Former Indiana basketball wing Miller Kopp joined the Basketball and Brew podcast with Dan Miller to discuss his college basketball career and more.
Kopp spoke extensively about his two years at Indiana.
Here’s what Kopp said about playing for Indiana, coach Mike Woodson, and the NIL landscape at IU and beyond. You can watch the full podcast further below.
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ON PLAYING FOR INDIANA
“Oh it was incredible it was everything I ever expected and more. It was weird because I was on the other side of it as well (at Northwestern), but they embraced me my first year, and my second year even more so. I love that they really gave me a home and Coach Woody and the staff, (AD) Scott Dolson and everybody really took me in and made me feel at home which is the biggest thing you can really ask for when you transfer in because at the core of it it’s a transactional thing, like I’m giving you a basketball player and a good student you’re gonna hopefully give me a great experience. But they made it more than that so I’m appreciative for them, and the fan base is just wild about basketball there in Indiana, they’re they’re nuts there, it is all basketball and nothing more. It’s all you can imagine and then some honestly.”
ON PLAYING FOR MIKE WOODSON
“He’s a very genuine person. He understands that it’s bigger than basketball. He understands that at the end of the day, when you decide to play for him you’re now part of his family and that feels good as a player because like I said before a coach/player relationship a lot of times is transactional — I’m gonna be the best player I can be to try to get on the floor and you’re going to hopefully reward me for that with playing time. That’s how it goes. He made it more than that and which makes it easier to play for a guy like that.
He’s a very straightforward guy, he’s like ‘hey I need you to do these things.’ He told me in the offseason ‘you need to do these things, make shots and be our best wing defender.’ That’s it. I didn’t go into the offseason doing defensive slides, you know, all I heard was like make shots, okay got it, I can do that like that’s simple.
It made it easy to play for him because he really simplified things for me as a player and a lot of other guys. He’s somebody who is gonna find a way. Like if I call him right now and said ‘hey coach like I need help with this he’d be like ‘alright who is this’ but also, no I’m kidding, he’d probably answer on his flip phone it doesn’t have caller ID and then say ‘who is this’ and then be like ‘oh hey’ and then help. That’s just who he is, he just gives and gives because he’s done so much in his career in terms of basketball and coaching and playing that he doesn’t need anything else.
He wants to win at the highest level and in terms of his basketball like, just obsession, the guy will talk for hours on end about basketball. Like they’ll (the coaches) be sitting in those meetings in their you know conference room for three or four hours before practice, and he’s just talking and he’s just up on the TV and the board just going through things. You could just tell he just lives and breathes the game so it’s refreshing to know your play you’re playing for a coach like that.”
ON NAME IMAGE and LIKENESS IN COLLEGE BASKETBALL AND AT INDIANA
“It’s one of those things where people on the outside, there were questions about if it would mess up the locker room, or guys might get jealous if they know who’s getting what. I didn’t experience any of that, not with myself or with my teammates at all because at this at this age if you’re 18, or my case was 23, you are happy for your teammates that they can get paid. Some of my friends who have told me like what they’ve got, and my first reaction was ‘congrats man this is good for you’ and that’s the overarching theme.
Obviously there are so many cases of being able to use your NIL for good and I think guys are really understanding that, and it also an intro into the quote-unquote real world you know because guys will learn how to spend money, and how to lose money. They’re not 30 and just now have this money.
Obviously Indiana is the top of the top in terms of NIL opportunities for players, I know that for a fact, so I only know it from the upper echelon of everything but I do know with the whole landscape of things it’s definitely changing recruiting and it’ll be very interesting to see if guys are going to make the right decision basketball wise because of NIL.”
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