‘You Win With Good Guard Play’: Mike Woodson Learned From Mistakes Last Season, Landed Rice and Carlyle

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana coach Mike Woodson learned the hard way last season that his team’s guard play didn’t cut it.

Enduring injuries and lacking backcourt depth and talent, Woodson’s third season ended with his first missed NCAA Tournament, a 19-14 record and a sixth place Big Ten finish.

Woodson relied heavily on Xavier Johnson going into the season, but he played in just 20 of Indiana’s 33 games with 13 starts. Even when healthy, he wasn’t the same point guard whose performances down the stretch powered Indiana to the 2022 NCAA Tournament. That thrust freshman Gabe Cupps into a starting role for 22 games, which Woodson did not envision entering the season.

Johnson’s troubles also forced Trey Galloway to handle point guard duties, and he posted career-highs with 10.6 points and 4.6 assists per game. But this adjustment took away the 3-and-D wing role in which Galloway excelled the previous season, shooting 46.2% from beyond the arc, without having a capable replacement. Add a season-long injury to freshman Jakai Newton and a somewhat unexpected one-and-done season from Jalen Hood-Schifino in 2022-23, and Indiana’s guard depth was depleted.

Woodson also left a scholarship open last year that could have been used to add another guard to its transfer class of three front court players: Kel’el Ware, Anthony Walker and Payton Sparks.

“I just didn’t want to get caught in that position again,” Woodson said Wednesday during Indiana’s fundraising event at Huber’s Orchard and Winery in Borden, Ind.

“I’ve learned in this short period of time that I’ve been in college, you win with good guard play. It’s great to have big guys that can play and do the things we’ve had over the last three with the bigs that we’ve coached, but you win with perimeter and guard play – good guard play.”

So when the offseason began, Woodson said he treated it like his NBA days. He tried to construct his Indiana roster to resemble those when he was the head coach of the New York Knicks from 2012-14, when he had lead guards like Jason Kidd, Raymond Felton and Pablo Prigioni.

Woodson pursued two of the top-ranked guards in the transfer portal, Myles Rice from Washington State and Kanaan Carlyle from Stanford. Carlyle is considered the No. 1 combo guard and No. 13 overall transfer by the On3 Industry rankings, and Rice is ranked as the No. 9 point guard and No. 36 overall.

“We brought some pretty good portal players in, I thought, last season, but this year it was wide open,” Woodson said. “It was more wide open in terms of how we evaluated, and we sat down at the end and I kind of treated it like I was back in the NBA.”

“I make our guys rank the top 10 players at their position and rank them, then I make the decision on who I’m going to go get. And if it’s the best player, then we gotta go give it a shot because all they can do is tell us no.”

Both Rice and Carlyle join the Hoosiers with three years of eligibility, and their freshmen seasons in the Pac-12 show promise in both the short and long term.

Rice was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and made the All-Pac 12 first team last year, leading Washington State to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2008 as a No. 7 seed.

He finished the year averaging 14.8 points, 3.8 assists and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 43.9% from the field, 27.5% from 3-point range and 81.1% from the free throw line. He had six 20-plus point games and 12 games with at least five assists, including a season-high 35 points and eight assists at Stanford.

Carlyle worked his way into a starting role at Stanford as the calendar flipped to 2024. He had a breakout 28-point performance against the eventual Pac-12 champion Arizona Wildcats, then scored a career-high 31 against Rice and Washington State.

Across 25.7 minutes per game, Carlyle averaged 11.5 points and 2.7 rebounds while shooting 32% from 3-point range and 77.6% from the free throw line.

“[Rice and Carlyle] are capable of making plays off the bounce,” Woodson said. ‘’They’re capable of making plays for their teammates, and they’re capable of putting the ball in the hole. … We had to really amp up our backcourt and get better, and I thought we’ve done that.”

Though Johnson graduated, Indiana retained Galloway, Cupps, Newton and Anthony Leal and added five-star freshman Bryson Tucker, Rice and Carlyle. Woodson hopes these changes will allow Indiana to avoid the pitfalls from last season.

“I didn’t come into the season thinking I was going to start and play Gabe the minutes that he played, not that he didn’t deserve it and that he didn’t hold his own,” Woodson said. “I thought Gabe had a hell of a freshman year. But we really counted on Xavier to be back after all his injuries that we just thought we had him back, and that crushed us. We never really rebounded from that, we were playing catch up, where we had to mix and match.”

“So I’m pleased with the guys that we brought in, I just gotta put it to work now and get them ready to play.”