Author: Mike Schumann

If Indiana’s only criteria for filling their soon to be open head coaching role was who would be most likely to have the Hoosiers playing their best basketball by November, Rick Pitino would probably be the first call. In his second season at St. John’s, Pitino has the Red Storm off to a 23-4 start, including a 14-2 mark in the Big East.  He has a career .711 winning percentage and 754 victories as a college coach. While he has been suggested as a good candidate for Indiana by some, Pitino seems like an unlikely target for IU AD Scott…

Although he hasn’t been on the floor for an NBA game since April of 2023, Victor Oladipo is not ready to say his playing career has come to an end. Inducted into the IU Athletics Hall of Fame last year, Oladipo reached the pinnacle of his NBA career with the Indiana Pacers, when he was named an NBA All-Star twice in 2018 and 2019.  He has played in 504 games in the league over 10 seasons and has a career average of 16.9 points per game. But for the third time in just over four years Oladipo suffered a major…

On Wednesday the various IU Athletics social media accounts announced plans for both the women’s and men’s basketball teams to wear special uniforms in upcoming games. The women were set to where Adidas uniforms from the “Fear of God” line the next day. But when they showed up on the court at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall last night, the Indiana women were wearing their standard look. What happened? Student newspaper Indiana Daily Student put out a statement from IU Athletics indicating that neither the women’s or men’s teams would be wearing the Fear of God line this season, while also…

Many IU basketball fans don’t want to hear anything positive when it comes to former head coach Kelvin Sampson. And that’s fair. We’re not here to try to disabuse the majority of you who see him as a cheater who wrecked the Indiana program and got what he deserved. But an honest analysis does require you to take note of his success since returning to the college game.  Sampson has won 27 or more games in six of his last seven seasons at Houston.  He’s won 32 or more games for three straight years, and four of the last six…

With the men’s head coaching position open for the sixth time in 25 years, it can be argued that the stars have never been better aligned for Indiana to finally hire a competent basketball coach. Too often IU’s coaching searches have been corrupted by a number of forces.  But could this time finally be different? Let’s take trip back through memory lane and compare the appeal of the Indiana job opening in 2025 to the five times that preceded it since Bob Knight was fired. 2000:  KNIGHT TO DAVIS The opening presented a thankless task in 2000, when the job…

One prominent name we haven’t included on our hot board to this point for the upcoming IU basketball coaching vacancy is former Virginia head coach Tony Bennett. The 55-year-old Bennett surprised many when he announced he was stepping away from Virginia just a couple weeks before the start of the 2024-25 season. Bennett said he left Virginia in large part because of all of the recent changes in the college game, namely the Wild West nature of NIL and the transfer portal. “The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be…

Indiana is running it back with Adidas’ Fear of God line. But this time it appears the Hoosiers will stick to their team colors. After wearing unpopular dark grey uniforms in 2024, the IU men’s and women’s teams will wear Fear of God uniforms in the school’s traditional colors of cream and crimson this month.  Beyond the colors, the design looks very similar to what the teams wore in 2024. The IU women will wear the Fear of God uniforms on Thursday when they host Ohio State, and the men will wear them on Feb. 26 against Penn State. The…

In his first season as head coach at Indiana, Mike Woodson snapped a five-year IU streak of missing the NCAA Tournament.  The Hoosiers won a First Four game against Wyoming before bowing out a couple days later against St. Mary’s. With his retirement looming whenever this 2024-25 season comes to an end, Woodson’s staff wants him to finish in the same place that first season wrapped up — in the Big Dance. “As far as our coaching staff, that’s something that we’ve mentioned and talked about,” IU associate head coach Kenya Hunter said on Woodson’s radio show Monday evening. “Our…

Mike Woodson’s tenure as the head coach of IU basketball will come to an end next month. His appearances with Don Fischer on the radio have apparently already ended. For more than 50 years IU fans have listened to Fischer interview the school’s football and basketball coaches on pregame, and postgame appearances, along with a regular one hour midweek radio show.  Fischer even called Woodson’s games as an Indiana player. But since IU AD Scott Dolson announced on Feb. 7 Woodson’s retirement at the end of the season, the coach has not appeared on any of those radio spots with…

Back in 2021 I wrote that there was no coherent reason to hire an “IU Guy” to be the next head coach of the Indiana basketball program. But of course no one was asking me, and suddenly Mike Woodson came out of left field just days later. If there was one contemporary comparison at the time that likely emboldened the decision to hire Woodson, it was the success had by Juwan Howard at Michigan.  That success was reaching its pinnacle right as Indiana hired Woodson. It was difficult to ignore. Named the national coach of the year in 2021 by…