodson and May finally jumped for a major-conference job, returning to the Big Ten, but just not to the school so many expected him to one day end up. After taking over a program that went 8-24 last season, May brought the Wolverines into Bloomington with a 17-5 mark, making him one of a handful of worthy candidates for national coach of the year honors.

All week leading up to the game, there were questions and speculation about what the scene inside the arena would be like. Would Woodson be booed? Would May be cheered as part of some sort of hero’s welcome? More than anything else, just how clear would the Hoosiers’ May-related missteps be, with the reinvigorated image of what could have been on the visiting bench contrasting so plainly with the storied program’s messy, unsatisfying reality?

Indiana did its best to squash those questions and offer its own answers.

Last Friday, the day before the much-anticipated matchup with Michigan, the Hoosiers officially announced that the 66-year-old Woodson would be stepping down at the end of the season, putting in place a finish line for an inconsistent, largely unremarkable tenure for the former star guard from the Knight era.

With the loss to Michigan, what was a preseason top-20 team fell to 13-10 and dropped Woodson’s mark to 76-50. With Woodson’s fate sealed, the setback against the Wolverines wasn’t anything more than it needed to be, though Indiana certainly didn’t help itself by refusing to allow questions about Woodson’s impending exit during his post-game press conference.

The move itself is only so much of a shock. The Hoosiers are coming off a disappointing 19-14 season and Woodson’s high-priced 2024-25 roster did little, if anything, to cool down the already scalding heat beneath their coach’s seat.

Because things have played out the way they have, Indiana finds itself in what’s become an unnervingly familiar position. For the third time in the past eight years, the proud program is looking not just for a coach, but a savior, someone who can restore some sense of luster and strength to one of college basketball’s preeminent historic powers and iconic brands. With that search, however, comes not just the hope of brighter days ahead, but existential questions about whether what the eventual hire is being brought in to accomplish is even possible.

Can Indiana basketball be what it once was, or at least something close to it?

I think it can.

How Indiana basketball got here

For all the optimism I may have, it will take hard, diligent work for the Hoosiers to climb out of the sizable hole they’ve dug for themselves for much of this century.

In the spring of 2002, about a year and a half after Knight was abruptly (and justifiably) fired, Indiana went on a thrilling and inspired run through the NCAA Tournament, knocking off reigning national champion Duke in the Sweet 16 and advancing all the way to the national championship game, where it lost to Maryland.

Little has gone right since.