BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Here we are on 17th Street gazing south at the Indiana University athletic complex, where the time is now, no matter which direction you look.
On the left, Memorial Stadium, where the football program is the renaissance story of the nation. The Hoosiers have gone from being picked 17th in the Big Ten preseason poll to No. 8 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings. They’re 9-0 for the first time ever – the same number of victories they had in their previous 37 games. Indiana began 2024 with three winning seasons in the past 29 years, no bowl victory since 1991 and its only Rose Bowl appearance 57 years ago. This season the Hoosiers have trailed in one game and won all nine by an average of 33 points. It’s as if a mighty oak has suddenly grown out of a tar pit.
On the right, Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, where the five national championship banners speak of rich basketball glory, but not lately. They have trophies. They have statues. They have Martha the Mop Lady on the scoreboard singing Indiana, Our Indiana before the game, just like she did to open the telecasts back in Bob Knight’s salad days. What they don’t have is much recent magic to show for all that aura. Indiana is routinely mentioned among the game’s royalty for several good reasons, but if the Blueblood Club of college basketball had annual membership reviews, the Hoosiers would be on double secret probation.
Is it possible that Indiana basketball has finished the season in the Associated Press top-10 only once in the past 31 years? Or advanced to the Elite Eight once in the past 29 NCAA Tournaments? Or gone 71-84 in the Big Ten the past eight seasons? Or missed five of the past seven NCAA Tournaments? All true. It’s as if the colors of the famed candy stripe warmup pants came out of the wash a tad faded.
But two coaches – one the new football guy in town and the other an IU basketball legend facing a situation of some urgency – are determined to change the narrative, faster than you can say transfer portal. So there is a jolt of new hope around here.
Mike Woodson, still in the top 10 in Indiana career scoring, opened his fourth season as basketball coach Wednesday as the Hoosiers dispatched SIU-Edwardsville 80-61. An upgraded roster heavy with West Coast imports was there for its first official inspection. Former Arizona all-conference Wildcat Oumar Ballo and his 15 points. Guard Myles Rice from Washington State with 11 (and five turnovers). Stanford’s Kanaan Carlyle, who went 0-for-4. How about all those new faces, IU fans? Your NIL dollars at work. But with all the reinforcements, it was one of the holdovers from last season, Mackenzie Mgbako, who owned the night with 31 points.
That suggested the potential for strong balance and Woodson was sorta kinda OK with the results, but not really. “This team (SIUE) was able to hang around. A lot of that is because we just didn't execute. I got to get us better in that regard,” he said.
“This team, there's enough to spread the wealth all around the team if guys play the right way. I don't think in stretches we played the right way tonight.”
The offensive identity for the new look Hoosiers? “Don't know,” Woodson said. “Still searching. I do know we can score the basketball.”
Woodson had to keep the transfer hot line open with so many needs to address. “We had no choice” he said earlier in the fall. Or much time. With Indiana missing the NCAA Tournament last season, Woodson’s name has been prominently mentioned on the dreaded win-or-else list by many analysts. He’s more concerned with just getting the Hoosiers back to the penthouse of college basketball, where they were when he played. Indiana starts this season ranked No. 17 and considered a top Big Ten contender with its Purdue buddies up in West Lafayette..
“We can't hide from it. Expectations, that's a good thing. We expect that,” Woodson said Wednesday. “So I expect our players to play at a high level.”
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Indiana also expects to sit at the same table with the regal likes of Duke, Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky North Carolina, Michigan State. But the last Hoosiers’ Final Four run was 2002. Those six other heavyweights have been there a combined 30 times since then. Overall, 43 schools have made it since 2002. George Mason. Wichita State. Loyola Chicago. Just up the road, Butler twice. Even – this one had to hurt – Purdue. “I think we took a step backwards last year by not making the tournament," Woodson said recently. “But we got to move forward.” With a healthy streak of talent on the roster, Woodson called these Hoosiers “the deepest team we’ve had since I’ve been here.”
The oddest dynamic is going on. Most years by early November, the hearts and minds of the Indiana masses are already fully given to basketball, the season’s oxygen having long been sucked out of the football stadium. But across the parking lot from Assembly Hall, a fairy tale grows. What kind of a new world order is it in Bloomington when the basketball team is ranked 15 spots behind Alabama in the AP poll, but the football team is ranked three places above the Tide?
So Wednesday night seemed a bit unusual. Get excited about beating SIUE? Hey, Michigan will be in town Saturday and the footballers have beaten the Wolverines twice in 56 years. Two weeks from now is the Big Ten showdown no one saw coming: Indiana at Ohio State, when the Hoosiers could really dawn a new day. Indiana last beat the Buckeyes in 1988. The Hoosiers are 0-30-1 against Ohio State since then, including 29 losses in a row.
While Woodson took a big swig out of the portal, new football coach Curt Cignetti turned it into the Amazon River. His roster includes 27 transfers, 13 of them coming from James Madison with him. Of the 22 starters last weekend on offense and defense against Michigan State, 15 were playing for someone else last fall. The numbers they have united to create are stunning.
Indiana leads the nation in rushing defense, is No. 2 in scoring offense, No. 3 in total defense and pass efficiency. The Hoosiers have crushed the opposition 87-10 in the first quarter and still been banging away in the fourth by a 115-20 count. They have scored more points in the second quarter this season than they have allowed in all their games combined. In points off turnovers, the gap is 70-7. The quarterback from Ohio, Kurtis Rourke, is completing 73 percent of his passes with a 19-3 touchdown/interception ratio. The defensive lineman from James Madison, Mikail Kamara, has 9.5 sacks. The receiver from James Madison, Elijah Sarratt, has caught a pass in 34 consecutive games. On and on it goes.
The natural question is how Cignetti managed to lure so much talent to a program where coach after coach has driven over a cliff. His answer before the season quickly became Indiana folklore: “I win. Google me.”
Cignetti now has something on his plate that would have seemed unfathomable two months ago -- keeping the Hoosiers’ attention on each Saturday and not the high rankings, vast possibilities and exploding fervor around them. Trying to “eliminate the noise and the clutter . . . I'm aware of it. But to get caught up on that and lose your focus would be the kiss of death.”
Woodson has no such problem yet, but he’d like to one day. The basketball team has a hard act to follow. Imagine that at Indiana.
