Source: NCAA to fire Mike Woodson this season…..
The Hoosiers are nearing the end of their worst season under Woodson, sitting at 17-13 overall and 9-10 in Big Ten play with one game left in the regular season after Wednesday night’s 70-58 win over Minnesota.
The Hoosiers started the season 10-3 and 2-0 in the Big Ten, but they lost 10 of 14 games before righting the ship and winning three in a row.
Woodson’s return was first reported by the Indianapolis Star. He declined to comment when asked about his return after Wednesday’s game.
The Hoosiers reached the NCAA tournament in each of Woodson’s first two seasons, including last season’s second-place Big Ten finish. They earned a 4-seed in the NCAA tournament before falling to eventual Final Four participant Miami in the second round.
Woodson, 65, is a former Indiana star who played under Bob Knight from 1976 to 1980 before being selected in the first round of the 1980 NBA draft by the New York Knicks. After an NBA career that included 11 years as a player and 25 years as a head coach and assistant coach, he was hired by his alma mater in 2021 to replace Archie Miller.
Woodson would have been owed $12.6 million if Indiana let him go, although his contract would have allowed the school to pay it in $1 million annual installments.
After three months of constant changes to the college basketball landscape — due to seismic coaching changes, the transfer portal, the NBA draft — July was a quieter period for roster machinations. There were a couple of noteworthy additions, but the final real needle mover from the portal was Arthur Kaluma going to Texas.
As a result, there’s no major team movement in the August edition of these rankings. There could still be some changes before we officially hit the preseason, with the potential for reclassifications from the recruiting class of 2025 and international prospects still yet to reveal themselves.
So we’re taking a different approach to this month’s rankings: We’re picking one nonconference game to watch for each of the top 25 teams. They might not be the best games on a schedule, but they do present fascinating storylines. And they could inform how good these teams might be in 2024-25.
