Mike Woodson: Why IU Old Guard is Excited
11/3/2021 9:30:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Bob Hammel
So what stands out most to me in memories of this new IU basketball coach, this Mike Woodson, since I first saw him nearly 50 years ago?
That there are so many memories, after all these years.
And that so many of them involve basketball excellence, yes, but also something above that:
Character.
That's why there was an explosion of enthusiasm among Bob Knight players from the years in and around those of this man they call Woody. Those excited players were used to winning. They considered just part of The Indiana Game excelling under pressure, playing hard in practices and games, competing, all those Knight-time staples. But they saw this man Woodson do all that and some things nobody else ever has done. Before. Or since.
That's a big statement. But start with this:
When that was going on, few in Bloomington noticed because eyes there were riveted on the greatest team in at least Big Ten and maybe college basketball history, the unbeaten '76 Hoosiers – then the U.S. Olympic team that won gold at Montreal with captain Quinn Buckner and College Player of the Year Scott May as leaders.
That fall an IU team shorn of all those '76 stars but All-America center Kent Benson had to regroup with a few other talented holdovers and all those touted freshmen. And when the firing started in late November, the first thing noticed was that Woodson was the rookie wearing the No. 42 that May had worn.
Second was that Woodson was the one who bobbed to the top among all those freshmen.
It was a rocky year. Teams that had been pummeled by those all-timers no longer around made it so. No freshman started the opener (a 110-64 rout of South Dakota), but Woodson entered early. His first three college stats were two turnovers and a missed shot. Then he hit four shots in a row, finished 8-for-11 with 16 points and started Game 2 at Toledo, where the rocky part started. He scored 6 in a 59-57 loss, snapping IU's 33-game winning streak. He started again and scored just 3 in a 66-51 loss to No. 5 Kentucky that snapped IU's 35-game Assembly Hall winning streak. He didn't start but hit eight shots for 16 points in a 78-65 loss at No. 4 Notre Dame. It was his last non-start at IU.
But it wasn't that team's last embarrassing streak-breaker. In its Big Ten opener, his 14 points didn't avert an 80-63 loss to Purdue that ended IU's 37-game Big Ten winning streak – still 10 games longer than any other team has managed in the history of the ultra-competitive league.
By season's end, those '77 Hoosiers barely managed to stay above .500 but Woodson was an established Big Ten star. Benson was the Big Ten MVP and repeated as a first-team All-American, taken No. 1 in the draft, but injuries ended his season early and Woodson led that team in scoring with 500 points and an 18.5 average.
His sophomore year, he (577 points, 19.9 average) and Indianapolis pal senior Wayne Radford led a late-season charge to a Big Ten runnerup finish and a return to the NCAA tournament.
His junior year, 1977-78, was when the dramatic things began. A 1-4 Big Ten start all but ruled out an NCAA return. IU was just 17-12 going to Illinois for a season-closer with uncommon pressure. The NCAA had expanded its field from 32 to 48 teams, with the cap still at two for any conference. It ultimately meant that one of the Big Ten's tri-champions (turned out to be Purdue) was bumped to the NIT, but from his West Point days the NIT loved having Bob Knight teams and leaked the word that a spot might be available at 18-12, not 17-13. Win or season's over.
It was under those conditions, worsened by a cold-shooting day for the rest of the team, that the real Mike Woodson legend began.
He opened the game with a four-basket blast for an 8-0 lead. But Illinois had some stars, too, particularly in future long-time NBA players Eddie Johnson and Mark Smith, who shared the defensive assignment on Woodson. The Illini streaked back to lead 10-8. Game on: Woodson vs. Illinois.
IU led at halftime 37-32 because Woodson had 29 (13-for-16 shooting while his teammates were a cold 3-for-13 and already willing to help the hot hand sizzle). At one point he hit eight straight shots, including what writer Loren Tate in the Champaign News-Gazette called "a gliding jack-knife shot that could only be described as breathtaking."
Five minutes into the second half Woodson led Illinois, 37-36, the team's margin 9. Three times Illinois cut the lead to 5; each time Woodson scored to beat them back. IU won, 72-60, and the NIT bid came. Word already was out by game's end that Big Ten coaches had left Woodson off their all-conference first team. "Is that so?" Illinois coach Lou Henson said. "Let's see if we can change it." The writers' all-league team did include him, the only time in his 2,000-point career he made All-Big Ten.
IU's first-round assignment was to Texas Tech, where Knight was to coach later. Woodson (11-for-14, 30 points) led an early blitz and this time had help in a 78-59 romp. A Lubbock writer asked Knight if Woodson was "just on a hot streak." The response: "He has averaged 20 points a game for 90 games now. That's a hell of a streak."
Back home they outlasted the season's only unbeaten team, 28-0 Alcorn State with its own future NBA star Larry Smith (All-Rookie, 14 seasons, led league one year in offensive rebounds). Smith had 18 points, 10 rebounds; Woodson 19 and 10.
That sent Indiana to a Madison Square Garden Final Four that had three Big Ten teams. Woodson had 20 as IU topped Ohio State, 70-62, before Purdue, with 42 points from 7-foot center Joe Barry Carroll, blew away outsider Alabama, 87-68 – setting up the first post-season match ever between the two archrivals.
IU led early, trailed most of the way, and won 53-52 on a late top-of-the-foul circle shot by Butch Carter. It was a bristling defensive game between teams that had split season games and knew each other well. Woodson was checked with 10; underclassmen Ray Tolbert and Landon Turner, who had a national championship in their own future, combined to hold Carroll to 14, and a panel of New York coaches elected Carter and Tolbert as the tournament's co-MVPs.
Woodson had a career-high 714-point season.
That summer, Knight took Woodson, Tolbert and incoming recruit Isiah Thomas with him on the U.S. team that won the Pan American Games gold medal – Woodson spectacular as a high-scoring team leader, Thomas finishing with a brilliant championship game as the two met and got to know each other as teammates for the first time.
IU entered the 1979-80 season as the nation's No. 1 team and played like it – blasting a Soviet national team that was preparing to host the Olympics. The margin that night was 28 points, then 28 again, 26 and 32 as Miami of Ohio, Xavier and Texas-El Paso left withered. Then the problems came: a foot injury that turned out to be season-ending for third-year starter Randy Wittman, a back injury that required surgery for Woodson. The Hoosiers tumbled from No. 1 to unlisted in wobbling to a 7-5 Big Ten start.
It was such a strong and balanced league that no team had pulled away. That was the scene when Woodson returned for a road game against one of the challengers, Iowa. Just 64 seconds into the game went up for his first shot in 58 days: swish; 59 seconds later, another, swish; 2½ minutes later, third shot, third swish. Three years later, after rookie Thomas had been elected to a starting NBA All-Star spot, he was asked if that was his biggest basketball thrill. "No," Thomas said. "My biggest thrill in basketball was watching Mike Woodson hit his first three jump shots at Iowa after being out eight weeks."
Woodson played all but 27 seconds and scored 20 in a 66-55 win. Then 24 as Minnesota fell, 67-54; 20 and 24 in a road sweep at Michigan State (75-72) and Michigan (65-61), and 16 against Wisconsin (61-52), setting up the most dramatic final game in Assembly Hall's 49-year history: the rest of the league eliminated, Ohio State vs. Indiana in a nationally televised afternoon collision of 12-5 team, winner take all. First-round NBA draft picks were all over the floor: Herb Williams, Kelvin Ransey and Clark Kellogg for Ohio State, Woodson, Isiah Thomas and Ray Tolbert for IU. The game matched the talent. Native Ohioan Butch Carter sent the game into overtime with two tying free throws. IU won, 76-73, with 21 points from Woodson, including six second-half baskets, in my choice as the best game ever played at The Hall.
That capped a 6-0 stretch run with Woodson, who averaged 20 points and 40 minutes played in those games. Postgame, Knight was first to voice the magnitude of Woodson's role: "How could anyone else be the Big Ten's MVP?" When the vote came in, no one else was – although it's the only time the league's MVP didn't make All-Big Ten.
The chance for a dream finish was there. The NCAA Final Four was in Woodson's hometown, Indianapolis; the championship game on his birthday, March 24. But the stretch run had taken all the magic he could muster. The Hoosiers fell in the regional to Purdue.
Woodson went on to a strong 11-year NBA career, his best season with Kansas City when coach Cotton Fitzsimmons installed Knight's passing game and one night Woodson brought back his 1979 Illinois game: 48 points, tying the most ever by an NBA Hoosier. That night he hit 22 of 24 shots, 17 straight for a franchise record – franchise alumni including Oscar Robertson in his best years. In the last minute of the 20-point Kings victory, with the crowd and his teammates urging him to go for 50, Woodson saw a teammate open and dished off an assist instead. "As hot as he was, he turned down a shot and passed," Fitzsimmons said. "I liked that. He knows how to play."
"Coming out to practice?"
"No, not tonight, Michael's playing against the Pacers and I'm going up."
Long pause, then: "Come out about 5. I'll go with you."
Bob Knight never cut into his practices. Like the football coach he admired, Paul Brown, he planned them precisely, stuck with them, and through the years kept every one on file for ready reference. This day, he cut practice short, we got in my car, and headed north. We weren't at the edge of Bloomington yet when he made a remark that told me . . . whoops!
Bob thought the Michael we were going to see was one of his favorite former IU players, Mike Woodson, not Jordan. And that's who he had shortened practice for.
I kept driving and told him the true situation. We drove a good five miles more without a word back. Finally, he said:
"Okay. I'll go. And I'll enjoy it. I really like Jordan. But — from now on — you remember:
"In this program: Michael is Woodson."
So what stands out most to me in memories of this new IU basketball coach, this Mike Woodson, since I first saw him nearly 50 years ago?
That there are so many memories, after all these years.
And that so many of them involve basketball excellence, yes, but also something above that:
Character.
That's why there was an explosion of enthusiasm among Bob Knight players from the years in and around those of this man they call Woody. Those excited players were used to winning. They considered just part of The Indiana Game excelling under pressure, playing hard in practices and games, competing, all those Knight-time staples. But they saw this man Woodson do all that and some things nobody else ever has done. Before. Or since.
That's a big statement. But start with this:
- In his senior season, 1979-80, Mike Woodson was named the Big Ten's Most Valuable Player. After playing in just a third – 6 games – of the 18-game league schedule.
- Not that it was a weak league: three of the first four 1980 NBA draft picks, six of the first 20, four of the first 20 the next year, were in that MVP field.
- And the six games he did play were immediately after being out eight weeks because of back surgery.
- Score 48 points – most by any player in Knight's 3-school, 43-year, 1,273-game coaching career. And he did it in a must-win schedule-ending game on the road at Illinois to squeeze the Hoosiers into the 1979 NIT, then led them to the championship.
When that was going on, few in Bloomington noticed because eyes there were riveted on the greatest team in at least Big Ten and maybe college basketball history, the unbeaten '76 Hoosiers – then the U.S. Olympic team that won gold at Montreal with captain Quinn Buckner and College Player of the Year Scott May as leaders.
That fall an IU team shorn of all those '76 stars but All-America center Kent Benson had to regroup with a few other talented holdovers and all those touted freshmen. And when the firing started in late November, the first thing noticed was that Woodson was the rookie wearing the No. 42 that May had worn.
Second was that Woodson was the one who bobbed to the top among all those freshmen.
It was a rocky year. Teams that had been pummeled by those all-timers no longer around made it so. No freshman started the opener (a 110-64 rout of South Dakota), but Woodson entered early. His first three college stats were two turnovers and a missed shot. Then he hit four shots in a row, finished 8-for-11 with 16 points and started Game 2 at Toledo, where the rocky part started. He scored 6 in a 59-57 loss, snapping IU's 33-game winning streak. He started again and scored just 3 in a 66-51 loss to No. 5 Kentucky that snapped IU's 35-game Assembly Hall winning streak. He didn't start but hit eight shots for 16 points in a 78-65 loss at No. 4 Notre Dame. It was his last non-start at IU.
But it wasn't that team's last embarrassing streak-breaker. In its Big Ten opener, his 14 points didn't avert an 80-63 loss to Purdue that ended IU's 37-game Big Ten winning streak – still 10 games longer than any other team has managed in the history of the ultra-competitive league.
By season's end, those '77 Hoosiers barely managed to stay above .500 but Woodson was an established Big Ten star. Benson was the Big Ten MVP and repeated as a first-team All-American, taken No. 1 in the draft, but injuries ended his season early and Woodson led that team in scoring with 500 points and an 18.5 average.
His sophomore year, he (577 points, 19.9 average) and Indianapolis pal senior Wayne Radford led a late-season charge to a Big Ten runnerup finish and a return to the NCAA tournament.
His junior year, 1977-78, was when the dramatic things began. A 1-4 Big Ten start all but ruled out an NCAA return. IU was just 17-12 going to Illinois for a season-closer with uncommon pressure. The NCAA had expanded its field from 32 to 48 teams, with the cap still at two for any conference. It ultimately meant that one of the Big Ten's tri-champions (turned out to be Purdue) was bumped to the NIT, but from his West Point days the NIT loved having Bob Knight teams and leaked the word that a spot might be available at 18-12, not 17-13. Win or season's over.
It was under those conditions, worsened by a cold-shooting day for the rest of the team, that the real Mike Woodson legend began.
He opened the game with a four-basket blast for an 8-0 lead. But Illinois had some stars, too, particularly in future long-time NBA players Eddie Johnson and Mark Smith, who shared the defensive assignment on Woodson. The Illini streaked back to lead 10-8. Game on: Woodson vs. Illinois.
IU led at halftime 37-32 because Woodson had 29 (13-for-16 shooting while his teammates were a cold 3-for-13 and already willing to help the hot hand sizzle). At one point he hit eight straight shots, including what writer Loren Tate in the Champaign News-Gazette called "a gliding jack-knife shot that could only be described as breathtaking."
Five minutes into the second half Woodson led Illinois, 37-36, the team's margin 9. Three times Illinois cut the lead to 5; each time Woodson scored to beat them back. IU won, 72-60, and the NIT bid came. Word already was out by game's end that Big Ten coaches had left Woodson off their all-conference first team. "Is that so?" Illinois coach Lou Henson said. "Let's see if we can change it." The writers' all-league team did include him, the only time in his 2,000-point career he made All-Big Ten.
IU's first-round assignment was to Texas Tech, where Knight was to coach later. Woodson (11-for-14, 30 points) led an early blitz and this time had help in a 78-59 romp. A Lubbock writer asked Knight if Woodson was "just on a hot streak." The response: "He has averaged 20 points a game for 90 games now. That's a hell of a streak."
Back home they outlasted the season's only unbeaten team, 28-0 Alcorn State with its own future NBA star Larry Smith (All-Rookie, 14 seasons, led league one year in offensive rebounds). Smith had 18 points, 10 rebounds; Woodson 19 and 10.
That sent Indiana to a Madison Square Garden Final Four that had three Big Ten teams. Woodson had 20 as IU topped Ohio State, 70-62, before Purdue, with 42 points from 7-foot center Joe Barry Carroll, blew away outsider Alabama, 87-68 – setting up the first post-season match ever between the two archrivals.
IU led early, trailed most of the way, and won 53-52 on a late top-of-the-foul circle shot by Butch Carter. It was a bristling defensive game between teams that had split season games and knew each other well. Woodson was checked with 10; underclassmen Ray Tolbert and Landon Turner, who had a national championship in their own future, combined to hold Carroll to 14, and a panel of New York coaches elected Carter and Tolbert as the tournament's co-MVPs.
Woodson had a career-high 714-point season.
That summer, Knight took Woodson, Tolbert and incoming recruit Isiah Thomas with him on the U.S. team that won the Pan American Games gold medal – Woodson spectacular as a high-scoring team leader, Thomas finishing with a brilliant championship game as the two met and got to know each other as teammates for the first time.
IU entered the 1979-80 season as the nation's No. 1 team and played like it – blasting a Soviet national team that was preparing to host the Olympics. The margin that night was 28 points, then 28 again, 26 and 32 as Miami of Ohio, Xavier and Texas-El Paso left withered. Then the problems came: a foot injury that turned out to be season-ending for third-year starter Randy Wittman, a back injury that required surgery for Woodson. The Hoosiers tumbled from No. 1 to unlisted in wobbling to a 7-5 Big Ten start.
It was such a strong and balanced league that no team had pulled away. That was the scene when Woodson returned for a road game against one of the challengers, Iowa. Just 64 seconds into the game went up for his first shot in 58 days: swish; 59 seconds later, another, swish; 2½ minutes later, third shot, third swish. Three years later, after rookie Thomas had been elected to a starting NBA All-Star spot, he was asked if that was his biggest basketball thrill. "No," Thomas said. "My biggest thrill in basketball was watching Mike Woodson hit his first three jump shots at Iowa after being out eight weeks."
Woodson played all but 27 seconds and scored 20 in a 66-55 win. Then 24 as Minnesota fell, 67-54; 20 and 24 in a road sweep at Michigan State (75-72) and Michigan (65-61), and 16 against Wisconsin (61-52), setting up the most dramatic final game in Assembly Hall's 49-year history: the rest of the league eliminated, Ohio State vs. Indiana in a nationally televised afternoon collision of 12-5 team, winner take all. First-round NBA draft picks were all over the floor: Herb Williams, Kelvin Ransey and Clark Kellogg for Ohio State, Woodson, Isiah Thomas and Ray Tolbert for IU. The game matched the talent. Native Ohioan Butch Carter sent the game into overtime with two tying free throws. IU won, 76-73, with 21 points from Woodson, including six second-half baskets, in my choice as the best game ever played at The Hall.
That capped a 6-0 stretch run with Woodson, who averaged 20 points and 40 minutes played in those games. Postgame, Knight was first to voice the magnitude of Woodson's role: "How could anyone else be the Big Ten's MVP?" When the vote came in, no one else was – although it's the only time the league's MVP didn't make All-Big Ten.
The chance for a dream finish was there. The NCAA Final Four was in Woodson's hometown, Indianapolis; the championship game on his birthday, March 24. But the stretch run had taken all the magic he could muster. The Hoosiers fell in the regional to Purdue.
Woodson went on to a strong 11-year NBA career, his best season with Kansas City when coach Cotton Fitzsimmons installed Knight's passing game and one night Woodson brought back his 1979 Illinois game: 48 points, tying the most ever by an NBA Hoosier. That night he hit 22 of 24 shots, 17 straight for a franchise record – franchise alumni including Oscar Robertson in his best years. In the last minute of the 20-point Kings victory, with the crowd and his teammates urging him to go for 50, Woodson saw a teammate open and dished off an assist instead. "As hot as he was, he turned down a shot and passed," Fitzsimmons said. "I liked that. He knows how to play."
From Bob Hammel's autobiography Last Press Bus Out of Middletown
In Michael Jordan's breakout first NBA season, he put together a rookie-record string of 40-point performances and came to Indianapolis to play the Pacers with that streak going. I lined up press credentials and the afternoon of the game got a call from Bob Knight:"Coming out to practice?"
"No, not tonight, Michael's playing against the Pacers and I'm going up."
Long pause, then: "Come out about 5. I'll go with you."
Bob Knight never cut into his practices. Like the football coach he admired, Paul Brown, he planned them precisely, stuck with them, and through the years kept every one on file for ready reference. This day, he cut practice short, we got in my car, and headed north. We weren't at the edge of Bloomington yet when he made a remark that told me . . . whoops!
Bob thought the Michael we were going to see was one of his favorite former IU players, Mike Woodson, not Jordan. And that's who he had shortened practice for.
I kept driving and told him the true situation. We drove a good five miles more without a word back. Finally, he said:
"Okay. I'll go. And I'll enjoy it. I really like Jordan. But — from now on — you remember:
"In this program: Michael is Woodson."
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