Saturday felt like the end, not just for Mike Woodson but for an era of Indiana basketball

Posted by author February 8, 2025 Basketball

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Saturday’s loss to Michigan felt secondary for Indiana basketball. A strange day included IU’s newest favored son downplaying his interest in the Hoosiers.
It felt like an end of an era for Indiana basketball, though what happens next is going to be as important as anything for a sleeping giant with storied history.

BLOOMINGTON — The iconic old arena that’s seen more odd moments than glorious ones in the last two decades added a new core memory Saturday. One ultimately made remarkable by how unremarkable it was.

On the court, No. 22 Michigan eased its way to an 18-point lead it then proceeded to throw away, before fending off a furious late comeback to defeat Indiana basketball 70-67. That makes this the Hoosiers’ first five-game losing streak in four years but its fifth in Big Ten play just in the last eight, a number which tells a certain story.

Not one nearly as awkwardly compelling as what happened everywhere but the playing floor Saturday. An Assembly Hall conflicted over exactly how it should feel watched in worried fascination across the course of an afternoon when it felt like fans of this storied yet tired program decided they were simply ready to move on.

From this season, yes, that’s slipping so steadily away from all its preseason promise.

A team once expected to compete for a Big Ten title is now trending instead toward the Big Ten tournament bubble. All the ambition stemming from a summer spent trawling the transfer portal with a substantial NIL number, the hope born out of an exhibition win at Tennessee, evaporated. Replaced by a team now apparently buckling under the weight of its failure.

“We haven’t been the same team for a while,” IU coach Mike Woodson said. “For whatever reasons, we’ve dug a hole. I’ve done a terrible job of putting them in the best position possible to win, I think. Emotionally, these kids have taken a beating a little bit.”

Indiana (14-10, 5-8 Big Ten) dug itself another hole it could not quite climb out of Saturday, though it certainly tried.

The Hoosiers rallied from down 18 late in the first half and down 16 at halftime to tie the game with a little more than four minutes left. Mackenzie Mgbako and Malik Reneau punished Michigan with some of their crispest combined offense this season. It was certainly Reneau’s best game since his injury.

But IU also never led. Michigan (18-5, 10-2) found the right combination of stops and scores, and crucial free throws, and an Anthony Leal halfcourt heave at the buzzer going down only served to upset some of Saturday’s bolder bettors by cutting the final margin of defeat in half.

Indiana was meant to be so deep and talented it would simply be able to out-option anyone. Reinforcements always available, a solution for every problem.

Instead, this team has evolved into a figurative jack of all trades, yet master of none. Woodson seems to settle on a different best lineup every night. Performances burn hot and cold. There are some constants but rarely enough, and the results are what you’d expect from the inconsistency.

“Seven games is a lot of games,” Woodson said, referencing the rest of the regular-season schedule. “We’re still trying to play to stay in the Big Ten Tournament, and then see where that takes us, but we’ve got to start winning some games here soon to do that.”

The thought alone there says a lot about why — with Woodson now officially stepping down when it is over — Saturday felt like a conscious uncoupling for this fan base from what’s left of this season.

And perhaps something more.

Everyone collectively showed up Saturday wondering just how weird things might get, with Woodson’s future confirmed Friday and Dusty May, Indiana’s new favored son, bringing Big Ten-contending Michigan to town.

The strangeness turned out to be that nothing was strange. Other than a healthy round of applause for May, a former IU manager and Bloomfield native, pregame, the building mostly just cheered when there was something to cheer for, and then left.

May poured as much cold water on speculation linking him to his alma mater — the job now guaranteed to come open this spring — as he could afterward. But that was basically it. No theatrics. No grand pronouncements. No fireworks.

Woodson wouldn’t even really address the decision-making process that led to Friday’s news. The closest he came was in admitting the 25-point home loss to Illinois on Jan. 14 during which the atmosphere inside Assembly Hall turned angrily against his bench.

“You can look at it in all kinds of ways,” he said. “I thought at that time we were playing pretty good basketball … and then all hell broke loose. We just haven’t been the same.”

That was probably as close as he got to walking backward through the weeks leading up to his decision to step down at season’s end. And it’s probably as close as his fan base will ever really ask him to go.

Saturday’s overriding tone as the building emptied was one of a page being turned. This, in IU fans’ hearts and minds, is all but over now. There are games left to play but the emotional cord has been cut. What’s next is what matters.

Intended or otherwise, Woodson felt like a last roll of the dice for an old way of thinking about this program, its history and its future. IU had tried so much else. Give a member of the family a chance to try and restore some of that culture that produced so much success across Bob Knight’s 29 years.

Woodson both represented that, and embraced the idea that he did.

He brought other former players with him. Randy Wittman is often around the program. Isiah Thomas sometimes as well. Former teammates spoke to his players as recently as Saturday. Before every practice, he tells his team to face the five national championship banners hanging from Assembly Hall’s north rafters as a reminder of the ultimate goal here.

That goal won’t change with his exit. But it does feel like something will. Like this will be a final detaching for Indiana basketball from any perceived fealty to that history. Even the links to May start first with his success as a coach, not the stamp on his diploma.

From this point forward, whatever IU basketball makes of itself will belong to its present and future.

Maybe that will prove healthier and more successful than what across the last quarter century has amounted to a steady regression away from relevance at the top of the conference and college basketball writ large. Maybe it won’t.

But everyone who showed up waiting for a spectacle on Saturday instead witnessed an ending — not of a game or a season, but of a place in time. Wherever IU basketball goes next, it does so untethered from the weight of a past that has far too rarely done its future any good.

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