Indiana's male basketball coach Mike Woodson renounces his position at the end of the season, the school said Friday.
The Hoosiers are heading towards their second consecutive season without an appearance in the NCAA tournament, losing four consecutive games and six of its last seven.
ESPN informed Thursday that Woodson, 66, and the university were in discussions about his departure and that he was not expected to return to the Hoosiers next season.
“During a meeting with coach Woodson on Wednesday, he informed me that he wanted to resign as chief coach of our program at the end of the current season,” said Indiana director Scott Dolsson, in a statement on Friday. “He said he had been weighing in his mind for a while, and that it was an emotional and difficult decision. We have had reflective subsequent conversations about his decision and his desire to ensure that the program is in the best position that can be in motion. Foring .
“It is clear to me of our discussions in recent days that his priority number 1 is that attention does not stay out of it, and instead focuses on joining Hoosier Nation in support of our students athletes, coaches and, what More important, the program.
While the financial terms of Woodson's resignation are not clear, his contract requested that more than $ 8 million be paid if he was fired. Its contract allows the purchase to be paid in annual global sums of millions of dollars, which makes it more manageable to school from a budgetary point of view.
Indiana had one of the largest budgets of name, image and likeness in the Big Ten and in the country this season, which is expected to be a significant point of sale for work.
Indiana will be the host of No. 24 Michigan on Saturday. Wolverines coach Dusty May, a Hoosiers student who was a student manager under Bob Knight, will be among the objectives to replace Woodson.
After a low season reconstruction that included one of the best transfer portal classes in the country, headed by Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Myles Rice (Washington State) and Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Indiana entered the season with expectations considerable. The Hoosiers were number 17 in the pre -season AP survey and only behind Purdue in the Big Ten Media preseason survey.
The Hoosiers suffered consecutive defeats in Louisville and Gonzaga at the end of November before straightening the ship and winning nine of its next 10 games. But they have won only one game in the last month and fell to 14-9 in general and 5-7 in the Big Ten.
In ESPN's last installment, the Hoosiers do not even appear among the next four outside.
After Indiana's last defeat, a 76-64 defeat in Wisconsin in which the Hoosiers lost 26-4 a few minutes after the game, Woodson openly questioned the hardness of his team.
“We are simply not a difficult team right now,” he said. “We are not. We are not hard.”
The Hoosiers had a similar collapse in the mid-Big Ten Play last season, starting 10-3 before losing 10 of their next 14 games. They ended 19-14 in general, with the school announcing towards the end of the campaign that Woodson would return as coach of the program for the 2024-25 season.
Indiana reached the NCAA tournament in each of Woodson's first seasons, including a second place in second place in 2023. He obtained a 4 seeds in the NCAA tournament before falling before the eventual final participant Four Miami in The second round.
The Hoosiers were 21-14 in 2021-22, slips in the first four of the NCAA tournament and beating Wyoming before falling before Saint Mary's.
“Coach Woodson is a class act,” Dolson said in the statement. “During the last four years, he has led the program for a time of transformation in university athletics and helped us become Bloomington and accept the challenge of rebuilding our program and re -connecting it with its past and its foundation. Randy Wittman and Jordan Hulls, all of whom share their love and passion for this program.
“With this decision taken, coach Woodson and I shared the desire to see that Hoosier Nation joins from Saturday afternoon in support of these players, coaches and program.”
Woodson is a former Indiana star who played under 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 race that included 11 years as a player and 25 years as a chief coach and assistant coach, he was hired by his Alma Mater in 2021 to replace Archie Miller.
