Jack’s Take: Mike Woodson a Bob Knight Disciple, But He Has Adapted to Changing Times

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – From game-day traditions to classic uniforms, Indiana recognizes its history as much as any college basketball program in America.

But Indiana went away from coaches with program ties when it hired Kelvin Sampson, Tom Crean and Archie Miller, who’s tenures ended for varying reasons. So when it hired Mike Woodson – a Bob Knight pupil, 1980 Big Ten Player of the Year and the program’s sixth all-time leading scorer – before the 2021-22 season, the idea that he’d bring back foundational principles that Knight used to win three national championships made sense.

Knight was the first person Woodson thanked during his introductory press conference in 2021, crediting him for his knowledge of the game’s fundamentals and how to be a man on and off the floor. But just after Woodson took the Indiana job, almost everything about the college basketball world changed.

The NCAA in April 2021 allowed student-athletes to transfer without sitting out a year, making transferring – two, three or four times in some cases – the new norm. Later that year, the ability for players to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL) further altered the sport, as program’s NIL collectives could legally pay players. These changes have essentially created unrestricted free agency for everyone in college athletics.

Indiana seems to be positioned well for this new era, as the website NIL-ncaa.com ranks Indiana 12th among public universities with an estimated NIL collective funding of $13,631,160 for the 2023-24 school year. That puts Indiana fourth among Big Ten schools, behind football powers No. 2 Ohio State, No. 6 Michigan and No. 11 Penn State.

“This is not like the Bob Knight days where you can build your team over three-four years and trust the process,” Woodson said on May 29 during Indiana’s fundraising event at Huber’s Orchard and Winery.

“Our process now is changing every year because you don’t know who’s coming and who’s going.”

Woodson has utilized the portal to varying degrees in his tenure, adding four to his first roster, then bringing in a four-man freshman class in 2022. He landed three transfers in the 2023 class and five this spring, and he’ll have at least six spots to fill for the 2025-26 roster based on graduating seniors and currently vacant spots alone.

Now entering his fourth season, Woodson’s roster construction strategies show he’s well aware that college basketball is far different from when he played and that he can’t build his program with Knight’s blueprint.

Woodson now has to re-recruit some of his players simply to stay at Indiana while facing the inevitability that some will leave. Transfer portal recruiting simultaneously moves at a pace far more rapid than high school recruiting, which still can’t be ignored. Players who declared for the 2024 NBA Draft had all the way until May 29 to withdraw or stay in the draft, adding another wrinkle to roster building.

Those coaches who balance each of these factors set themselves up for the most success, and that’s all before anyone even takes the floor for the first summer workouts.

“I would love to grow a team with high school kids and they stay with me for four years, man, but those days are gone,” Woodson said. “You get a player that’s disgruntled, ‘Hey, I want more minutes,’ and I’m trying to put a team together, man, that you can’t worry about minutes. It’s gotta be about team.”

“You gotta commit to team and then everything else will take care of itself. That’s with any coach in college basketball, that’s what you gotta navigate because everybody wants to play, everybody wants to go to the NBA. Well, shit, that’s not realistic. You can’t play everybody 40 minutes, and everybody is not going to play in the NBA. That’s being real, from a guy that spent 34 years of his life there. So it’s what it is.”

Following a 19-14 season, which ended with Woodson’s first missed NCAA Tournament in three years, he and his staff had to replace six players. Xavier Johnson and Anthony Walker graduated. Kel’el Ware entered the NBA Draft. CJ Gunn, Kaleb Banks and Payton Sparks entered the transfer portal.

Woodson’s program was in a precarious position, at one point having seven open scholarships and zero high school commitments after five-star recruit Liam McNeeley’s March decommitment.

But from March 28 to May 16, Woodson landed six new players: five-star freshman Bryson Tucker, plus transfers Myles Rice (Washington State), Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Luke Goode (Illinois) and Langdon Hatton (Bellarmine). They join returning Hoosiers Trey Galloway, Anthony Leal, Malik Reneau, Gabe Cupps, Mackenzie Mgbako and Jakai Newton to account for 12-of-13 available scholarships.

“I thought a year ago we brought in – we had some good freshmen that came in and 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 ranking 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.”

Indiana’s incoming transfer portal class is ranked No. 2 in the nation, per 247Sports, behind Arkansas and new head coach John Calipari, who brought a chunk of his Kentucky roster to Fayetteville. This influx of talent has also led to Indiana climbing preseason top-25 rankings, coming in at No. 18 overall in ESPN and CBS’ latest lists.

The importance of embracing these changes is undeniable, but that’s not to say schools with the most transfers or highest NIL budgets will automatically be the most successful. Coaches must still be smart about the kinds of players they’re adding, and they can’t outright neglect high school recruiting.

Take the 2024 National Championship game, for example. UConn coach Dan Hurley started two transfer guards, a five-star freshman and two players he recruited out of high school. Purdue coach Matt Painter is perhaps the most Knight-like in his roster building, with just one transfer on the entire roster and a group full of multi-year developers. But the one transfer, starting guard Lance Jones, proved transfers can help even the programs that least choose to use the portal.

After bringing in just one freshman before the 2024-25 season, Indiana’s recruiting strategy may shift back to focusing more on high school recruits. Some of its main targets attend Indiana high schools, including Jalen Haralson, Braylon Mullins, Trent Sisley and Darius Adams, plus Malachi Moreno from Georgetown, Ky.

“I think they’re talented enough to help us here in the future,” Woodson said. “So we’re still on their doorsteps, we’re still going to AAU and I’m on the phone constantly communicating because we’d like to see them stay here in the state. But again, it’s up to these guys. They’ve been offered a scholarship. I don’t know what more we can do. We can keep hammering home and say, ‘We want you in the uniform, come see us, can we come see you,’ and they still tell us no.”

“So I mean, it’s different. I convert back to when coach Knight asked me to come here and play. It wasn’t so much for the university. I came here because of Bob Knight. Hell, he asked me, gave me an opportunity, shit, I didn’t mess around. ‘I’m coming coach. I’m going to be there wearing an Indiana uniform.’ So I mean, those guys have that opportunity because I have offered them scholarships, and I do want them here, man, and I just gotta keep recruiting them. I can’t quit.”

Having to strike a balance between recruiting high schoolers and the portal is a far cry from how Woodson remembers his playing career, but he knows adaptability is what this day and age requires.

Moving forward, student-athletes will receive even more money, as ESPN reported on May 23 that schools will begin sharing television revenue in the fall of 2025 as long as settlement terms are approved.

“I think anytime you got additional money that goes toward recruiting, it’s going to help,” Woodson said. “We’re in different times, man.”

“It’s not going to change, man, it’s going to be that way for years to come. It’s what it is. I just think as long as the playing field is even for everybody, it should be very competitive if you’re able to go out and recruit and get talent to come in to help you win.”

Woodson’s first three seasons came with ups and downs. It started with an upward trajectory, snapping a five-year NCAA Tournament drought and making the Big Dance in back-to-back seasons as No. 12 and No. 4 seeds, respectively, in his first two seasons.

His third year was a step back, but Woodson embracing and adapting to the modern landscape of college basketball is part of the reason things are looking up again in 2024-25. In Woodson, Indiana fans got the Knight protege they’d been demanding for years. But while he embraces some Knight principles, he recognizes building the championship team he desires must be done in a different way.