IU could have packed it in. It hasn't. And Mike Woodson, Hoosiers deserve credit for that.
Adamantly, Mike Woodson refused Wednesday night to discuss his job status.
Twice, and in different ways, he shut down any discussion of the future now assured — it probably always was — through next season and the support he felt from Indiana’s administration.
“I’m not going to discuss that,” Woodson said firmly, in the aftermath of a 70-58 win at Minnesota. “I shouldn’t have to sit here in front of you guys and discuss my job. No comment.”
About very nearly anything else relevant to the evening, Woodson was full of words. And he should’ve been.
Insider: Mike Woodson has critics, and some complaints have merit. But this was always the outcome.
Calling his team’s third-straight victory “a total team effort from the beginning,” Woodson sang the praises of point guards and centers, freshmen and seniors, starters and role players, and a team that had every right to quit on a season some of its fans clearly have.
But the Hoosiers (17-13, 9-10) haven’t.
They are imperfect and inexperienced and probably still too far from the NCAA tournament field to find any reasonable path to it outside winning their conference tournament.
They have spent too much of this season too banged up, too inconsistent offensively, too shy of the 3-point line and too rooted in their own failings. They are also a senior-day win against Michigan State away from a .500 Big Ten record. They could still finish as high as fifth in the league. It is almost certainly too little too late — barring a run to beat all runs next week in Minneapolis — but they’re playing their best basketball, individually and collectively, at the precise moment when it was assumed they would be packing their lockers and going their own ways.
“It’s just been guys are committing themselves,” Woodson said. “We’re playing now like we should’ve been playing.”
Why just now? There’s obviously no one answer to that question.
Woodson often refers to youth, which is and was always going to be an obstacle. The Hoosiers lost four starters and a heavy chunk of production from last season’s Big Ten runner up. Ken Pomeroy rates them 224th nationally in Division I experience, and 262nd in minutes continuity, which means they’re young individually and younger together.
It’s a coach’s job to mitigate that, and Woodson hasn’t, at least not adequately to the demands of this season. A 2-8 stretch between mid-January and the end of last month stands as testament, and the fact that Woodson’s job security was even a talking point Wednesday night reflects that.
Turnabout remains fair play. If he gets blamed for what went wrong, he gets praised for what’s now going right.
Indiana led for more than 31 ½ minutes Wednesday. There was no dramatic fightback as in College Park on Sunday, when the Hoosiers erased Maryland’s 16-point lead. IU was simply better than a Minnesota (18-12, 9-10) team appearing scared of the moment and playing like it.
The Gophers never got ahold of Kel’el Ware, who once again looked every inch the NBA prospect on his way to 26 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and three blocks.
They had no answer for Mackenzie Mgbako, who stood toe-to-toe with fellow Big Ten freshman-of-the-year candidate Cam Christie and outmatched him, scoring 15 points to Christie’s eight and contributing meaningfully to Christie’s 2-of-13 performance from the floor. The freshman Woodson used to fear he couldn’t keep on the floor because Mgbako struggled so much defensively has traveled proverbial miles at that end of the floor this winter, and now he’s knocking down shots to match his five-star billing out of high school.
“We started with Mack and just hung in there,” Woodson said. “He hung in there and kept working. He started to blossom in front of us. It’s kind of nice to see the work he’s put in.
“The staff has done a helluva job in getting where he is today, but he still has a ways to go, man. He’s got to continue to work and grow and help us continue to win, because that’s all it’s about moving forward.”
No one has moved Indiana forward quite like Trey Galloway.
The senior from Culver Academy was a bit of a square peg looking for a square hole to start this season. He epitomized 3-and-D last season, turning himself into an effective mid-volume 3-point shooter and confining most of the rest of his energies to the other end of the floor.
Galloway hasn’t enjoyed that luxury this winter. Xavier Johnson’s various injuries cost him 13 games and sidelined him for long stretches of Big Ten play. Galloway’s 3-point averages have regressed in a pronounced way this winter, but in Johnson’s stead, he’s given the Hoosiers something far more valuable: creativity.
He has an assist-to-turnover ratio better than 2-to-1, despite not taking over wider point guard duties until, generously, Maryland at home in December. He’s averaging 4.6 assists per game, that number climbing to 5.5 in league play. In fact, in Big Ten games alone, Galloway’s 29% assist rate is not just sixth in the league, it’s also better than any conference- or total-season number Yogi Ferrell ever posted.
That’s not to do Ferrell down. He was an All-American point guard, one of the best in program history. Galloway tackles the position differently but make no mistake — particularly after an 11-assist performance Wednesday — Galloway is as much this Indiana’s point guard today as Yogi Ferrell was in his career.
As a team, IU assisted a frankly remarkable 28 of 30 made baskets Wednesday, a staggering number to which no one contributed more than Galloway. In program history, only four Hoosiers have ever posted at least three games of 11 assists: Isiah Thomas, Michael Lewis, Jamal Meeks and Trey Galloway.
All three of Galloway’s qualifying performances have come in his past six games.
“Coach trusts me with the ball in my hands to make big plays,” Galloway said, “and I know I can go out there and make plays to get my teammates involved, and myself.”
Trust.
That’s a really important word in sports. In any team activity, frankly. There are few core values coaches hammer home more than doing your job to the best of your ability, trusting that your teammates will do the same and recognizing each individual piece will eventually merge into the successful whole.
Was Indiana doing enough of that earlier in this season? Did the Hoosiers trust each other enough not to try and cover gaps that weren’t theirs, at the expense of their own responsibilities? Did they trust themselves, as individuals?
Results certainly suggest they didn’t play like it, but they are now. This is Indiana’s third win in a row, second on the road. As of Wednesday’s latest NET update, two of the three are Quad 1 wins, and the third (Minnesota) is floating just outside that column.
Yes, all but of two of the Hoosiers’ nine Big Ten wins came against teams beneath them in the standings, but flawed as they are, their recent run of form means they’re climbing those standings. Eighth, as of press time, thanks to the season-sweep tiebreaker with Minnesota. The higher you climb, the more teams you’re bound to put behind you.
That’s not much to brag about without context, so here’s the context: This team lost eight of 10, and 10 of 14. It didn’t beat a likely at-large NCAA tournament team until Feb. 27. It’s young, imperfect, imbalanced and inefficient, and fans grew so frustrated with its performance there was a petition circulating online calling for its coach’s removal, despite the fact that he’d taken the Hoosiers to each of the past two NCAA tournaments (in his first two seasons).
Teams like that usually stop getting better. Teams like that usually stop trying to, anyway.
This one chose a different direction. It still probably won’t lead to the NCAA tournament — or the NIT, by the way, a competition this program does not particularly need right now. But it does reflect a message getting through, an individual buy-in and a collective fight.
His job security wasn’t the only question Woodson declined postgame Wednesday. Asked about potential focus in the upcoming transfer portal window — vital as Woodson tries to remake this roster once again — Woodson refused to cast his glance that far into the future.
“Right now, we’re in the thick of the rest of this season,” Woodson said. “We’ve got Michigan State coming in this weekend, which is a big game for us, and then we’ve got to start preparing after Michigan State for the (Big Ten) tournament.”
There’s coachspeak there, for sure. But there’s something else too.
IU didn’t feel in the thick of the season two weeks ago, when it was slumping to uninspired defeats against Northwestern, Nebraska and Penn State. It has earned the right to feel like it has something to play for, to see Sunday as crucially important and to attack rather than fear or loathe what comes after that.
A lot this winter failed whatever was the master plan before this season started. One thing hasn’t: Against expectation after an ugly February and against convention for a team of its record and recent fortune, Indiana is playing its best basketball at the time of year to do it. The Hoosiers have at least earned the right to wonder where it can take them.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Mike Woodson has IU basketball playing its best basketball now.
