Reliving 1980: Mike Woodson's Final Year at Indiana, and the Banner That Got Away
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It's been more than 41 years since Mike Woodson's name has been on an Indiana basketball roster. He played his last game for the Hoosiers on March 13, 1980, a massively bitter 76-69 loss to archrival Purdue in the NCAA Tournament regional semifinals at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky.
Fast forward to Tuesday, and on Nov. 9, 2021, Woodson's name will be on the roster again, but this time as the head coach of his alma mater. He comes home after four decades in the NBA as a player, assistant and head coach.
And now, he's back to restore the glory of Indiana basketball, much as it was in his days, when IU won national titles the spring before he got there, and the spring after he left.
Yes, he was in that class of 1980, the in-between class that left without a banner. But it's very possible that Indiana could have won a title that season had it not been for their best player — senior forward Mike Woodson — needing major back surgery in late December and staging one of the all-time greatest comebacks in college basketball history, winning Big Ten Player of the Year despite playing only SIX GAMES in the league season.
This ''what might have been'' season was one of five that longtime Indianapolis Star reporter Terry Hutchens and I relived in our best-selling 2016 book "Missing Banners.'' We took a deep dive back into the past and looked at five years where the Hoosiers could have won a championship but didn't — 1975, 1993, 2002 and 2013, along with Woodson's final year in 1980 with freshman Isiah Thomas and a cast of some of Hoosier Nation's all-time favorite players.
As a treat for you prior to Woodson's rebirth at Indiana, I thought I would share our three chapters on the 1980 season with you from our book, "Missing Banners.'' It was a great time, and so much fun to write, because Woodson's four years at Indiana from 1976 to 1980 overlapped with my four years as a student journalist as well. Every game that Woodson played during his four years at Indiana, I was there to see it all.
And I'l be there again Tuesday night.
Here's the story of the 1980 season. Enjoy the read.
1980 — Chapter1
Expectations are ingrained in the DNA of every Indiana basketball fan. Every year, it’s all the same. Not five minutes after one season ends, Hoosier fans begin breaking down the next season, dreaming big dreams, sheltering potential concerns and talking the big talk.
It’s how we’re wired. We expect good things. Some years, we expect great things.
That’s what makes the 1979-80 Indiana Hoosiers somewhat unique. They are one of only three Indiana basketball teams ever to be ranked preseason No. 1 in the Associated Press poll – the 1976 and 2013 teams are the others – but the 1980 group is often overlooked as one of the greatest teams in IU basketball history.
And that’s flat-out wrong.
There was plenty of debate when this book project was being put together about which IU team would be the fifth one we’d highlight as a missing-banner candidate. We considered 1975, 1993, 2002 and 2013 as no-brainers. There was discussion back and forth on the guys from 1954, 1960, 1984, 1992 and others, and 1980 wasn’t always the first candidate. There were good reasons for arguments against: No signature nonconference wins, a nondescript Big Ten season outside of the final few weeks, no exciting tournament run. All were valid, but for this one point:
That all could have happened.
“They all sure could have happened,’’ said Steve Risley, a rugged junior forward on that 1980 team. “The potential was definitely there. I mean, seriously, look at that roster. Look, Mike Woodson and Isiah Thomas are two of the greatest players in IU history and we went out there with both of them side by side, feeding off each other’s greatness. We had a ton of other weapons, too.
“It’s just a shame we couldn’t keep it all together for an entire season. We won it all the next year, of course, but much like those ’75 and ’76 talk about, I say the same thing. In my mind, our 1980 team was better than the 1981 team that won it all. We were that good. Well, that good when we were all out there at the same time. That just didn’t happen much. Injuries just killed that team, and when they showed up, we didn’t really respond very well to picking up the slack.’’
IU fans were starving for a title chase that season because success had been fleeting for three years after the great run of the 1976 group that featured Scott May, Quinn Buckner, Bobby Wilkerson and others. In their final three years from 1974 to 1976, that group went 86-6, culminating in the ’76 unbeaten champions, considered by many as the great team in college basketball history.
What followed, probably to be expected in the ebbs and flows of college basketball, was a downward turn. In the next three years, IU went 59-31, didn’t win any Big Ten titles and won only one NCAA tournament game from 1977 through 1979. The 31 losses over a three-year period were substantial. Knight didn’t lose that much at IU until the very end of his 29-year career.
There could have been some inside fixes. Knight, who played the redshirt card very well through the years at Indiana and was a bit of a Big Ten innovator in that area, often admitted that had he started redshirting people sooner in his career, that the lull might not have happened. He often said that if he had redshirted Tom Abernethy and Jim Crews for a year each during that 1975-76 run, that the 1977 team that only had Kent Benson back would have been much better.
Some great recruiting classes during the Knight era never panned out either. That was the case in 1976, when six recruits arrived to Bloomington, all with great acclaim. Mike Woodson and Butch Carter stuck around for four years and Woodson was an all-time great. But other potential stars like Derek Holcomb, Mike Miday and Bill Cunningham soon transferred. Glen Grunwald, the top high school player in Illinois that year, battled injuries throughout his career and wasn’t able to contribute as he and others thought he would.
“Bob (Knight) had a pattern of building a nucleus in one class and then filling in after that,’’ longtime Bloomington Herald-Times sports editor Bob Hammel said recently. “It was that way with the ’93 team when you go back to how it was built in 1989 with (Calbert) Cheaney, the two Grahams (Greg and Pat), and the guys that would contribute there. Matt Nover was a year ahead but redshirted and so he was part of that class, too. Then the next year they added Damon (Bailey) and the next year they added Alan (Henderson). But the nucleus was all in that first year.
“And it was the same with the ’75 and ’76 teams with the Scott May and (Quinn) Buckner and (Bobby) Wilkerson group, and they thought they had the next group in place with Woodson’s freshman year but that one just kind of scattered into the hills and it set everything back for that period a little bit. They needed to regroup and get some things back together.’’
Butch Carter (left) and Mike Woodson were a huge part of Indiana's 1976 recruiting class. IU Archives)
Woodson was spectacular from the day he arrived on the IU campus, but there were very few other bright spots during those three years, which produced 11-, 8- and 12-loss seasons. Most of what got written on a national basis about Indiana basketball during those three years wasn’t pretty.
In fact, it was oftentimes downright ugly.
And that’s never good.
*** ***. ***
Two events served as ugly precursors to the 1979-80 season. One happened during the summer, when IU coach Bob Knight was coaching the U.S. team at the Pan American Games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Knight got into an argument with a police officer before a team practice and he was accused of assaulting the officer. Knight got the “Ugly American’’ tag roped around his neck and Puerto Ricans considered it an insult that Knight basically thumbed his nose at them. He was convicted of a crime in abstentia and sentenced to six months in jail. It was all wildly blown out of proportion. Knight argued vehemently that the police officer lied about the events, that the cop had actually first poked Knight in the eye, and there were plenty of witnesses that agreed with Knight, including U.S. assistant coach Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary Duke coach who had played for Knight at Army and was coaching there at the time. Krzyzewski always had Knight’s back – and rightly so – that Knight was never the instigator in the blow-up.
Bob Knight won national titles in 1976 and 1981 on either end of Mike Woodson's career, and he hated that Woodson left Indiana without a national title. (IU Archives)
Still, it was a negative story, but it was really more about Knight than the players, even though Woodson, Thomas and IU’s Ray Tolbert were also on that U.S. team. The story dragged on for months. Puerto Rican law officials wanted Knight extradited, which was never going to happen, of course. Knight eventually apologized, but it wasn’t roundly accepted by the Puerto Ricans.
The other negative from the previous season ripped right through the IU roster. During a November trip to Alaska for a tournament that included two losses, more than half of the IU players used marijuana. When that came to light for Knight, it tore him apart. In his 2003 biography, he said the event and the subsequent fallout “hit me as hard as anything ever in coaching.’’
Knight kicked three players – Jim Roberson, Don Cox and Tommy Baker – off the team and put the others, who were considered first-time offenders, on probation. That group included Woodson and Tolbert – “some of the best kids I’ve ever had. That was very tough to handle,’’ Knight said.
Thirty-five years later, Risley still calls it the most emotional night of his life when the team gathered at Assembly Hall to deal with it all.
It was that tough.
“That night in the locker room, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in my life,’’ Risley said. “I wasn’t involved in it, and I was grateful I wasn’t, but as teammates, you hated to see all that happen. I think Knight had gotten tired of Jim Roberson and Don Cox. Cox came from Broad Ripple with Woody, but he wasn’t really a good fit with us. It was hard for Tommy Baker. He was a really good player, and I think it was tough on Coach to let him go, too.
“It was finals week, and we all just stayed in there for hours. I mean, players were crying, coaches were crying. It was a tough night. The guys who just got probation, they had to call their parents and talk to them. That was the only way they would get to stay. For those guys, he left the discipline up to the parents.’’
The 1979 team would finish 22-12 and in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten. They got an invite to the NIT tournament and made the most of it, beating state-rival Purdue in the finals at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Three games in a year with Purdue. They were going to get used to that.
***. ***. ***
That was actually a very interesting time in the Indiana-Purdue rivalry. It was, at least for two years, very civil. Even though there was a lot at stake in both 1979 and 1980, animosity was at a minimum. Lee Rose was the new coach at Purdue and he stayed just those two years, but there were no issues between the two programs, even though it was ugly beforehand and would get very ugly again a year after he left.
“During my entire time at Purdue, I never had a cross word with Knight. Not one,’’ Rose said in a 2015 interview. “When I took the Purdue job, I didn’t really know any of the Big Ten coaches. I had heard there had been some problems between the two schools, but when I first saw Coach Knight at the Big Ten coaches meeting, I went up to him and we talked. I said to him ‘I don’t know about what’s gone on before, but you’re not going to have any problems with me. And he said to me ‘You’ve just done something no one else has ever done.’
“It was a nice exchange and we never did have a single issue. I respected the heck out of him as a coach and really enjoyed competing against him.’’
It wasn’t much different with the players.
“We all knew each other so well. We had a lot of Indiana kids, and so did they,’’ Risley said. “We’d play at Hinkle (Fieldhouse) together all summer at Butler and no one even knew we were all there. There’d be a lot of the NBA guys there, too. Magic (Johnson) and (Greg) Kelser would come down and (Larry) Bird was there a lot, too.
“Purdue was really good then, and we were too. We had our battles on the court and it was about as even as it could be during my career. Don’t get me wrong, we always wanted the beat the heck out of them, but there was always plenty of respect between the two of us.’’
The civility even showed with the coaches.
“Any time I ever saw Coach Knight, he was always cordial with me,’’ Purdue’s Rose said. “Even later, when I worked with USA Basketball and whenever I saw Coach Knight there when we were picking teams, we always had nice conversations.
“When we played at IU and lost, I congratulated him and his players. And when we won at Purdue, he even came into our locker room and congratulated my kids. It takes two people to do that. There were a lot of strong personalities in the Big Ten, but I didn’t have a problem with any of them. Especially Bob Knight.’’
Winning the NIT in 1979 was a nice way for all the Indiana players and coaches to end a difficult season. There was hope for the future. IU had plenty of great wing players and talent inside with the big guys.
There was only one thing missing. A point guard.
But he was coming.
*** ***. ***
The recruiting of Isiah Thomas was a national story, even back in those days before the national recruiting websites. Thomas was a Chicago legend from the mean streets on the west side of town that were covered with gangs and guns and drugs. He was the youngest of Mary Thomas’ nine kids and a star in the making. For some, he was the best high school point guard they had ever seen. He had a lot of fans.
Including Bob Knight.
Knight wanted Thomas in the worst way. Thomas was under a lot of pressure to stay home and play at DePaul, the Chicago school that was a national powerhouse back then and had made great inroads in recruiting and keeping Chicago kids. Other Big Ten schools also pushed hard. But Mary Thomas liked that Knight was honest and a disciplinarian, too, just like she was. She knew Indiana would be a good fit for her little boy. The discipline in Knight’s program mattered to her.
“That's how my mom raised me," Thomas told the New York Daily News in 2008. “(Knight) was a lot softer on me. She admired his honesty and discipline. At the time, he was one of only a few coaches who didn't come in and try to bribe my mom. My mom never took the money.’’
It was a perfect fit, right on down to how Knight treated Thomas during his two years in Bloomington.
“What I remember about Coach is how he was yelling at me just like my mother. Every swear word that my mother used, he was using, and I was like, “Have they been talking about me?”
So when Isiah chose Indiana – “it just seems right,’’ he said at the time – Isiah was happy. Mary Thomas was happy. And Bob Knight was very happy.
He had the final piece.
Isiah Thomas played two years at Indiana, first with Mike Woodson in the 1980 season, and then in 1981, where he helped the Hoosiers win a national championship. (IU Archives)
*** *** ***
When they first assembled as a group for the 1979-80 season, the players felt good about chasing a national championship. They had talent at every position, plenty of veteran depth and a great freshman class headlined by Isiah Thomas. “I definitely thought we were that kind of team, the kind of team that could win it all,’’ Risley said. “We had strong senior and junior classes, and we had Isiah coming in. That’s why they picked us No. 1. We were all set to make a run at a title.’’
Thomas, of course, fit right in.
“He was ahead of his time as a young player. He had tremendous talent and skill,’’ junior big man Ray Tolbert said recently. “He had to adjust quickly and buy into Coach Knight’s philosophy and his extreme demands, but he caught on very fast.’’
Sports Illustrated, which was a big deal back then, picked IU to be No. 1. They wanted to come to Bloomington for a photo shoot and story. But Knight, who had had several run-ins with Sports Illustrated reporters in the past, refused to cooperate. The magazine ran a simple cover, with an Indiana jersey with a No. 1 on it, a huge departure from their usual artistic photo covers.
They were ready to go.
“Being ranked No. 1 was a great feeling, but the way Coach Knight saw it was more like a challenge to keep us focused on just playing basketball rather than basking in our newfound success,’’ Tolbert said. “We were looking forward to the challenges of being No. 1, to see if we could match the ‘76 team.’’
So was everyone else in the Hoosier Nation.
1980 — Chapter2
It didn’t take long for the country – or the world, for that matter – to figure out how good this Indiana team really was. In preparation for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the Soviet Union national team was making a November tour through America, playing exhibition games against a dozen or so of the best college basketball teams around the U.S.
Knight had already taken on Puerto Rico in the summer and everyone wondered how he’d handle the Russians. As a precursor to the Olympics, a first-ever World Top 20 basketball poll was released of the top amateur teams across the globe. The Russians were tied at the top in the rankings, not with the U.S. or any other country, but with Indiana University. That’s the respect this team got.
Polls never meant much to Knight, and this one didn’t either. “I think about it the same way I think about most polls,’’ he said at the time. “I don’t think people know what they’re talking about this time of year.’’
But from the opening tip of the game with the Russians, IU earned that respect. They won 78-50 and it wasn’t even that close. Mike Woodson led the way with 28 points, Randy Wittman added 12 and the Hoosiers had five players in double figures. They strategically and methodically picked apart the Russian zone, scoring at will.
The Russians’ best player, Sergei Belov, had the quote of the night in his very-broken English: “Against zone, move move move players, move move move ball.’’
The first three games of the regular season were all romps for the No. 1 Hoosiers. They beat Miami of Ohio 80-52 in the opener, then pounded Xavier 92-66 and UTEP 75-43 to win the Indiana Classic in Bloomington. The only disappointment early was a foot injury to promising freshman forward Steve Bouchie. The 6-8 forward from Washington, Ind., started the opener, but then missed three games.
Knight wasn’t saying many good things publicly, but there were signs of something special brewing. Woodson was scoring well – he had 28, 28, 26 and 32 points in IU’s first four outings – and was named tournament MVP. Even his postgame comments, however, spoke of looking at the bigger picture. “This means a lot to me,’’ he said then, “but a national championship will mean a lot more.’’
The IU guards showed a lot, too. The flashy freshman point guard Isiah Thomas had a great running mate in Randy Wittman, the sophomore from Indianapolis who had burst onto the scene a year earlier. They continued to play well in a tight win over No. 16-ranked Georgetown, winning 76-69 against a very good Hoyas team that shot 63 percent from the field and still lost. Thomas led a pressuring defense that forced 19 turnovers and he scored 19 points, while Woodson added 23. They were a lethal one-two punch. But there were also concerns.
*** *** ***
Injuries were nagging the Hoosiers a bit. Highly thought-of freshman Steve Bouchie – who had been Mr. Basketball in Indiana a year earlier at Washington High School – missed several games after the opener with a foot injury. Wittman had been battling an ankle injury as well and he hobbled onto the floor for the big showdown with No. 5 Kentucky.
It would be Wittman’s last game of the season. He would re-injure his ankle in the second half, and never return.
“Wittman going down, that hurt so much,’’ junior forward Steve Risley said. “He and Isiah were great together as guards. They would have been something really special. They’re two of the smartest players I ever played with and they really loved playing together.’’
Knight always raved about Wittman. He was a standout from the day he got on campus, shining as a freshman in that ’79 season. He was so good that Knight said Wittman had “made the best adjustment from high school to college basketball as any freshman I ever coached.’’
Randy Wittman (24) had a great career at Indiana, but he was injured early in the 1979-80 season and was out for the season. (IU Archive)
The Hoosiers missed Wittman immediately. They lost 69-58 to Kentucky in Lexington. They were called for four illegal screens in the first half and fell behind. Thomas was in foul trouble throughout and Wittman left for good with his injury just two minutes into the second half. Woodson had a rough day, shooting just 4-of-18 and not scoring at all in the second half, a 20-minute segment where they scored only 19 points as a team.
Something didn’t seem right with him.
Indiana beat Toledo in Indianapolis, with Woodson starting at guard alongside Thomas now that Wittman was out. The rotating starting lineups were nothing new. In fact, by season’s end, 12 different players would start a game for IU.
Next up was No. 8 North Carolina on Dec. 22 in Bloomington, but the bad news – the very bad news – came a day earlier. That’s when IU announced that Woodson would miss the game with what was described as a pinched nerve in his back. It ended a stretch of 96 consecutive games played for Woodson. The Hoosiers lost at home 61-57, and didn’t look very good doing it without their leader and best player on the floor.
About the only player Knight was happy with through December was Thomas. The two losses to Kentucky and North Carolina bothered him, of course, but he also wasn’t very happy with how people were playing even in the other wins, many of them routs.
“Thomas has been far and away our most consistent player, which is pleasing but at the same time a little bit distressing from the standpoint that we haven’t been getting that consistency from some of the players who have been around two or three years,’’ Knight said at the time.
But the bombshell came the day after Christmas after tests determined that Woodson had a herniated disc in his back. He underwent surgery in Indianapolis, and his time away from the team was undetermined. It could be a few months, or it could be more. It also could be season-ending. No one at the time really knew for sure.
Knight was devastated. He had seen all the work Woodson put in all summer as part of Knight’s Pan American Games team and had seen how much he cared about having a great senior season.
“I have never felt worse for any player for any reason than I do for Mike, because I think more than any person, I know how much he looked forward to his senior year,’’ Knight said at the time.
Woodson averaged 21 points a game in the first six games, but he was never playing at 100 percent. He would wind up missing 15 games, six of which would be Indiana losses. A once-promising season fell apart quickly.
“When Woody got hurt, it threw us all off. We had a guy or two who didn’t play team ball,’’ Risley said. “It was a very cliquey team and without Woody, well, we missed his leadership. We never got to the point where all 12 of us shared the same team goals. It’s kind of like racing. It takes everybody on the team to win. We didn’t really have that, and it’s too bad.’’
***. *** ***
With Woodson and Wittman gone, Isiah Thomas had to take over the team and he was more than capable. He hit a game-winner to beat Tennessee 70-68 right after Woodson’s surgery, scoring 20 for the first time in his IU career and surviving a quick benching after committing six turnovers in the first half. He also had magical moments once the Big Ten season started.
“Isiah was such a charismatic person. And when Woody went out, he became our engine,’’ Risley said. “He did a fabulous job on the court. Even though he was a freshman, we never looked at him like that. He was a leader from the beginning.
“Isiah had all these great individual skills, but he was completely a team guy. He was a team-first guy for sure. When we lost Woody, we lost our rock, but Isiah stepped right in. He’d speak up in the locker room all the time, which you just don’t see in a freshman. He carried us, that’s for sure.’’
Or tried to. It would take some time for Thomas to adjust to Woodson being gone.
The Big Ten season started with a thud, with a one-point loss at No. 5 Ohio State (59-58) and a 52-50 loss at Wisconsin to quickly fall into an 0-2 hole in the league. Thomas had 15 points against Buckeyes, but had been burned several times gambling too much on defense. Against Wisconsin, he shot just 6 of 22, playing all 40 minutes and trying to do too much on his own.
They bounced back with four straight wins, beating Michigan, Michigan State and No. 13 Iowa at home and Northwestern on the road. Thomas had only six points against the Wolverines, but added eight rebounds and eight assists. He had 19 against Michigan State and started to look a little more comfortable running the show.
Against Iowa, he had 14 points and 13 assists and was in constant attack mode. That wasn’t all good, because he picked up three charging fouls and had to spend a good bit of time on the bench. But the win at Northwestern was special. Thomas, coming home to Chicago, scored a career-high 28 points. “We knew he was ready tonight,’’ Knight said at the time. “He got off the plane smiling.’’
They fell to 4-3 in the conference with an ugly loss at Minnesota, scoring a season-low 47 points in a rough 55-47 defeat. Thomas scored only four points on 2 of 4 shooting, once again dealing with foul trouble from the start. He picked up his fourth foul with 13:22 to go in the game and wasn’t a factor. It was becoming troubling that this team just wasn’t very good offensively if Thomas wasn’t at his best. Foul trouble was killing him, and no one else in the backcourt was filling the gap.
IU came home to beat Purdue (69-58) and Illinois (60-54) but then went to Purdue and lost 56-51. Thomas picked up three fouls in the first three minutes and didn’t score until only 10 minutes remained in the game. He finished with 12 down the stretch, but only played 22 minutes.
“It was a good thing we were playing Isiah as a freshman that year,’’ Purdue coach Lee Rose said recently. “He was a great player, and he was way better than next year. But as a freshman, he was so aggressive and always pushing things so hard that it would get him in trouble sometimes. That happened against us in the game at home. He was in big foul trouble almost immediately.’’
It happened again at Illinois. After an easy win at home against Northwestern, the Hoosiers went to Champaign and got clobbered 89-68. Thomas again was in early foul trouble and wound up playing only 29 minutes, scoring 13 points. There had been some talk early in the week that Woodson might return for the Illinois game, just six weeks after his surgery. Doctors opted to wait another week and it once again showed on the court. When Thomas was good, the Hoosiers had a good chance to win. But whenever he was shackled with foul trouble, the Hoosiers couldn’t score enough without him on the floor.
The Hoosiers were 7-5 in the Big Ten and back in the middle of the pack, although no one else was running away with a big lead. They would all come to regret that.
Help arrived on Feb. 14 when Woodson returned from his back surgery to face the Iowa Hawkeyes in Iowa City. He had been practicing lightly for a week and looked good when he was out there. When he got the green light, he was ready to go. Everyone was glad to have him back on the floor. They had all seen what he had been going through. The pain of rehab had been immense … and intense.
“Woody came back, but we brought him back too early. Knight probably should have never let him play, but Woody was such a team guy that he wanted to do anything he could to help us,’’ Risley said. “He made such a gallant effort to play, but it was so obvious he was in an enormous amount of pain. It may have looked like he was 100 percent, but he was nowhere close.’’
It took everything Woodson had just to play in a game. He was hurting so bad that he couldn’t practice most days. There were times where he’d play a game, stay in bed for two days sacked in pain, and would play another game and be the best player on the court.
“We all did whatever we could to help him. No one minded that he couldn’t practice,’’ Risley said. “ We never let him drive. I’d go pick him up. We’d bring him food, run errands for him, lots of us or his girlfriend, who later became his wife. He’d play in a game, but then he couldn’t even move for two days.
“I think Coach Knight felt bad too. He’s a human being and he saw how much Woody was hurting. But he also saw that Woody wanted to play, wanted to do whatever he could to help us. That’s just the kind of guy Woody was. I’ve known him since I was 13 years old, and he’s just the best guy. Not only did he want to win so badly, but he always wanted to do anything he could to help us too.’’
He came back with a vengeance. And his teammates fed off his return.
The Iowa game was tough. The Hawkeyes were very good – they would reach the Final Four later that year – and always tough to beat at home. Woodson played 39 minutes in what Knight called “one of the guttiest performances you’re ever going to see’’ that night. Thomas added 14 points – and 30 stitches – in an impressive 66-55 win.
Thomas got the stitches diving for a loose ball and cracking heads with an Iowa opponent. Seeing it up close from 10 feet away was scary.
Woodson reminisced about it years later in an interview when talking about Thomas’ toughness as a teammate.
“My first game back, it’s a close game and right before the half, there’s a loose ball, Isiah’s racing for the ball, another kid’s racing for the ball and they collide heads. It’s like a gunshot went off. I get over to Isiah, he’s on his knees, he looks up at me — I could see down in his head. His head just exploded! He goes in at halftime, he gets 30 stitches. Today, that’s a concussion, you don’t play. He came back, played with 30 stitches and we win the game.
“That’s one tough kid.’’
Thomas always said the same thing about Woodson. In a story that’s been shared often, Thomas harkened back to that Knight in Iowa City four years earlier the night he was named MVP of the NBA All-Star game. Asked the if winning MVP had been his biggest thrill in basketball, he replied, “My biggest thrill was watching Mike Woodson come back from back surgery and hit his first three shots at Iowa.’’
Yes, that’s how much Woodson’s return meant to his pals.
Woodson followed up that debut with 24 points in 39 minutes against Minnesota in a 67-54 win in Bloomington. He was named Big Ten Player of the Week. The Hoosiers, who had been unranked prior to Woodson’s return, suddenly reappeared at No. 13. They even got one first-place vote — a first-place vote after being unranked — in the coaches’ poll, from Michigan coach Johnny Orr.
Call it the Woodson respect factor.
IU won at Michigan State five days later. Woodson played all 40 minutes, scoring 20 points in the 75-72 victory. Thomas also played 40 minutes, which was just as amazing considering he needed more stitches to close a cut over his eye after he was assaulted by a student in his dorm room. He fell after being hit and struck his head on a table on the way down.
They concluded the road trip with an impressive 65-61 win against Michigan in Ann Arbor. Woodson once again played 40 minutes, scoring 24 points. Steve Risley had a huge game in 15 minutes of playing time, including a big outlet pass right on the money to Woodson late to seal the win. They came home and beat Wisconsin (Woodson 16 points in 39 minutes), setting up a winner-take-all scenario for the Big Ten title on the last day of the season in Bloomington against Ohio State.
***. ***. ***
Indiana won 76-73 in overtime against the No. 9 Buckeyes to win the Big Ten title outright. Woodson played every minute, gutting it out until the end. It was an amazing six-game run for Woodson and the Hoosiers, who passed five teams in the Big Ten race to win the title outright in a year no one thought that was possible.
“They beat Ohio State the last day of the season in what amounted to a playoff game. I think it may have been the greatest game I ever saw at Assembly Hall,’’ said Bloomington Herald-Times sports editor Bob Hammel, who’s seen just about every game played in the 40-plus years that Assembly Hall has been around. “You look back at the lineups, and I think seven of the starters that day went on to play in the NBA. And that didn’t include Wittman. But both teams just had terrific players and it was a game for the ages, with IU winning in overtime.’’
A few weeks later, Mike Woodson was named the Big Ten MVP in a landslide. He had only played six of 18 games, something no MVP had ever done. Think about it, he played a third of his team’s games and was still MVP in a league that was loaded with great teams and great talent.
“When Mike came back, we knew that things were looking successful again,’’ IU center Ray Tolbert said recently.
IU would finish the regular season ranked No. 7 in the final poll. They were unranked three weeks earlier. Woodson was back … and those dreams of a national title were back, too.
It was time for the NCAA tournament to start and the Hoosiers were back in the conversation when it came time to talking about title contenders. They saw the brackets and smiled. The path to the Final Four was going to very interesting.
Four months earlier, that’s all they would have ever asked for.
Steve Risley and Mike Woodson (42) celebrate after beating Ohio State on the final day of the 1980 regular season to win the Big Ten title. (IU Archive)
1980 — Chapter3
Back in 1980, the NCAA tournament had 48 teams, which meant the top four seeds in each regional got a first-round bye. Indiana was placed in the Mideast Regional as the No. 2 seed and was sent to Bowling Green, Ky., for the first week. Kentucky was the No. 1 seed, and went to Bowling Green as well.
The Hoosiers went into that first week of the tournament brimming with confidence, with just one small concern.
“The way those last three weeks went so well with Woody back, we felt like we could beat anybody,’’ IU forward Steve Risley said. “To win six tough games in a row like we did to come back and win the Big Ten, that really had us ready. We were ready to make a run. Those championship aspirations we had at the beginning of the season, they were back. Sure they went away for a while in the middle of that season, but they were definitely back. Woody had been that sensational.’’
The concern? Back then, the NCAA didn’t have any restrictions about teams playing on their home court in the tournament. The first-round game that set Indiana’s opponent was No. 7-seed Virginia Tech against No. 10-seed Western Kentucky. Even though Western Kentucky was the lower seed, the Hilltoppers were playing on their home court in Bowling Green. A win would give them the Hoosiers … on their home court.
Crazy things can happen in those scenarios. IU didn’t really want that to be an option. They were somewhat relieved when Virginia Tech won, taking Western Kentucky out of the picture by erasing an 18-point deficit in the second half.
The Hokies proved to be no match for IU in the second round, with the Hoosiers winning 68-59. Virginia Tech fell behind quickly, too, trailing 26-12 and could never catch up. Indiana made its free throws down the stretch, hitting 10-of-12 to stave off a rally. Isiah Thomas led the way with 17 points. Butch Carter had 16, Ray Tolbert added 14 and Mike Woodson scored 13 points.
Kentucky won too, sending both of them to opposite brackets of the regional semifinals in Lexington, Ky,.
Rupp Arena in Lexington … Kentucky’s home court.
But the crazy scenarios did play out at the other Mideast Regional site in West Lafayette, Ind. Purdue was just the No. 6-seed in the region, but the Boilermakers got to play their first two NCAA games on their home court. After dispatching No. 11-seed LaSalle in the first round at Mackey Arena, Purdue upset No. 3-seed St. John’s, which had a very good team that year. The St. John’s people did a ton of bitching afterward about having to play Purdue on its home court. (The NCAA stopped the process a few years later).
Purdue got what it wanted, surviving and advancing the first week with a huge prize at the end, a rematch with Indiana in the regional semifinals in Lexington. It would be their sixth meeting in 14 months, a stretch of showdowns unmatched in the long history of the rivalry.
“We had great battles with Indiana, and that was really rare, playing three times in a year. It was very rare to do it two years in a row,’’ former Purdue coach Lee Rose said recently. “It was a big thing for us going into the next season that our previous year had ended with that loss to Indiana at the NIT in 1979.
“It left a bad taste in the kids’ mouth, all of them. There was a certain amount of carryover from that. And it even still carried over into the postseason, definitely. When we were getting ready to play Indiana in the tournament, what happened the previous year came up often. We didn’t want them ending our season again.’’
And the last thing Indiana wanted, of course, was for Purdue to end its season either. It was going to happen to somebody. Indiana looked at it this way: They were a weekend away from advancing to the Final Four and all that stood in the way were their two biggest rivals, Purdue and Kentucky. Winning a regional to get to a Final Four was always sweet, but this was going to be over-the-top sweet, a three scoops of ice cream, covered in sprinkles, covered in hot fudge kind of sweet.
Purdue and Kentucky, in Lexington no less. How great was that?
Oh, and Duke was there too. Had to have a fourth, you know.
Purdue coach Lee Rose (left) gives instructions to center Joe Barry Carroll during the 1980 season.
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The atmosphere around Lexington was incredibly intense, like no regional ever seen since. Rupp Arena held 23,000 fans and change but there were easily more than 100,000 basketball fans in town all weekend. Big Blue Nation was out in force, of course. The Wildcats were back, having won the 1978 NCAA title and convinced – as they always are – that this 1980 title was soon to be theirs as well.
The red-clad IU faithful were out in full force too, invading Lexington in waves. Thousands of people came without tickets to the game, just to be there and, more importantly, to say they were there to all their friends back home.
It was all that important.
“That was one of the most incredible settings for a regional tournament that I had been around,’’ longtime Louisville sportswriter Billy Reed said recently. “Indiana and Kentucky were both very good and everyone expected them to meet in the finals. I mean, they were the top two seeds. The UK fans were out in force, of course, because the games were in Lexington, but the IU fans showed up in the thousands too.
“There were people everywhere, and everybody wanted tickets. There were some high dollars being paid for tickets that week.’’
Everyone was looking forward to the weekend’s IU-Kentucky showdown of No. 1 vs. No. 2. There was no doubt the IU fan base was, and so were the players.
“We wanted another shot at Kentucky because of the way they had beaten us earlier in the year,’’ Risley said. “Woody was really hurting then — he had his back surgery a week later — and Wittman went out for good in that game, too. With Woody back, we felt we were better than they were.
“But I’ll also tell you this. We would never look past Purdue. Never. Our total focus was on that game. We knew the challenge we had with them.’’
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As you would expect with such a huge gathering of natural rivals, a lot of this was personal, too. It certainly was for Lee Rose, the Purdue coach. Lexington was home to him, born and raised. He had first made a name for himself as an anonymous head coach at North Carolina-Charlotte, taking them to the Final Four in 1977 as a relative unknown.
No here he was with his Purdue team just a few years later, back in his hometown again. (UNCC also advanced to the Final Four by winning a regional in Lexington).
“I was from Kentucky, I went to school right there at Transylvania in Lexington, and UK,’’ Rose said. “My daddy died young, but my mother was there and it was really nice for me, because she couldn’t get to many games. That was big. It was a great experience.’’
It meant a lot to Billy Reed, too. Anything IU-Kentucky was big, but having the Lee Rose angle was nice for him, too. Local boy made good was a nice story, and they were friends as well.
“For me, the story that weekend was Lee Rose because we had been friends for a longtime. Lee grew up in Lexington and we both went to Transylvania College. He’s a really good man and I was rooted for him, quietly of course,’’ Reed said. “Lee came from a very, very poor background and grew up maybe a driver and a wedge from Rupp Arena. He worked so hard for everything he’s accomplished in his life.
“He had a good team that year, but I think everyone still expected Indiana to win that game. They had been playing really well coming into the tournament. For Lee, this was a dream opportunity, to beat Indiana and Kentucky in Lexington and get to a Final Four. That was special.’’
And that’s why they play the games.
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When you’ve played a team five times in 14 months, it’s not easy to surprise them with anything. Lee Rose knew that. So did Bob Knight. Sure, there would be tweaks here and there, but this IU-Purdue matchup in the regional semifinals was going to be all about execution.
“Playing Indiana so often, it’s not like there were a lot of adjustments you can make. We knew them so well, just like they knew us. You might throw a little defensive wrinkle in there, maybe drop a defender off on somebody now and then, but that’s about it. It’s all about executing after that. You’re not going to fool Knight with anything, and he wasn’t going to fool me either. You had to bring your A-game, and we brought it for sure. We stuck to our game plan all the way through.
“We had a game plan that we had a lot of confidence in. We just wanted to keep throwing it in to (center Joe Barry Carroll) every time and force Indiana into some tough decisions, some tough double teams,’’ Rose recalled. “He played great and also did a great job of passing out to his teammates. We got a lot of good looks in that game and we shot really well early. Joe was outstanding. Everyone played well.’’
Purdue kept control of the game through most of the first half, pushing its lead to nine points at the half. “We just came out flat and lethargic,’’ IU’s Ray Tolbert said recently.
On the way into the locker room, Knight was giving the officials an earful. He ranted and ranted and ranted, and when he finally went too far, they gave him a technical.
Then his blood really came to a boil.
“After that technical, he comes into the locker and throws a Gatorade bottle against the wall — and it just explodes,’’ Risley said. “It wound up getting all over him. He had this light blue shirt on, but it was soaking wet and it got all dark. He coached the whole second half with Gatorade dripping off of him.’’
Purdue came out and made both free throws on the technical, and then scored on their first possession. Suddenly the Boilermaker’s nine-point lead had grown to 13.
The Knight technical was a huge turning point in the game.
“No question it was. I thought that issue at the half was really big,’’ Rose said. “When we came back out, we hit the shots and then scored right away to go up 13. From there, we quickly got it to 20, we were playing so well. They made a run at the end, but we had a big enough cushion to handle it. I thought that issue at the half was really big.’’
It’s difficult to chase down a good team from behind. Eight or nine points is one thing, but 13 is tough. And 20 is even tougher.
“Once we fell behind, we just couldn’t get it all back,’’ Risley said. “When you fall behind against top-level teams, it’s really hard to catch up.
“By the time we got to the Purdue game, Woody was completely wiped out. He was running on empty, and it was a very physical game. He didn’t have any miracles left. With Woody hurt, we just didn’t have enough firepower to get back in it.’’
Freshman sensation Isiah Thomas tried. He led a late furious rally to try to get the Hoosiers back into it. He finished with 33 points, but the Hoosiers came up short. Their season – and Woodson’s career – ended with a 76-69 loss. Woodson finished with 14 points, and no one else had more than six.
“Isiah just took over and did all he could. We all did. But they were really good,’’ Risley said.
Rose has enormous respect for Thomas and his performance that night. But he also reminded everyone that he got 40 points from his starting guards, Drake Morris and Keith Edmonson, who had 20 points each.
“He scored a lot, and he was just terrific, but our guards scored a lot as well,’’ Rose said. “We neutralized them, I thought, in the backcourt and they didn’t have an answer for Joe. We were scoring pretty well and they just couldn’t keep up.’’
To a man, every IU teammate appreciated all that Woodson had sacrificed for them. He gave it his all.
“Unfortunately, Mike just ran out of gas coming back so soon from all of the rehab and pounding his body took through that period of the Big Ten 10 push,’’ Tolbert said. “He just didn't have that same energy to lead us like he normally would have.''
The six games in 14 months between these two arch-rivals were so even. Both teams won three times. Both teams knocked out the other in a postseason tournament. Indiana scored 353 points, Purdue 351.
“You can’t get any more even than that,’’ Rose said.
But in the only NCAA tournament game the two schools have played, it’s Purdue that gets to claim the upper hand. They’re 1-0.
“Rose and Purdue beat Indiana in a great game. He had his kids really well prepared and everything they tried against Indiana worked,’’ Billy Reed said. “That was a coach’s dream come true that night, beating your biggest rival in the tournament, in the city you grew up in. He was really proud of that game.’’
All the Kentucky fans in the building loved watching Purdue beat Indiana in the first semifinal that night. They cheered for the Boilers as hard as they cheered for their own team. But their arrogance and crassness disappeared quickly a few hours later when a very pedestrian Duke team upset the Wildcats on their home floor.
The Indiana-Kentucky showdown everyone expected never happened. Both of them lost.
“That was such a strange night, with both Indiana and Kentucky losing,’’ Reed said. “You could just see all the air get sucked out of that building. It was such a terrific setting for a regional, but no one expected it to turn out that way, with Purdue and Duke knocking off the big boys.
Purdue beat Duke two days later in a half-empty Rupp Arena to advance to the Final Four. It was one of the most special moments of Rose’s career, winning a regional in Lexington, especially at the expense of Indiana fans. The Boilermakers would lose to UCLA in the national semifinals and Rose would leave Purdue a few weeks later to take a job at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
His time was short at Purdue, but he made his mark. Purdue fans will always have that, the 1-0 record against Indiana in the NCAA tournament. “Winning that day in Lexington, it was really special beating Indiana,’’ Rose said.
We’ll give them that. We have all of our NCAA championships, of course, and they have none. Purdue, in case anyone needs reminding, has not been back to the Final Four since then.
The 1980 Indiana Hoosiers. Mike Woodson is in the front row, on the left.
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Woodson finished his career at Indiana with 2,061 points. At the time, despite missing those 15 games, he finished second on the all-time IU scoring list behind only Don Schlundt (2,192). Based on his scoring average, those 15 games probably cost Woodson at least 300 points. Had he stayed healthy, he would have certainly passed Schlundt and the Big Ten record-holder at the time, Purdue’s Rick Mount (2,333).
Woodson was that good. And it’s a shame he didn’t leave Indiana with a ring. If anyone should have, it was him. He gave IU all he had, playing through enormous pain and fatigue during his senior year. IU went on to win a national title the next year, but Woodson could only watch from afar. Happy for his friends –very happy – but without a title himself. It’s one of the great injustices in IU basketball history.
“That was the worst part of it all, Woody not getting a ring. He deserved it so much. I always felt guilty that I got one and he didn’t,’’ said Risley, who had grown up in Indianapolis and had known him since he was 13 years old. “I don’t think any of us would have minded if Coach had given Woody a ring the next year. For every one of us, he meant that much to us as a player, as a person and as a teammate.
“He’s really one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known.’’
That’s a great way to be remembered. Thousands of Hoosiers fans feel the same way.
“When you look at that 1980 team and the fact they had the Pan Am experience with Woodson and Tolbert and Thomas, and I really believe Woodson was on his way to becoming the national player of the year. He was off to a great start,’’ longtime Bloomington Herald-Times sports editor Bob Hammel said recently. “They had a chance to be one of the great Indiana teams ever. Woodson was such a premier player and Thomas was emerging in the backcourt and Tolbert was developing, too, at a very quick rate. You look at their scores before the injuries and they were just killing people.’’
“Woodson was back, but by (the NCAA tournament) he was just worn out. He had just stretched himself way too thin.’’
But that effort to try – and play so well – will never be forgotten. It’s why Mike Woodson is one of Indiana’s all-time favorite players.
There could have been many more banners in Assembly Hall. These five years, thanks to a little Photoshop work, were chronicled in the book "Missing Banners'' by Terry Hutchens and Tom Brew.
How to order your copy of "Missing Banners''
"Missing Banners'' was written by longtime Indiana writers Terry Hutchens and Tom Brew and was published in 2016 by Hilltop30 Publishing Group, LLC. The book is still available both in bookstores and online.
If you've enjoyed this three-chapter treatment of the 1980 season, you might also enjoy three chapters each on the 1975, 1993, 2002 and 2013 teams, but a chapter on why the banners mean. so much to Indiana fans and players alike, and a chapter on several other Indiana teams that we left out.
Here's how to get your copy of the book:
- AUTOGRAPHED COPY: If you would like an autographed copy of the book. simply email Tom Brew at tombrew@hilltop30.com.
- AMAZON.COM: The link to order the book on Amazon.com is here. CLICK HERE
