Sources — Woodson unlikely to return to Indiana next season

Men’s basketball coach Mike Woodson is not expected to return to Indiana next season, sources told ESPN on Thursday.

Woodson, 66, is expected to coach the rest of the year, sources said, but he and the Hoosiers are in discussions about the coach’s wishes to step away after this season. The details of the exit are being discussed.

The Hoosiers are heading toward their second consecutive season without an NCAA tournament appearance, losing four straight games and six of their past seven.

While the financial terms of Woodson’s exit are not clear, his contract calls for him to be paid more than $8 million if he’s fired. His contract allows for the buyout to be paid in annual million-dollar lump sums, which makes it more manageable for the school from a budgetary standpoint.

Following an offseason rebuild that included one of the better transfer portal classes in the country, headlined by Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Myles Rice (Washington State) and Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Indiana entered the season with considerable expectations. The Hoosiers were No. 17 in the preseason AP poll and behind only Purdue in the preseason Big Ten media poll.

Indiana had one of the largest NIL budgets in the Big Ten and in the country this season, which is expected to be a significant selling point for the job.

The Hoosiers suffered back-to-back blowout losses to Louisville and Gonzaga in late November before seemingly righting the ship and winning nine of their next 10 games. But they’ve won just one game in the past month and dropped to 14-9 overall and 5-7 in the Big Ten.

In ESPN’s latest Bracketology, the Hoosiers are not even listed among the Next Four Out.

Following Indiana’s latest loss, a 76-64 defeat at Wisconsin in which the Hoosiers trailed 26-4 just minutes into the game, Woodson openly questioned his team’s toughness.

“We’re just not a tough team right now,” he said. “We’re not. Mentally we’re not tough.”

The Hoosiers had a similar collapse midway through Big Ten play last season, starting 10-3 before losing 10 of their next 14 games. They finished 19-14 overall, with the school announcing toward the end of the campaign that Woodson would return as the program’s head coach for the 2024-25 season.

Indiana reached the NCAA tournament in each of Woodson’s first two seasons, including a second-place Big Ten finish in 2023. It earned a 4-seed in the NCAA tournament before falling to eventual Final Four participant Miami in the second round.

The Hoosiers went 21-14 in 2021-22, sneaking into the First Four of the NCAA tournament and beating Wyoming before falling to Saint Mary’s.

Woodson 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.