Todd’s Take: Lack Of Urgency Has Ailed Indiana In Mike Woodson Era

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Did you know that Indiana led by three points with just over five minutes left in the first half at Iowa on Saturday? In the wake of the debacle that was the 85-60 defeat at the hands of the Hawkeyes, it’s completely understandable if you forgot about it.

I would have forgotten about it too, but for one thing I recalled as the game played out.

After the Hoosiers took a 28-25 lead with 6:38 left in the first half, Iowa went on a 16-0 run that effectively decided the game.

As Iowa cranked up its engines, I wondered what Mike Woodson might do from the sideline to stem the tide. Anyone who watches their share of basketball knows that when a home team gets on a run, it’s very hard to stop the bleeding.

However, rather than nip the Iowa run in the bud with a timeout, Indiana got caught buying the fool’s gold of a couple of empty Iowa possessions after the Hawkeyes took a two-point lead.

That didn’t last. Iowa’s Drew Thelwell converted a layup to put Iowa up four. After an ill-advised 3-point attempt by Indiana’s Kanaan Carlyle, Brock Harding hit a 3-pointer to put Iowa up 35-28.

Then the 30-second timeout was called by Indiana, but it was too late. Iowa, already with 10 unanswered points, was rolling, and with a home crowd behind them the timeout was too late to change the dynamic for Indiana.

The Hawkeyes scored six more unanswered points and Indiana never recovered.

Typically, I don’t like to pick on in-game decisions. Having watched thousands of games, I know that picking on in-game decisions is to stroll on thin ice.

I’m making an exception in this case, because I think it goes to the heart of the issue when it comes to Woodson and his time at Indiana.

There is no sense of urgency. The timeout is one very micro example of what is a larger macro problem.

In every phase of the program, this lack of urgency exists and it's been that way for several seasons now. Recruiting? Indiana gets in the door with highly touted recruits but isn’t able to close the deal. When it comes to having an identity forged in the offseason? Indiana never has it. When it comes to treating every game with its proper importance? I don’t see it.

I think lack of urgency comes to Woodson honestly. Either as a player or as a coach, Woodson spent 41 years in the NBA. It’s a longer season and more of a marathon than the comparative sprint in college basketball. The NBA has a different way of doing things, and some of it runs counter to how college basketball works.

Take the team identity component. I’ve covered Woodson-coached Indiana teams for three years, and the first two months of the season are always the same.

“What’s the identity of this team?” Woodson is asked.

“Too early to tell,” says Woodson in response.

That absolutely cannot be the answer in college basketball. The head coach is integral in forming the identity of the team. It comes from a philosophy of how you want to play, which flows into how to construct a roster, which then goes into recruiting the pieces you want to make it all work.

There will always be tweaks as a season goes along, but the actual identity of a team should be forged during the offseason.

Not only should everyone be on the same page, there shouldn’t be a page at all. The identity flows from the principles of the head coach, which translates to a like-minded staff and players who buy into all of it. See Indiana football and Curt Cignetti for an example of how it’s supposed to be done.

Besides, the days where you rolled a ball out for the first practice in October is long gone. Teams work out constantly during the offseason. Even in the era of NIL-influenced mercenary transfer portal pieces, there is no excuse for not having a team identity going into game one.

In the NBA, those principles also apply, but you have 82 games to sort through things. November and December in the NBA can be spent figuring out roles and tinkering with combinations. If it isn’t working, you still have four months and a ton of games remaining to sort it out.

By the end of December in college basketball, you’re a third of the way through a 32-game season, and the games that do remain are conference games that are vital to your fate. It’s a totally different dynamic that I’m not sure Woodson has fully comprehended.

Related to this, the urgency of how games are approached is lacking. You only have a limited time to play through things. You don’t get 10 games with 72 to spare to iron out wrinkles.

Much has been made, rightfully so, about Indiana’s habit of getting blown out under Woodson. The 25-point loss at Iowa just being the latest example.

In the NBA, even good teams get blown out every now and then. With 82 games, you can absorb a butt-kicking or four and not really have it affect your season. It’s much like baseball in the sense that you take your licking, forget it, and move on to the next. In college basketball, each game has far more impact, win or lose.

Indiana has been beaten soundly by Louisville, Gonzaga, Nebraska and Iowa. Even if Indiana doesn’t get beaten badly again, those four games comprise roughly 12.5% percent of the season total.

(Indiana has played 17 games so far, so the current blowout percentage is 23.5%, a staggering percentage for a team that was picked near the top of the Big Ten.)

These games just can’t be blown off as flush it and forget it. Margin of victory and loss play a big role in your NCAA Tournament bona fides, a concept you never worry about in the pros.

It’s true that there’s a fine line between lack of patience, the right balance of patience and waiting too long to react. For all sports, coaches or GMs should subscribe to a 10% Rule. You can use 10% of your games to tinker or tweak, but if it’s not working or if there’s a pattern that comes up that’s concerning, you address it.

Woodson too often is guilty of being too patient, but again, it comes honestly. If you apply the 10% Rule, you get eight games to try something out in the NBA. In college basketball? You get three games.

Indiana Head Coach Mike Woodson instructs his team during the Indiana versus Winthrop men's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Problems have to be addressed quickly. There has to be an urgency to the practices and in the pregame approaches to each game. There are no throwaways.

For that reason, in-game decisions need to have more urgency, too. Decisions have to come much faster. Waiting two or three possessions to call a timeout is often too long because there’s fewer possessions in a college game versus the NBA. Patience is not always a virtue.

There are other ways in which the lack of urgency rears its head. I mentioned the end results from recruiting. I don’t want to get into the weeds of Woodson’s recruiting habits because I’m not there in the room. What’s truth and what’s hearsay – there is no shortage of axes to grind that are best left alone – is not a rabbit hole I want to tumble into.

However, the end results suggest something needs to change. For whatever reason, Indiana is not getting the guys it’s targeting. The roll-out-the-NIL-barrel routine clearly isn’t good enough. There has to be a sense of urgency in learning why players won’t come and how to fix it.

Identifying lack of urgency is one thing. Fixing it is another. Perhaps most concerning of all is that I don’t see much inclination to change.

If there is self-reflection on these things, we don’t see it. Publicly, Woodson does not let down his guard. So we can only judge on what we see. What we often see is Woodson appearing to be stubborn in his belief that the way he’s doing things is working.

Part of being good at anything, especially when it comes to management, is to recognize what you do well, but just as importantly, what you don’t. If you have that self-reflection, you can find people that can do things well that you don’t.

If Woodson has blind spots in certain areas – even most good coaches do – is he applying the proper sense of self-reflective urgency to understand his own shortcomings?

I would hope so, but I don’t know so, and based on the evidence? I don’t think so. Things keep cropping up – like 25-point road Big Ten losses – that would suggest the lack of urgency is beyond the point of being fixed.

I hope I’m wrong. This season can still be a successful one, but only if there is an honest assessment of what is holding the Hoosiers back. Lack of urgency is a huge part of it, and Woodson is the only person who can do something about it.

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