Indiana AD Scott Dolson comments publicly on decision to suspend Woodson

Indiana basketball head coach Mike Woodson will return for a fourth season in Bloomington, a decision that was reported March 6 by multiple media outlets toward the end of IU’s 2023-24 season. But as the reports were made public, IU’s athletic department never provided a formal statement or announcement regarding Woodson’s future.

In an interview Tuesday on the Hoosier Hysterics! Podcast, Indiana Athletic Director Scott Dolson commented for the first time on the decision to retain Woodson — nearly two full months after reports began to surface.

Dolson said one of the reasons the athletic department did not issue a formal statement was to not create a habit of commenting publicly each time a season becomes challenging, which is in line with the prerogative of many other athletic directors and departments.

“I don’t think it helps, every time things get a little challenging, that I come out with some type of statement,” Dolson said. “And at the end of the year last year, there was never a statement that was put out. Woody was never not coming back.”

While some Indiana fans and stakeholders hoped for a public acknowledgement regarding Woodson’s future from Dolson and IU’s athletic department, Dolson said he did not think it would help to ease the fanbase’s concerns with the men’s basketball program at the time.

“If at some point, if I don’t feel — just like we did in football — that we have a chance to meet those (expectations), then we’ll make a change and walk up to those changes,” Dolson said. “But to have kind of frequent updates throughout a season when we have a tough loss would only, in my view, hurt the program rather than help it, because people will just parse apart and try to say, ‘Well, I don’t know, he wasn’t as strong on Woody as I thought he’d be. I’mid”:0.7017367737899258,”hostPeerName”:”https://247sports-com.cdn.ampproject.org”,”initialGeometry”:”{

“When I went into the locker room after games, it’s interesting for me to see the faces,” Dolson said. “… When I go into the basketball locker room, I wish fans could see how much Malik Reneau cares, how much Trey Galloway cares. I mean, they want the same things that you guys want as fans, and that gives me inspiration to keep doing whatever I can do and we can do as a department to keep supporting Woody and the program to help them win.”