Mike Woodson to be next IUBB coach. Thad Matta to be associate AD

[Hoosierfan2017 21,055]

14 minutes ago, Trish said:

That is the NBA, they have the best players in the entire world. 

Woody needs to prove himself with worse players in comparison at the D1 level. 

 

That’s a different concern altogether. You’ve been concerned that his coaching style can’t translate to the modern game because basketball has changed quite a bit since he was last a head coach in the NBA. But then when you’re given evidence that he was ahead of the curve with shooting the 3 ball with the Knicks, you shift the goal posts. Now it’s, well sure his teams played modern basketball back in the day, but he’ll have to do it with worse players at IU. Of course he will. But you were concerned with his coaching philosophy being stuck in the old days. His Knicks teams shot more threes than anyone else in the NBA. They shot 2,371 threes compared to a league average of 1,636. 
 

The league average in 2019 was almost a thousand more than it was in 2013 - it was 2,625. Yet with teams shooting, on average, a thousand more threes per year, the 891 threes the Knicks made in 2013 was more than 12 teams made in 2019. The Knicks also had the third highest offensive rating in the league in 2013. There shouldn’t be any concerns about his offensive style, imo. The only concern is whether he can get good enough players. 

[Trish 11,523]

3 minutes ago, IUBBx5Banners said:

You ever think that maybe the reason they played so slow is because they were the oldest team in the nba?

Jason Kidd was the only player to play more than 1,000 minutes who was older on that team. 

The outliers who hardly played caused them to have a very old team, on paper. 

[pumpfake 3,930]

Just now, kreigh8 said:

Without scrolling through 111 pages, can some give me an idea of the negative comments that Dakich had on the Matta portion of this hire? I saw it mentioned, but don't think I ever saw the exact statements

Everytime someone asked him or brought it up he just flippantly said "I don't care" and down played it almost mockingly.  Same attitude and comments about Leal's tweet and his mom's.  Just typical Dakitch behavior, unfortunately.

[kreigh8 2,037]

Just now, pumpfake said:

Everytime someone asked him or brought it up he just flippantly said "I don't care" and down played it almost mockingly.  Same attitude and comments about Leal's tweet and his mom's.  Just typical Dakitch behavior, unfortunately.

Thank you.

I went hunting for it last night through Google search and saw his Facebook page had a comment that he said Matta is not part of MW's staff but Dolson's staff so he'd have little impact on recruiting and play. I don't think that that is too out of line, so was trying to figure where the outrage here was coming from. I'm no DD fan, but that FB comment wasn't too outrageous to me.

[Hardwood83 4,762]

11 hours ago, Papacap said:

And I’m trying to see why fans can’t get excited about this. Lunacy? No recruiting pull? Seems like better coaching? Can’t see it ending well?

I get having questions. But I honestly don’t understand the intensity that some people feel this can’t work. 

Randy Quaid’s character in Major League had more optimism.

In short I can't get excited about this because I think IU hired the wrong guy. I wouldn't say "it can't work" because it can.  I still have to agree with Wayne though, I don't see it working. 

Has nothing to do with optimism either since I really, REALLY want it to work too. Still this hire seems like a mess. We hired an old NBA hand just because he played at IU and wanted the job more than anyone else. That is nice, but not exactly prime qualifications. 

We then pulled in an (apparently) broken-down Matta to help fix all the blind spots that some pretend Woodson doesn't even have in the first place. Winning in the NCAA/B1G isn't easy obviously and MW has several hurdles. No doubt he has passion for IU, that will help buy him some time. He also obviously knows basketball. So have the last several IU coaches, including Bobby. Btw, Knight was younger when he was fired than Woodson is now (60 v 63). 

Can Woodson recruit? can he build a cohesive staff? Will he work well with Matta? Will the off the court demands get old? Will he have the energy to maintain this for 5+yrs? Will his NBA experience translate to the B1G?  Lot's of questions. There have been many reasonable arguments to answer each of these questions on this very site. But we don't know. There are plenty of other guys that we do know the answers, because they have already done it. I think this is the primary reason that Woodson wasn't on many people's top 10 list. He's an unknown that might work....now many on here state "I was hesitant, but he's enthusiastic so now I am too!" Ok, good. But that isn't what it takes to win.  My enthusiasm or your excitement means squat toward beating Purdue, Wisconsin and Northwestern.  We need a capable coach that can pull it all together in a short amount of time. I don't believe Mike Woodson is that guy. 

I appreciate the nostalgia, familiarity and comfort of having one of our own running the show. I don't believe that outweighs having the right coach though. To me the best guy is a proven winner (particularly in college) and is young enough to build and maintain that. Woodson is none of those things. So that is why I am not confident in his success. My hopes were dashed with Woodson's hiring, so I'll deal with it and hope for the best. Still, I have very low expectations and think we'll be in this painful position as a program again in 3-5yrs. I will relish being proven wrong and am not an "I told you so" @sshole, so won't appreciate it if I am right. 

 

[Trish 11,523]

2 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

That’s a different concern altogether. You’ve been concerned that his coaching style can’t translate to the modern game because basketball has changed quite a bit since he was last a head coach in the NBA. But then when you’re given evidence that he was ahead of the curve with shooting the 3 ball with the Knicks, you shift the goal posts. Now it’s, well sure his teams played modern basketball back in the day, but he’ll have to do it with worse players at IU. Of course he will. But you were concerned with his coaching philosophy being stuck in the old days. His Knicks teams shot more threes than anyone else in the NBA. They shot 2,371 threes compared to a league average of 1,636. 
 

The league average in 2019 was almost a thousand more than it was in 2013 - it was 2,625. Yet with teams shooting, on average, a thousand more threes per year, the 891 threes the Knicks made in 2013 was more than 12 teams made in 2019. The Knicks also had the third highest offensive rating in the league in 2013. There shouldn’t be any concerns about his offensive style, imo. The only concern is whether he can get good enough players. 

It's just hard for me to get excited about something that happened in 2012-2013. I'd feel much more confident if he was a head coach recently. The time away from basketball from 2018-2020 concerns me as well. 

[pumpfake 3,930]

1 minute ago, kreigh8 said:

Thank you.

I went hunting for it last night through Google search and saw his Facebook page had a comment that he said Matta is not part of MW's staff but Dolson's staff so he'd have little impact on recruiting and play. I don't think that that is too out of line, so was trying to figure where the outrage here was coming from. I'm no DD fan, but that FB comment wasn't too outrageous to me.

You might be able to find his show(audio) from Monday on the 107.5 "The Fan" website.  His interview with Coach Woodson was in the first 20 minutes or so.

[IUBBx5Banners 227]

3 minutes ago, Trish said:

Jason Kidd was the only player to play more than 1,000 minutes who was older on that team. 

The outliers who hardly played caused them to have a very old team, on paper. 

Kenyon Amare Tyson JKidd all averaged more than 20mpg. Even 35 year old Pablo played more than 1500 mins.

And they played decent minutes at various points to Camby, Sheed & Kurt Thomas, all 38 years or older. Even their weighted age per minute is top 2 oldest. 

Let’s not ignore amare coming back from microfracture surgery after Dantoni ran him into the ground.. So what’s the coaching case for playing fast cause I sure don’t see it. 

 

[IUCrazy2 2,356]

1 minute ago, Hardwood83 said:

In short I can't get excited about this because I think IU hired the wrong guy. I wouldn't say "it can't work" because it can.  I still have to agree with Wayne though, I don't see it working. 

Has nothing to do with optimism either since I really, REALLY want it to work too. Still this hire seems like a mess. We hired an old NBA hand just because he played at IU and wanted the job more than anyone else. That is nice, but not exactly prime qualifications. 

We then pulled in an (apparently) broken-down Matta to help fix all the blind spots that some pretend Woodson doesn't even have in the first place. Winning in the NCAA/B1G isn't easy obviously and MW has several hurdles. No doubt he has passion for IU, that will help buy him some time. He also obviously knows basketball. So have the last several IU coaches, including Bobby. Btw, Knight was younger when he was fired than Woodson is now (60 v 63). 

Can Woodson recruit? can he build a cohesive staff? Will he work well with Matta? Will the off the court demands get old? Will he have the energy to maintain this for 5+yrs? Will his NBA experience translate to the B1G?  Lot's of questions. There have been many reasonable arguments to answer each of these questions on this very site. But we don't know. There are plenty of other guys that we do know the answers, because they have already done it. I think this is the primary reason that Woodson wasn't on many people's top 10 list. He's an unknown that might work....now many on here state "I was hesitant, but he's enthusiastic so now I am too!" Ok, good. But that isn't what it takes to win.  My enthusiasm or your excitement means squat toward beating Purdue, Wisconsin and Northwestern.  We need a capable coach that can pull it all together in a short amount of time. I don't believe Mike Woodson is that guy. 

I appreciate the nostalgia, familiarity and comfort of having one of our own running the show. I don't believe that outweighs having the right coach though. To me the best guy is a proven winner (particularly in college) and is young enough to build and maintain that. Woodson is none of those things. So that is why I am not confident in his success. My hopes were dashed with Woodson's hiring, so I'll deal with it and hope for the best. Still, I have very low expectations and think we'll be in this painful position as a program again in 3-5yrs. I will relish being proven wrong and am not an "I told you so" @sshole, so won't appreciate it if I am right. 

 

Outside of a very select few coaches who were not going to come here, those same questions would exist for any hire (other than maybe the age).

Musselman and Oats are newer and have one decent run in the tournament each.  Drew would have recruiting questions at Indiana because the AAU coaches here are not a fan.  "But he could get national guys here...he recruits Baylor."  Maybe.  We don't know that.

I think this fanbase (me included) gets too wrapped up in the next shiny object.  We panned Greg Gard.  We panned Holtmann.  We panned Howard.  We panned Painter.  We said that Underwood was a bad hire.  All those guys have been kicking our butts with our "proven Final Four and Elite 8" coaches.

There will always be questions, I hope that we can sit back and let this guy actually do some of the job before we bury him under pessimism before he has even coached his first game.  Let the guy have a ******* honeymoon.

[GloryDays 5,915]

24 minutes ago, Trish said:

That is the NBA, they have the best players in the entire world. 

Woody needs to prove himself with worse players in comparison at the D1 level. 

 

The point was under Woodson they led the league.

Every coach in the NBA had the best players in the world.  That statement really doesn't make sense to me.

 

 

[IUBBx5Banners 227]

9 minutes ago, Trish said:

It's just hard for me to get excited about something that happened in 2012-2013. I'd feel much more confident if he was a head coach recently. The time away from basketball from 2018-2020 concerns me as well. 

Well...Archie was essentially away from basketball from 2018-2020 but you’re his biggest supporter.

[Trish 11,523]

2 minutes ago, IUBBx5Banners said:

Kenyon Amare Tyson JKidd all averaged more than 20mpg. Even 35 year old Pablo played more than 1500 mins.

And they played decent minutes at various points to Camby, Sheed & Kurt Thomas, all 38 years or older. Even their weighted age per minute is top 2 oldest. 

Let’s not ignore amare coming back from microfracture surgery after Dantoni ran him into the ground.. So what’s the coaching case for playing fast cause I sure don’t see it. 

 

Minutes per game doesn't concern me as the older guys could be coming in and playing junk minutes or vs second units. 

He won't have that issue here at Indiana luckily with old farts. 

Only two players over the age of 31 played more than 20 minutes. I would argue faster pace = more modern. They were shooting 3's but not playing fast.

That's fine and all but let's see what Woodson can do in 2021 and not 2012. 

 

[HoosierRobbie 929]

Keeping Kenya hunter is a huge move.


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[PB1230 502]

8 minutes ago, pumpfake said:

Everytime someone asked him or brought it up he just flippantly said "I don't care" and down played it almost mockingly.  Same attitude and comments about Leal's tweet and his mom's.  Just typical Dakitch behavior, unfortunately.

I tend to believe this is more about Dakich trying to advocate Woodson as a solid hire, irrespective of Matta being hired or not.

I do think that Woodson will be fine with by himself with any on court practice/game coaching and all aspects of offensive and defensive schemes/strategy. Matta's biggest impact will probably be highly college specific behind the scenes stuff: managing practice/workout schedule to fit class and travel needs, allocation of time and effort on recruiting (eg who is going to what games/events), managing support staff - decisions essentially that are above the pay grade of a typical assistant. 

[Hardwood83 4,762]

4 minutes ago, IUCrazy2 said:

Outside of a very select few coaches who were not going to come here, those same questions would exist for any hire (other than maybe the age).

Musselman and Oats are newer and have one decent run in the tournament each.  Drew would have recruiting questions at Indiana because the AAU coaches here are not a fan.  "But he could get national guys here...he recruits Baylor."  Maybe.  We don't know that.

I think this fanbase (me included) gets too wrapped up in the next shiny object.  We panned Greg Gard.  We panned Holtmann.  We panned Howard.  We panned Painter.  We said that Underwood was a bad hire.  All those guys have been kicking our butts with our "proven Final Four and Elite 8" coaches.

There will always be questions, I hope that we can sit back and let this guy actually do some of the job before we bury him under pessimism before he has even coached his first game.  Let the guy have a ******* honeymoon.

OK, fair enough, we don't see it the same way. 

I'm not seeing the outpouring of pessimism you mention. I've posted a few times what I thought and got my hand slapped so am mostly just waiting to see what happens. If anything it seems to be an unbridled love-fest. Either way, I'm for old IU and am glad it wasn't Alford. 

 

[iu eyedoc 1,877]

12 hours ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

Lunacy? Yeah, in my opinion.  

A 63 year old head coach giving college his first try.  No system in place to be an elite recruiter.  Players will have to just trust him because he can’t point to prior success.  
 

Ask yourself this, if any other B1G team made this hire or an equivalent hire based on all the on paper data we would fully expect it to fail.  
 

Doesn’t mean it will, and I hope it doesn’t. 

 It seems you want to create questions where there are none.

No system in place to be an elite recruiter. Just retained elite recruiter Kenya Hunter. Has access to WWW, Thad Matta, and all of his NBA connections. How is this different than had 8 yrs out of the NCAA Brad Stevens taken the job?

Players will have to just trust him because he can’t point to prior success. He took a Hawks team that finished 5th of 8 and had below a .400 winning % and increased the win total evry year he was coach resulting in back to back 2nd place finishes and peaking at a .646 % and 53 wins. The Hawks have only reached over 48 wins and a better win % once in 11 years since he was fired.

With the NYK, he took them to a 1st place finish and 54 wins in his 2nd season. That was the only 1st place finish since 1994 and hasn't been matched since he was fired.

By contrast, Brad Stevens took over a Celtics team that had finished 1st 5 of 6 seasons before he was hired and has grossly under-performed with a decreasing winning % the last 4 seasons at a current career low of .489.  Even the end of his college coaching career was down a bit from his early success.

 

Not saying I didn't want BS, because I did, but even his allure was based on success 10+ yrs ago in what was a different college game, exclude that, which seems to amount to ancient history by those crowing about Matta's 4 year absence, and you have a guy that has been a middling NBA coach that hasn't recruited in 8 yrs and missed the tourney and lost in the second rnd.

Outside of his 2 NCAA tourney runs he is a successful mid major coach that lost in the 2nd rnd, lost in the first rnd, missed the tourney, lost in the 2nd rnd.

 

Again, I certainly wanted him, but he just as easily could be a guy that has made bank based on 2 back to back Cinderella runs, his career otherwise in those 11 of 13 seasons both NCAA and NBA has been  very good to even bad any given yr.

 

 

 

[Chris007 43,619]

16 minutes ago, PB1230 said:

I tend to believe this is more about Dakich trying to advocate Woodson as a solid hire, irrespective of Matta being hired or not.

I do think that Woodson will be fine with by himself with any on court practice/game coaching and all aspects of offensive and defensive schemes/strategy. Matta's biggest impact will probably be highly college specific behind the scenes stuff: managing practice/workout schedule to fit class and travel needs, allocation of time and effort on recruiting (eg who is going to what games/events), managing support staff - decisions essentially that are above the pay grade of a typical assistant. 

Yes he said the next day he likes the Matta hire but he wanted the first day to be all about Woodson

[JJacks 28]

44 minutes ago, PB1230 said:

I tend to believe this is more about Dakich trying to advocate Woodson as a solid hire, irrespective of Matta being hired or not.

I do think that Woodson will be fine with by himself with any on court practice/game coaching and all aspects of offensive and defensive schemes/strategy. Matta's biggest impact will probably be highly college specific behind the scenes stuff: managing practice/workout schedule to fit class and travel needs, allocation of time and effort on recruiting (eg who is going to what games/events), managing support staff - decisions essentially that are above the pay grade of a typical assistant. 

Guessing Matta will do some of that stuff.  However, does it take a guy with that much credibility to do the traditional "Operations of Men's Basketball" type duties.  Is there going to be an "Operations of Basketball" position under Matta?    I still can't put my finger on what Matta will do that is different than the traditional position above.  It seems like we were led to believe he'll have more impact than what is being mentioned.   Ideas?  

[IU Scott 2,375]

2 hours ago, Trish said:

Basketball was different then, so I'm not taking too much of that into account. I mean.. NBA players don't shoot mid-range jumpers anymore like 2013.

The Knicks were Top 3 that year in 2013. 

His Knicks teams broke records for 3's made until GS broke them

[HoosierFan1994 4,729]

I think my favorite part of the hire is the national media hates it. They are wrong on everything so I feel good about this!

I was worried about recruiting but Dakich sold me on his ability to recruit. He was involved in NBA free agency. That is pretty much recruitment.