Mike Woodson will return as Indiana’s head coach for the 2024-25 season, sources confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday, ending speculation regarding his future in Bloomington.
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.
The narrative ahead of the 2024 NBA draft was that the talent pool was down relative to previous years. Adding to that, the first round was projected to be older — and bigger, height-wise — than it was in past seasons.
Did Wednesday and Thursday play out that way?
ESPN spoke to a dozen college coaches about some of the important storylines that emerged over the course of the two-day event.
According to several sources, the increased age and size of the first-round draft pool are correlated, and they are directly related to several developments at the college level: name, image and likeness (NIL); the additional year given to student-athletes because of the COVID-impacted 2020-21 season; and the increased prevalence of the transfer portal.
Zach Edey, 22, spent four years at Purdue; Providence’s Devin Carter is 22; Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht is 23; and back-end first-rounders Dillon Jones (22), Baylor Scheierman (23) and Terrence Shannon Jr. (23) are all older than the average early draft pick.
“All of college basketball is a little bit older right now,” one college coach said. “I do think that while college basketball is pretty soon going to start getting younger again, the NBA — especially in the back half of the first round — seems to be more willing to draft established guys that can make major impacts than taking bets on better long-term projects.”
Another coach said, “It’s just the way college basketball is right now. “The age range is anywhere between 18-24 years old. … The NBA draft is at the mercy of what’s going on in the college landscape.”
