Mike Woodson on IU basketball recruiting approach: 'I didn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer'

BORDEN – On the night when IU’s annual Huber Winery dinner officially converted from a department benefit to an NIL fundraiser, basketball coach Mike Woodson brought his program’s strongest recruiting momentum in at least a decade to the party.

Speaking days before his third roster will begin to assemble in Bloomington, with three alumni in the NBA Finals and two more preparing to be drafted, Woodson walked into Huber with a second straight top-20 recruiting class in his back pocket and a bagful of good work in the transfer portal to talk about.

He joked with Don Fischer that his spring knee replacement meant he could outrun Indiana’s longtime radio voice, and told the story of seeing Jalen Hood-Schifino for the first time and immediately thinking of Jason Kidd.

Life hasn’t been this good for Indiana’s basketball coach — in recruiting, in perception, in direction — in a long time. Speaking with reporters before his engagement with a wider crowd of roughly 1,000 assembled IU fans, Woodson rightly bragged about a program carrying positivity infused by two-plus years of good work rebuilding his alma mater in an image he’s refused since the beginning to deviate from.

“This has been a great summer for us,” Woodson said. “I give a lot of credit to my staff and them getting me in front of the people we’re trying to recruit, the players, and it’s starting to pay off.”

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Woodson and his coaches have refilled a roster depleted by draft, graduation and transfer attrition, with a clutch of intriguing players. He’s supplemented returnees like Malik Reneau and Trey Galloway with Oregon transfer Kel’el Ware, Ball State transfer Payton Sparks and five-star freshman Mackenzie Mgbako. And he’s sewn it all together by securing a waiver handing Xavier Johnson his sixth and final season in college.

A little over two months ago, Woodson sat atop a podium in Albany, N.Y., and lamented what he saw as the premature end of a season he believed could last until April.

Since then, armed with the endorsement of each a likely (Hood-Schifino) and potential (Mgbako) lottery pick, Woodson has bolstered IU’s reputation for nurturing elite talent to a level it’s not known since at least Tom Crean’s tenure. The program that’s put just one player in the draft in the last four years and boasts just three one-and-done talents in the last 20, is fast developing the ability to talk to basketball’s best prospects on equal footing with some of the country’s best programs.

“Back in the day, it was always that way,” Woodson, an IU alum, said. “When I took the job, I made it clear to my coaches that we deserve to sit at the table with the best players. We kind of squabbled a little bit early on because they didn’t think we were in position to be able to do that, and I thought we were, based on Indiana basketball and the history of it.

“I didn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. I told them I wanted to be able to sit at the table with the best players and compete with the Kentuckys, the Kansases, the Dukes, and all they could do was tell us no.”

Enough said yes this offseason to rebuild Woodson’s roster, this one perhaps more in the image of his best work as both a head coach and an assistant in the NBA.

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Woodson has made no secret of his admiration of and appreciation for Trayce Jackson-Davis, his now-departed All-American senior forward. But Woodson has also never been shy in pointing out Jackson-Davis — a big man usually at his best with his back to the basket — isn’t the kind of forward he was accustomed to working with in the pro game.

“I coached (Carmelo Anthony) and Amar’e (Stoudemire), but they could step out and make shots and do a lot of other things from a coaching standpoint,” Woodson said. “I can go back to my comfort zone, and how we somewhat played in New York.”

Now, Woodson’s work with his staff has built a longer, rangier, more athletic roster. One that resembles not just his best in New York but also in Atlanta, where Woodson and general manager Billy Knight leaned into positionless defensive basketball when the sport still resisted that to an extent.

Mgbako is 6-8. Ware is 7-foot. Miami transfer Anthony Walker is 6-9. Added to a roster already including Reneau and also reinforced by Sparks, Woodson has the kind of length that underpinned some of the best teams he built in the NBA.

“In Atlanta, I caught a lot of hell early on when we built that team. It was basically 6-7, 6-8, 6-9 players, and I can go down the list,” Woodson said. “Everybody was like, ‘Why?’ I think you’ve got to build a defensive system first, and then figure it out offensively. We switched a lot, and we became a pretty good defensive team in Atlanta …

“The fact that we added a 7-footer, a 6-10 guy, 6-8 guy, that helps us defensively. It helps us at the rim, it helps us rebounding, a lot of things coming along with it, adding longer, athletic and rangy guys on your team.”

Those players will start assembling in Bloomington in the coming days. Woodson knows he has a significant summer ahead of him, as he tries to shape that team into something capable of competing at the top of the Big Ten once again.

It wouldn’t be possible without the groundwork laid to construct this roster in the first place. Without Woodson’s demand that Indiana fight at the top of the food chain, without his staff’s hard yards building the Hoosiers’ reputation where it mattered and without the results to point to in the development of players like Hood-Schifino and Jackson-Davis.

Recency will always be agency in recruiting. Success stories must be repeated to remain impactful with top talent. But in a little over two years, Woodson has turned a listing program into a relevant one in college basketball, not least with the constituency that matters most.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson talks his recruiting approach