They “Retired” Coach Woodson Thread

[AZ Hoosier]

3 hours ago, Banksyrules said:

Maybe it would be wise instead of spreading the money around. Consolidate and offer big money to two or three guards?

Actually it would have been better if Woodson had gone out and recruited players instead of relying on Uncle Cook and Uncle Simons to buy him a team that the could coach into the ground. But, obviously, that ship has sailed.

Giving Leal money for promoting the "true fan" crap is an abomination. Woodson has gone from "renting talent" to flat out buying propaganda. 

[go iu bb]

2 hours ago, OKHOOSIER said:

Seems a little odd we haven't landed one transfer yet given our money situation and minutes available. I know it is still "early" but there are plenty of good players who could help our roster at the guard position. 

We're waiting until the entire roster of the national champions enters the portal then getting them all.

[go iu bb]

2 hours ago, Ryno6284 said:

April fools!

Most insufferable day of the year.

[AZ Hoosier]

2 hours ago, Chris007 said:

The first thing is we shouldn't have overpaid a couple of guys who are currently on the team. 

This, 100%

I still don't get the "end game". I understood from earlier conversations that Woodson has this year to "show the world", and regardless of what happens, he's gone after the 2024-25 season. If that is absolutely true, then there are only two ways this can go:

1. We buy him a team, he gets a decent record, maybe to the round of 32, and rides off into the sunset, a hero in his own mind, having "righted the ship".
2. We buy him a team that he mismanages with his archaic basketball schemes and we see another epic fail.

Either way, I really don't see a positive here. Best case: he wins with a team acquired through contrived means, and is still seen as a guy who could not win any other way. Worst case: he's an epic loser of a basketball coach who should never have been hired to begin with.

And if he does manage to win anything at all, he gets a "Roger Maris" asterisk. 

Serious question: WHAT AM I MISSING HERE?

[IUCrazy2]

1 hour ago, IUrocker said:

Seeing PU make the FF makes me want this guy gone even more. Makes me sick and I’m choosing to blame Woodson for them making it that far haha. I like Matt Painter, good coach and I appreciate his class, so I’m happy for them, but their alumni and fans are a joke. Instead of being happy about their own accomplishments, the PU fans I know take their time to mention “IU sucks” instead. Its pathetic.
It shouldn’t have had to come to this for Woodson to realize we need better guard play and more shooters. Now at this point the good ones are smart enough to not want to play for him unless his buddies throw enough cash at them. Some say maybe PU winning the title will wake up the administration enough to make big changes. Shouldn’t have needed that much to wake them up, and it’s frustrating as heck. 

I expect them to beat NC State and next Monday we will be within a bad UConn game of the final cherry on top of this bad year...really this bad couple decades.  If they win a title then all 5 of ours are officially ancient history.  Them in the F4 is already bad enough.

There is no big name coming in after Woodson.  This is going to be a complete reclamation project.

[AZ Hoosier]

2 hours ago, steubenhoosier said:

Didn't someone post a few pages back that only about 30 guys have committed who entered the portal? Maybe it was in the transfer portal thread. 

Not yet time to be concerned. After the games this weekend, there may be more guys entering. Iowa State for one just had some guys enter.

It's ALWAYS time to be concerned with Mediocre Mike leading the charge. Fire his @$$ today.

[68Hoosier]

Sorry was a busy weekend for me.

 

Fire Woodson, Please

[Vauxhall and IU]

I keep seeing folks ponder whether Turdue winning a championship would somehow "light a fire" under IU but this idea is laughable. At this point, whether or not they hang a banner is of purely symbolic/psychological significance, for both their fanbase and for ours. Even if we get lucky and they don't win it all this year, it won't change the fact that they've clearly been the superior program in the state for years now. The only difference if they win is that their fans will just be that much more insufferable, if such a thing is even possible.

Them winning or losing the championship this year won't prove or disprove anything, and it won't make a whit of difference to anyone with any power at IU. Our program is in the shape that it's in today because TPTB are perfectly fine with the results we've seen for the past 20+ years.

There's not really any more to be said other than that this is just a really, really crappy time to be an IU fan. There's no joy in the present and there's no hope for the future. In the words of Simon and Garfunkel "preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."

[IUCrazy2]

50 minutes ago, Chris007 said:

I think a lot of people are going to be annoyed. It just doesn't make sense. Did we learn anything from this season? 

I just view all of this as another step closer to moving to the real future.

[AZ Hoosier]

1 hour ago, Unexpectedflash said:

If no one wants to play in Mike's crappy offense why doesn't he change it lol. Does this man watch no basketball to see that the game is no longer played in the post?

Because he's Mike Woodson. That's what got him all the way to "mediocre" as an NBA coach, so it has to be the only way to play the game. No one questions Mike Woodson. He's Mike Woodson.

Bottom line, he's just a stubborn old geezer who think's his crap doesn't stink and thinks that we're all fools for disagreeing with him. The "true fans" know.

[str8baller]

1 hour ago, AKHoosier said:

Just to play devil's advocate though - doesn't Purdue getting to a Final 4 put that belief to bed?

Edey touches the ball every possession and either shoots it or passes it back out after getting double teamed in the post. 

At the end of the day, you just need a really good team.

There’s nothing wrong with playing through the post. Purdue, NC State and even Uconn do it very effectively.  All this “modern basketball” “let the 3’s fly at all times” is a run away talking point, at this point. (But tbf, Alabama is the embodiment of that philosophy.  ) 
 

There are many ways to be effective on offense and having a great post game is as a tried and true method as any.  Even in analytics crazy NBA some of the best teams are centered around a dominant center, although they don’t get anchored to the block as much as Edey does. 
 

To be truly great you should be good at everything. And that’s sort of Woodsons problem. Beyond effective post play (and sometimes defense at the rim) we’re not good at anything else. 
 

Purdue can play inside-out because they also are effective at the “out” part. Woodys offense is really just “inside” with not much else. 

[AZ Hoosier]

1 hour ago, JF87 said:

My guess is that one of two options will happen.  We will get a good, but not great point guard or we will land a highly sought after point guard and make him one of the top three paid players in college basketball. 

Curious about player's salaries... whether or not the amounts are discussed among the players, there is certainly a lot of "best guesses" across the internet about what a player makes. How much of an issue will that cause in terms of team chemistry when word gets out that a kid riding the bench is getting $250K and the "good but not great point guard" is only getting $200-250K? Psychologically that has to be a factor in overall team chemistry, does it not?

[AZ Hoosier]

1 hour ago, 8bucks said:

I think this is still unknown tbh. Certainly after saying he wanted a different lineup after TJD left then running the same sort of offense flies in the face of what he has said. But I also think this ego people worry about could cause him to not want to go out with another bad year and he may be more open to change.  
 

Just in portal contacts it seemed early on that we were very guard focused. Doesn’t this suggest he knows roster mistakes were made and they have to correct those?  I don’t know if we can switch from what we have been to a team that shoots 30 3’s a game in one year but I would not be surprised to see us shoot twice as many as last year. 

I suspect that large part of the "guard focus" this year is all of the pundits, fans and media beating that point to death with last year's team. And of course, there's the fact that Xavier Johnson, the best thing to ever happen to college basketball, is finally gone.

[AZ Hoosier]

2 hours ago, AKHoosier said:

Totally agree. I'm just thinking maybe Woodson watches that, and thinks he can build a team like theirs.

(He can't).

Purdue shoots (and makes 3s), Woodson's teams, no. Long 2s are better. Just ask Mike.

[BlueDevil]

20 minutes ago, str8baller said:

There’s nothing wrong with playing through the post. Purdue, NC State and even Uconn do it very effectively.  All this “modern basketball” “let the 3’s fly at all times” is a run away talking point, at this point. (But tbf, Alabama is the embodiment of that philosophy.  ) 
 

There are many ways to be effective on offense and having a great post game is as a tried and true method as any.  Even in analytics crazy NBA some of the best teams are centered around a dominant center, although they don’t get anchored to the block as much as Edey does. 
 

To be truly great you should be good at everything. And that’s sort of Woodsons problem. Beyond effective post play (and sometimes defense at the rim) we’re not good at anything else. 
 

Purdue can play inside-out because they also are effective at the “out” part. Woodys offense is really just “inside” with not much else. 

Bringing in guys that can shoot the 3 can solve a lot of problems. The problem is running this offense with no shooters and chasing a game with 2s while the other teams are double and triple the 3s you are. It will lead to the amount of double digit losses that piled up this year.

[hoosierhoo]

54 minutes ago, AZ Hoosier said:

This, 100%

I still don't get the "end game". I understood from earlier conversations that Woodson has this year to "show the world", and regardless of what happens, he's gone after the 2024-25 season. If that is absolutely true, then there are only two ways this can go:

1. We buy him a team, he gets a decent record, maybe to the round of 32, and rides off into the sunset, a hero in his own mind, having "righted the ship".
2. We buy him a team that he mismanages with his archaic basketball schemes and we see another epic fail.

Either way, I really don't see a positive here. Best case: he wins with a team acquired through contrived means, and is still seen as a guy who could not win any other way. Worst case: he's an epic loser of a basketball coach who should never have been hired to begin with.

And if he does manage to win anything at all, he gets a "Roger Maris" asterisk. 

Serious question: WHAT AM I MISSING HERE?

A lot of us don’t believe the “regardless of what happens, he’s gone after next year” part. We live in terror of a 6-10 seed first or second round tourney exit in perpetuity.

 

[JSHoosier]

Woodson has said the 3 isn't a point of emphasis, do people expect that to suddenly change? He runs an offense the way things were when he played.

[str8baller]

3 minutes ago, BlueDevil said:

Bringing in guys that can shoot the 3 can solve a lot of problems.

Yes, but if I were a betting man I’d say it won’t solve enough problems. We’ve actually been ok at making 3’s in Woodys 3 years…really it’s been 1 good year, 1 bad, and 1 average-ish, in that regard. We simply don’t shoot very many.  
 

The other problem is exactly what you pointed out: the other team making 3’s. We give up a bunch of looks from 3 and always have under Woody. I’d argue if you’re not going to shoot a lot of 3’s you’d at least better be good at running the other team off the 3pt line on defense, so you don’t fall into the 2 for 3 trap you described.  
 

We are…not good at that. In fact, everyone here complains about Woody’s attention to the post on offense. I see it the other way: he focuses on the post waaay too much on defense. He has a rim protector every year and then sends guards to help down in the post leading to kick outs and 3’s by the other team.  
 

I don’t understand his philosophy there, and no amount of 3 point shooting, star portal guards will fix that absent a change in philosophy. 

[Hoosierfan2017]

Even when we had a shooter, Woodson barely ran anything to get him shots. Miller Kopp shot 44.4% from 3 his last year at IU and yet he only took 4 per game. Only 3.7 per game during conference play despite shooting 45.2%. 

[IUGRAD06]

8 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Even when we had a shooter, Woodson barely ran anything to get him shots. Miller Kopp shot 44.4% from 3 his last year at IU and yet he only took 4 per game. Only 3.7 per game during conference play despite shooting 45.2%. 

Stated also that it wasn’t his job to get Kopp shots.  Watching UCONN and Purdue run action/screens off the ball for their shooters and then rethinking our offense makes me want to punch things.