Why Did Similar Approaches Produce Different Results for Michigan, Indiana?

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Changes in the way college basketball rosters are built provide challenges for coaches and players that they did not face in past seasons.

With freedom to transfer without sitting out a year, player movement is at an all-time high. In the Big Ten last offseason, 13 of 18 teams brought in at least seven new scholarship players – transfers or freshmen. Every team added at least four new faces.

Purdue was the only school that didn’t add a transfer – the other 17 all brought in at least two – and is perhaps the sport’s best remaining example of a program that thrives with old-school roster retention and development strategies. The Boilermakers are in first place in the Big Ten, eyeing their third straight regular season conference title.

That’s not to say significant roster changes can’t result in success. In some instances, it can be a major benefit for a program to add a talented veteran to fill an area of need. But that only works if coaches excel in talent evaluation within a shortened transfer portal recruiting window, and do all the right things to create a cohesive unit.

Saturday’s game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall featured two teams with turnover but vastly different results.

Entering his fourth season, Indiana coach Mike Woodson added six transfers and a freshman – a class ranked third in the Big Ten and 13th nationally – in an effort to get back into the NCAA Tournament, and based on what we know now, save his job. The Hoosiers entered the season ranked No. 17 in the AP Top 25 poll, picked second in the preseason Big Ten media poll and ranked No. 39 nationally by KenPom.

Mike Woodson Indiana Basketball — Indiana coach Mike Woodson against Michigan at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Michigan fired coach Juwan Howard after an 8-24 season and plucked Dusty May from Florida Atlantic, where he went 60-13 across his last two seasons and reached the 2023 Final Four. Out of necessity, May added six transfers and four freshmen, a class ranked 10th in the Big Ten and 37th nationally. In the preseason, Michigan was unranked by AP votes, picked ninth by conference media and ranked 36th by KenPom.

But by the time Michigan defeated Indiana 70-67 Saturday afternoon, the Wolverines improved to 18-5 overall and were just a half game behind the Boilermakers for the Big Ten lead. Indiana slumped to 14-10 overall with losses in seven of its last eight games, and it’s now looking for a new coach for next season.

There are a multitude of factors that have led to these opposite outcomes. Among them have been May’s ability to get all of his new pieces to buy into his style of play, fit together on the court, battle adversity and steadily build confidence along the way.

Michigan’s season-long leading scorers all came from different schools. Danny Wolf is a versatile 7-footer from Yale; Tre Donaldson is a point guard from Auburn; and 7-footer Vlad Goldin is the lone Florida Atlantic player who followed May to Ann Arbor. That trio combined for 56 of Michigan’s 70 points Saturday at Indiana, and role players did their respective jobs.

How have they gotten a roster with 10 new players and a new coaching staff to work together and win games?

“Just buying in,” Donaldson said. “Buying in and doing it for each other. This is all bigger than us. Just continue to do it for each other and continue to build close bonds, because those are the teams that are able to play long in March.”

“Time,” Wolf said. “… We have an entirely new roster, a bunch of new faces and coaches and we’ve had our bumps, we’ve had a few very tough losses in similar games like these and we were able to really stick together down the stretch, and I think that just comes with time and experience.”

Danny Wolf Michigan Basketball — Michigan center Danny Wolf (1) backs down Indiana forward Malik Reneau (5) at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. | Robert Goddin-Imagn Images

Michigan’s first four losses came by eight combined points, and they’ve used those as learning experiences to improve as a team. Saturday’s game came down to wire, too, and the Wolverines were ready to execute. Indiana, for the third time in the last four games, faltered in late-game scenarios.

“It keeps clicking, and I feel like we’re getting better,” Goldin said. “At some point early in the season we lost by one point, we lost by two points, and now when it’s close games we’re able to roll and keep fighting through that. It’s something that’s still in the process.”

“To play and just trust each other, because it’s something that you cannot work on in practice. You have to go and play in front of the crowd, in front of the different referees, against people who you don’t know, people who are trying to scout you. So it’s just a matter of time, to be honest. Just learning each other.”

Contrast that with Woodson, whose roster has talent but does not necessarily fit together. From October and into February, there has been finger-pointing after missed defensive assignments, turnovers resulting from miscommunication and wildly inconsistent scoring outputs from several players on a game-by-game basis.

The Hoosiers’ confidence has suffered as a result. And Woodson hasn’t been able to find a solution, leading to his resignation at the end of the season.

“I wish I knew,” Woodson said Saturday, asked why talent hasn’t translated to success. “As the coach, the roster’s changing every year and that’s no excuse, and you think you’re putting the right pieces in play.”

“I've done a terrible job in really putting them in the best position possible to win, I think. But emotionally, these kids have taken a beatin' a little bit, and it's my job to try to lift their spirits and keep 'em heading in the right direction because there's still a lot of basketball left.”

May’s immediate success at Michigan shows he can win in two different ways. He steadily rebuilt a historically uncompetitive Florida Atlantic program over six years, enduring four seasons with win percentages below 57%, before breaking out with national success in his last two.

Vlad Goldin Michigan Basketball — Michigan center Vladislav Goldin (50) backs down Indiana center Oumar Ballo (11) at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. | Robert Goddin-Imagn Images

Now at Michigan, he identified the right mix of players and turned it into wins right away.

“He’s one of the best coaches in the country,” Wolf said. “He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to keep guys involved. He knows who to get the ball to late in the game. He knows what sets to run. He knows how to make adjustments, and I think it just speaks to how good of a coach he is. But then you can’t look past our assistants, because they’re such a big help as well.”

“I think [May] is more like a mentor,” Goldin said. “Because a coach is a coach, but he helps us to understand how we can get over our problems. Obviously, everybody’s fighting their own problems and everybody has their own challenges, so he just helps us with his experience to get over that.”

Indiana announcing Friday that Woodson will step down after the season gives administration what could be two months before hiring its next coach, if that process hadn’t already started at some level.

A large portion of the Assembly Hall crowd expressed Saturday they want it to be May. But regardless of who the Hoosiers’ next leader turns out to be, Michigan’s performance at Indiana was one of many examples that quick turnarounds are possible and building a team through the transfer portal can work at the highest level.

It’s just about finding the right person to put it all together.

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