Where to now?
Scott Dolson has a series of decisions to make. With the Mike Woodson era effectively over, it will be up to the Athletic Director and Board of Trustees to decide how to proceed.
The first order of business: formally ending the Mike Woodson era. This will be the first stage for his confrontation with the history of Indiana basketball.
Aside from the moderate success that Woodson experienced in his first two reasons, the main reason he is still employed is his history as a great Indiana player and connection to Bob Knight, the last coach to hang a banner in Assembly Hall.
Since at least the Crean era, a portion of the fanbase had been calling for a Knight disciple to return Indiana to its former glory. If it couldn’t be a former Knight player, somebody from Indiana with an appreciation of the program’s history would suffice.
Woodson checks both of those boxes as one of Knight’s greatest players and graduate of Broad Ripple High School, and four years into his tenure we find ourselves in an untenable situation.
A midseason dismissal could look callous towards a man who accomplished so much for the program and state as a player, but it would save him the embarrassment of fans calling for his firing at home games.
However Indiana navigates the termination of Woodson’s contract – a ‘mutual’ parting of ways wouldn’t surprise me – he’ll once again come face-to-face with Indiana basketball’s history when he has to name a new head coach.
Every day that we get further away from Keith Smart’s game winner in the 1987 National Championship, the pressure in the room grows. This is why Woodson found himself on the hot seat the season after getting Indiana to the round of 32 for the first time in nearly a decade.
Indiana fans want the team to be great again, and they want it to happen fast. Curt Cignetti’s success in year one as the head football coach only increases the sense that the right hire could have things up and running in year one.
The biggest difference between Indiana’s football and basketball programs, though, is history. Cignetti’s season began with half-filled Memorial Stadiums and pleas from the coach himself for fans to buy into this new regime, to believe that the future would be different from the program’s bleak history.
Indiana’s next basketball coach might not see an empty Assembly Hall in his entire first season. Depending on how well he can retain the existing talent and tap into Indiana’s massive basketball NIL war chest, he may very well have a roster that people expect to compete for Big Ten titles. If there’s a grace period, it will be extremely short.
That’s the double bind of Indiana basketball’s history.
The fandom and passion that decades of championship-caliber basketball translates into NIL dollars, sold out arenas, and strong fan presence that gives the program a material advantage that should make it attractive to schools and players alike.
On the other hand, when teams fail to meet historical levels of success, that support turns into animosity. Donations are withheld, boos rain down. The spiral does not stop.
The obvious solution would be to hire somebody who can win in year one while building a culture of sustained winning that does not give fans a reason to be angsty in year three. The problem is, the list of coaches who could do that without a doubt is pretty short.
Unless Dolson can somehow land Brad Stevens, the next hire is going to be under immense pressure from the start. That in and of itself will deter some candidates.
This isn’t to say the fans are the problem or that expectations at Indiana shouldn’t be high, but an acknowledgement of the fact that the pressure of the position makes it more difficult to land the right guy.
If things go right, the new hire will get a chance to rewrite Indiana basketball’s post-2002 history, making all of this a moot point. Until that happens, Scott Dolson and whoever he hires will be going up against what this program once was – a powerhouse.