On March 29, 2021, at Mike Woodson’s introductory press conference, an excited Scott Dolson, Indiana’s Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, painted this picture of his new men’s basketball head coach.
Taking Dolson’s words at face value, he seemed to believe he was getting a forward-thinking basketball savant. But less than four years later, with Woodson’s tenure as Indiana’s head coach nearing its completion, the “visionary” moniker Dolson bestowed on Woody ended up a far cry from reality.
Because what ultimately sunk Woodson on the court at Indiana was a stubborn adherence to antiquated basketball philosophies, efficiency be damned.
Let’s start with Indiana’s shot diet. Woodson’s Indiana teams took too many mid-range shots and long 2s, the most inefficient shots you can take on a basketball court, and the Hoosiers didn’t make them at a high clip. It’s something Alex wrote about in December. At that point in the season, there was no power conference team in the country taking more 2-point attempts from between 17 feet and the 3-point line. One of Indiana’s most-used baseline out-of-bounds plays is run to get a long 2-point jumper on the baseline. A shot chart from the first half of Saturday’s game against Michigan illustrates all this quite plainly.
Michigan took most of its shots from 3-point range, at the rim or in the paint. About as modern-looking and efficient as you’re going to get. Indiana’s, on the other hand? It was littered with shots from everywhere, including a paltry 5-of-14 mark on “other 2s” — all its 2-point shots that weren’t at the rim.
Woodson’s aversion to 3-point shooting also defied well-trodden modern basketball logic and his history as a coach. In that same introductory press conference, Woodson said: “The three-ball has changed the game, there’s no doubt about that.”
As head coach of the Knicks in 2012-13, his team shot 2,371 3-pointers and made 981, both new NBA records at the time. The Knicks finished third in adjusted offensive efficiency that season, per Basketball Reference. But you’d never guess that looking at the numbers from his nearly four seasons in Bloomington.
Woodson’s teams sported one of the lowest 3-point shot volumes in the country all four seasons, ranking 321st, 354th, 351st and 322nd (so far this season), respectively. Woodson gave lip service to shooting more 3-pointers the last two off-seasons, but it never materialized meaningfully.
In-season quotes from him often went like this: “We’re taking enough 3s, we’re just not making them.”
Other times, he was blunt when asked about specific players and their 3-point volume.
During the 2022-23 campaign, Miller Kopp shot a team-high 44.4 percent from 3-point range coupled with the team’s highest offensive rating (125.2, 43rd best in the country), but he also had the lowest usage rate among regulars (10.9). Additionally, it was Indiana’s best 3-point shooting season under Woodson (36.8 percent).
Said Woodson about Kopp’s low usage, though: “I run a couple plays for him here and there, but my focus isn’t just on Miller … I’m just not here to create a lot of shots for just Miller. I mean, I’m not here to do that.”
Okay then.
Both Woodson and Dolson also spoke of a 4-out, 1-in offense in the introductory press conference, which Dolson slapped the “visionary” label onto. It may have been seen as novel at the time to Indiana fans coming out of the Archie Miller era. But the problem? By the time Woodson stepped to the mic in March of 2021 in Bloomington, 5-out basketball was already proliferating the modern game — especially at the NBA level, though it was no stranger to the college game, either.
Other than this season when he was forced to start and play Luke Goode at the 4 for extended minutes because of Malik Reneau’s injury, and when Indiana flirted with some 5-out Princeton concepts on occasion, Woody’s teams simply weren’t structured in a way to maximize spacing and allow multiple guys room to cut, drive, pass and shoot 3-pointers. Instead, two-big lineups — from Trayce Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson, to Jackson-Davis and Reneau, to Kel’el Ware (the only Indiana big that could truly play on the perimeter, though Woodson chose not to use him there as much as he could have) and Reneau, to now Reneau and Oumar Ballo, Indiana had frontcourt players who needed the ball in the post to score. And Woodson was happy to oblige. Indiana’s leading scorer in each of his four seasons was his center: Jackson-Davis in his first two seasons, Ware in his third and Ballo currently this season.
So, Indiana was forced to defend the 5-out revolution instead. And teams with lesser talent, but with more connectedness, purpose and identity, often used it to great effect to beat the Hoosiers. Chris Collins and his Northwestern Wildcats pitched a perfect game against Woody (5-0). Fred Hoiberg and Nebraska have won their last four against the Hoosiers. The Micah Shrewsberry-led Penn State teams bested Woodson in three out of four matchups. The Iowa Hawkeyes, who at least sported some NBA talent during Woody’s tenure, went 5-1 against the Hoosiers.
Besides Woodson’s second year (28th in adjusted offensive efficiency), Indiana’s offense has been far from elite. It finished 95th his first season, 105th his third season and his self-proclaimed “most talented team” sits at a ho-hum 66th this season. The offense featured too much individual play, too much isolating and too much predictability. It often felt like guys were taking turns instead of playing as five together.
On defense, it was a strong start for the Hoosiers under Woodson. In his first season, Indiana finished first in defensive efficiency in Big Ten play and 24th in adjusted defensive efficiency in the country. The Hoosiers pressured the ball and played well as a team with Jackson-Davis as their rim protector. Their comeback win against Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament, a win that ultimately got them into the NCAA Tournament, was keyed by their defense. But that defensive identity has faded. In league play, that 1st mark went to ninth in year two, sixth in year three to 11th so far in year four. Nationally, in adjusted defensive efficiency, it went from 24th to 45th to 84th to 57th.
And then there’s the much-maligned nail-slot-rim coverage on middle ball screens.
In November of 2013, early in his last season as the Knicks head coach, this video from Basketball Breakdown details the weakness of the strategy looking at game film. By sending help to the ball-handler from one pass away, opponents were gifted open 3-point looks on the wing time and again. A decade later, with teams shooting more 3-pointers than ever, Woodson held firm on the strategy.
“I’ll never get away from nail-slot-rim,” Woodson said in January of 2023. “It’s what we do.”
To be fair, Indiana eased on the overhelp of the scheme during stretches of Woodson’s tenure. It often came after getting burned on it in previous games. And due to its opponents’ offensive systems and alignments, the coverage wasn’t always called for. Still, it was clearly in the arsenal as recently as this season. In a win against Providence in the Bahamas, the Hoosiers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, failing to communicate and playing incredibly confused as the Friars got up 30 looks from deep.
And it didn’t even take nail-slot-rim for Indiana’s defense to be susceptible to 3-pointers. Losing shooters in both half-court and in transition was all too common, with Indiana scrambling around in some games or just failing to get out on shooters in others. Allowing straight-line drives has been another defensive issue, too.
Add all this up — the inefficient offensive decisions, the odd choices on defense — and it’s no wonder the Hoosiers got crushed against top competition on several occasions under Woody, another fact Alex chronicled earlier this season. Sure, you can also point to preparation, not coming ready to play, not fighting and scrapping and competing like your opponent is. But don’t discount Indiana playing a different game than its opponents. Other teams were built to maximize efficiency. Indiana’s was not.
It wasn’t all bad. Indiana did make the tournament twice under Woodson. The Hoosiers finished second in the conference in 2022-23. They swept Purdue in Woody’s second season. Jackson-Davis, Ware and Jalen Hood-Schifino were drafted into the NBA. Woodson never had a mass exodus of transfers by his top players. Elite talent was brought in, even if it wasn’t maximized and fit was an issue.
Beyond the on-court play, Woodson’s “true fans” comments from last season’s Senior Day created a wedge between him and the fanbase he never really recovered from, despite some keeping an open mind on this season. The repeated phrases in press conferences after losses also started wearing people paper-thin.
Then add in what you started to hear going on behind the scenes — chronicled by accounts from the Hoosiers Hysterics and a number of columns from Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star recently — and the foundation became even more unstable. To hear them all tell it, Woodson’s effort on the recruiting trail for high schoolers was poor and almost non-existent compared to the grinding nature of his peers. A nickname emerged in those circles, “Bigfoot,” because no one ever saw Woodson. Wine, cigars and golf took precedence. Woodson didn’t listen and didn’t want to change his ways. And the whispers of him being insulated from an ouster by long-standing relationships — one by the chair of Indiana’s board of trustees, another by a key donor who doubled as a business partner — seemed to ring true.
That is, until last week.
With him receiving boos already from the Assembly Hall faithful and plenty more home games to come, Woodson had lost his political capital. Dolson needed to get out ahead of the decision to relieve him of his duties, lest an already toxic situation worsen. The statement released was about damage control, about the “No. 1 priority (being) for the attention to be off (Woodson), and instead focused on uniting Hoosier Nation in support of our student-athletes, coaches, and, most importantly, the program.”
It was a public relations move framed as Woodson’s decision to step aside at season’s end, lest an Indiana legend get outright fired.
The enduring image of the Woody era? His blank stare into the void on the sidelines, the Hoosiers again getting crushed, Woodson still believing he could get the Hoosiers over the hump if he just kept them working, if he could just figure out what was going wrong.
For his sake, for everyone’s sake, it was time to move on.