Indiana Basketball asked Mike Woodson to resign and then told him: It’s over.

On February 8, 2025By Littum

IU basketball coach Mike Woodson steps down, effective at the end of his fourth season because there can’t be a fifth year. The program would not survive it. The fan base does not allow it.
Woodson made it difficult on Indiana, but he was never one to accept help. He refused to listen to Thad Matta. He fired Dane Fife after a season. WOODSONS WAY OR THE HIGH RIDE: How did it work?
When the season was spiraling out of control, the IU administration fought control over his men’s basketball program from the chairman of the IU Board, formerly Allamerican Guard Quinn Buckner.

Difficult to the end, Indiana Basketball Coach Mike Woodson has been pushed out of a job that he never seemed to understand or embrace. He was men’s college basketball coach at IU in name, if not deed, and brought to Bloomington an NBA mentality that included a minimum of recruitment and all the golf he could play.

Recruits in the state – even those, IU are targeted – will tell you that they hardly knew him. High School trainers in the state will tell you that they didn’t like him much.

Trainer at other colleges around the Big Ten had a nickname for Mike Woodson:

Bigfoot.

Because no one has ever seen him.

When IU announced Woodon’s pending retirement on Friday, it did so without a quote from Woodson. This I meant by the first four words in this story: difficult to the end.

Discussions about the Woodson-IU separation had begun Wednesday and heated Thursday with a message expected in the middle of the afternoon, but then Woodon did what he does:

He disappeared.

Bigfoot was gone. The school was left to wonder: What now?

Should we shoot this guy?

Tom Crean, Archie Miller, now Mike Woodon

One of Mike Woodson’s biggest problems: refuses to accept help.

The school tried to help him in the end help him save face if nothing else by negotiating a way for him to advertise his departure – a pension – it would sound like it had been his idea. This day had come for weeks, starting with back-to-back 25-point loss to Iowa and Illinois in January, where the latter came in Assembly Hall, where the #iUBB fan base turned on for this team as it had turned on Tom Crean and Archie Miller in their last days with responsibility.

In Crean’s case, it was IU to miss the NCAA tournament in 2017 and then reject a chance to host a nit game in the first round and would not have a national TV audience to hear the IU audience boo the IU coach . In Miller’s case, it was thousands of IU fans hanging around to the end of Hoosiers’ loss in the 2021 Big Ten tournament just to boo the team and sing “Fire Archie!”

In both cases the end days were away.

For Woodson, as the losses mounted and fan-wedding grew, the IU administration began to fight control over the gentlemen’s basketball program from the chairman of the IU Board, formerly Allamerican Guard Quinn Buckner. Hoosiers were considered a Preseason Top 25 team and the Big Ten -competitor thanks to a list built with better zero resources than most college basketball programs. The key to it had been the financial network of Woodson’s Rich Alumnus Buddy, Steve Ferguson, the former IU Board of Trustees chair and another layer isolating Woodon from reality.

But IU (14-9, 5-7 Big Ten) had lost five of six on their way into his trip on Tuesday to Wisconsin, and when Badgers drove to a 26-4 lead- and coasted to a 76-64 victory – It was over. Ferguson and Buckner had lost. Woodson was done.

On Wednesday, he admitted the athletic director Scott Dolson that he would retire after the season, but the school’s goal of publishing this announcement in the middle of the day Thursday-Affent two full days before earlier IU student manager Dusty May’s Nr. 22 Michigan Wolverines arrived on Saturday in Assembly Hall – evaporated. Woodson had gone underground.

Around the time, randomly, news about Woodson’s pending retirement was leaked to a national reporter. That slip off the tongue – ups? – Forced Woodson’s hand. There would not come back, no changing plans after the news became public. Woodson was gone, whether he liked it or not. IU had tried to help, but Woodson doesn’t know how to accept help.

It’s been like that since his first days on the job.

Mike Woodson wouldn’t have Thad Matta or Dane Fife

Thad Matta wasn’t Mike Woodson’s idea. Neither was Dane Fife.

IU had insisted on giving Woodson, a NEOPhyt NCAA trainer in 2021, support in the form of Matta for administrative purposes. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo had creepy Woodson to hire Fife, who would return to his Alma Mater, for recruiting purposes. Woodson accepted both.

Woodson froze Matta out and fired Fife after a season.

Employees laugh at the location of Matta’s office in IU that the 2021-22-the longest possible office from Woodson-Da he served as an associate ad for men’s basketball. Today, colleagues honestly do not know if Matta chose it because it was one of the largest rooms in the hall or whether Woodson chose it because he did not want Matta everywhere near him.

FIFE, an IU guard from 1998-2002 that had helped Izzo recruit Indiana from 2011-21, was fired for reasons Woodon has never explained.

None of that prevented Woodson from gathering talent. The help of Ferguson’s zero crowddsourcing had Woodson loaded guards – but the results on the field over the past two seasons showed the interruption between the team’s talent and its scheme, effort and coaching. In that way, albeit in various eras, Woodson replied to former LSU coach John Brady, who was well known as an elite recruits but bad strategic coach.

Woodson arrived in Bloomington, clinging to his NBA performance of a “other device”, where he swapped three starters at one point as if he coached Hawks against jazz. When it failed, he would not have the deficiencies in his second unit philosophy, but of his other unit. But it had worked one time, so …

“If you followed me closely in the NBA, I have always emphasized that the other device is as important as the first device,” Said Woodson After his bench, a 74-52 blow of Uindy burned in October 2023. “If you don’t get it from the first unit, you can go from the second device.”

It was Woodson who clung to the past, enabling success in an exhibition game against a Division II opponent to strengthen his faith -and ignore what happened in real matches against the Big Ten opposition.

“He doesn’t listen to anyone,” an employee said.

Well, not true.

He listened to Armond Hill.

Who trusts at Woodson? Armond Hill

Woodson has had four assistant coaches in his four seasons at IU: His original staff of Kenya Hunter, Fife and Yasir Rosemond and recruitment coordinator Brian Walsh after replacing FIFE after the 2021-22 season. Woodson has had five assistants if you want to count the year Matta has used (far) down the hallway.

But hearing people at IU tell it is Woodson’s audio record and adviser – the only person he wants to listen to – his director of operations: Armond Hill.

Who is Armond Hill?

Woodson’s golf compass with Los Angeles Clippers, where they worked together under head coach Doc Rivers from 2014-18. Hill was an NBA assistant from 2003-2020. Before that, he had been the main coach of Columbia, where he went 72-141 for eight seasons. His last season there, Columbia was 2-25, 0-14 in the Ivy League and Hill was fired.

It’s been Woodson’s right man at IU since the first months of Woodson’s tenure here. And you wonder why it ended up so badly?

Things are, it started so well. Woodson’s first priority when he was hired in March 2021 was convincing Trayce Jackson-Davis to return to his junior season. Jackson-Davis also returned to his senior year, and Hoosiers reached 2022 and ’23 NCAA tournaments in Woodson’s first two seasons. Then Jackson-Davis traveled to the NBA and the ceiling fell in.

Woodson wasn’t much at recruiting athletes in high school, rarely seeing anyone in the state and preferring to use a booster’s private jet to see only recruits elsewhere if there were good golf courses around. He loved going to Las Vegas and other parts of the farthest southwest, for example. Can’t beat the courses out there.

How did he grow his list? Woodson used his fat Nil-Checkbook to get players, including Oregon Transfer Kel’el Ware last season and PAC-12 stars Canaan Carlyle, Myles Rice and Oumar Ballo this season. With Ware, the probable 2025 NBA Rookie of the Year, Hoosiers missed the NCAA tournament. And with Rice and Carlyle, which regresses this season, and the inconsistent ballo that routinely shows poor judgment or effort or both, Hoosiers will also miss the 2025 NCAA tournament.

Deep into the fourth year of Woodson’s tenure, it had become obvious: There could not be a fifth year. The program would not survive it. The fan base does not allow it.

Everyone realized it, even Woodson, but as usual he was the last to know.

Find Indystar -Spaltist Gregg Doyel at Threadsor on Bluesky and twitter on @Greggdoyelstaror at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

More: Join the text interview with sports salaried Gregg Doyel for insight, reader questions and Doyel’s look behind the curtain.