Indiana fans will remember the date Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025 for years to come.
It’s the day the Mike Woodson era became unsalvageable at IU.
Inside Assembly Hall on Tuesday night, echoes of “Fire Woodson” rained down from the student section as Hoosiers fans fed up with the product called for his ouster in an eventual 25-point loss to No. 19 Illinois – the team’s second-largest loss since Assembly Hall opened in 1971 – that dropped Indiana to 13-5 and 4-3 in the Big Ten.
And on the court, his own players at times seemingly played as if they agreed with the sentiment. Indiana trailed by as many as 30 points in the first half (!) vs. the Illini before surrendering a record-high 60 first-half points and a record-high 94 points in regulation. The loss and the margin in which IU lost was itself only part of a larger problem that arose within the game that included some uninspiring, and downright shocking, half-hearted play in front of the home crowd.
This is Indiana basketball: one of the biggest brands of basketball in the sport ripe with historical successes. This is program has been shaped by record-breaking accomplishments, not failures and embarrassments. Yet the latter has been far too common than the former in Bloomington, and with increasing frequency these days.
It was the second consecutive 25-point loss to a Big Ten opponent in a span of four days for Indiana and Woodson, and it served as the point of no return for him and his staff. Short of a magical turnaround – a shocking win streak or an unexpected Final Four appearance – this is the end of an era. Or at least it will be, when IU brass comes to the public conclusion its own fan base came to Tuesday: that having Woodson at the helm of the program is no longer tenable.
Hoosiers have gone from bad to worse
Woodson after the game rightly called the first-half performance – and the 25-point loss to Iowa days earlier – “embarrassing.” And he didn’t blame-shift. That’s a credit to him. He took it on the chin like any coach would typically do in his position.
But the loss is part of a theme of underperformance for Indiana over the last few years. IU fell to 15-34 in Quad 1 games under Woodson when accounting for Tuesday’s result, and 1-5 this season. Vanderbilt, Western Kentucky and La Salle have just as many wins vs. Quad 1 opponents this season, and on fewer attempts.
He’s likely to leave his post with two NCAA Tournament appearances and one NCAA Tournament win in four seasons.
“We’ve had some good games against big-time opponents over the three years; the record doesn’t indicate that,” Woodson said.
Again: this is Indiana, not some up-and-coming Division II school. The record is the point, and IU was once considered the standard.
Now it is a laughingstock.
Indiana’s antiquated offense
The team that beat Indiana by 25 on Tuesday has embraced modern basketball with a 3-point heavy attack, and in the process has pieced together a formidable contender. The team on the receiving end of that whooping, Woodson’s Hoosiers, are 17th out of 18th in the Big Ten in total points attributed to 3-pointers – with a 3-point rate that is fourth-lowest among all power programs, a 3-point accuracy that is 17th out of 18th in the conference and rates in the 18th percentile on a points-per-shot basis, per Synergy data.
What’s more, IU has ranked last in the Big Ten in total offense generated by 3-pointers — a stat that tends to correlate if on the higher end with some of the more efficient, modernized offenses — in every season Woodson has been coaching IU.
Some of the stylistic struggles may be attributable to the injury to Malik Reneau, the team’s second-leading scorer, or to the interior scoring efficiency of Oumar Ballo, but certainly not all of them. The good news is that Woodson and his staff have a plan on offense. The bad news is that it’s 2025, not 2005, and it’s therefore not a good plan.
Missing out on May
The pain of a lost season stings all the more for IU as alum Dusty May, once a student manager under Bob Knight, has guided Michigan to a perfect 5-0 start in Big Ten play in his first season – just months after IU could have potentially parted ways with Woodson and made May a target – while challenging conventional wisdom. That sliding door from last summer could haunt Hoosiers for years and set the program back beyond the stone age Woodson is coaching in.
At 13-5 on the season and 4-3 in Big Ten play, Indiana is projected to be an underdog in eight of its next nine games, per KenPom.com data. It’s bad right now, and almost certainly going to get worse. BartTorvik.com gives its at-large NCAA Tournament chances a 0.3% chance and a 7.7% shot overall – with almost all its hopes riding on a Big Ten tourney run of epic proportions.
That’s one consolation all parties can take solace in. The Woodson era is crumbling before our eyes as a spectacularly awful experiment gone wrong after an offseason filled with optimism from a talented portal class, but this team is going nowhere fast. It won’t be long before the season, and Woodson’s split with his alma mater, will be complete. After Tuesday’s debacle, that inevitability is all but a certainty.
