Woodson buyout wasn’t ‘leaked’
BLOOMINGTON — Talking Points leads this week with an uncustomary look behind the curtain.
This is very much inside baseball, to mix metaphors dangerously, but after a week or so of escalating speculation finally came to a rest with Wednesday’s confirmation Mike Woodson will be back next season, I wanted to set something straight.
We wrote (I wrote) a story earlier this week detailing an unusual change to the buyout structure in Woodson’s contract.
Normally, Indiana writes coaches’ contracts so that any buyout owed would be paid over the remaining life of the deal, as though the coach in question were simply kept on salary until the normal expiration date. But Woodson’s latest contract amendment, signed in August granting him both a $1 million-plus raise and also strengthened buyout protections, included a clause which would allow the university to pay his buyout in annual $1 million installments, dramatically reducing the year-on-year financial burden of any termination without cause.
That’s the news. Where it went, is what this is meant to address.
One of the most common byproducts of the 24-hour news cycle — and the intense scrutiny it sometimes trains on the news itself — is the assumption that every bit of information pushed into that cycle is added for a reason.
In this case, it was suggested in some corners we’d published our buyout story because it was leaked to us by someone with their own motives, or that we were pushed to make that particular information public to serve some wider purpose.
Obviously, that is not true. Here’s what is.
Woodson signed the amendment in question Aug. 18. We received a copy of it via records request Sept. 15. We’d already written a story detailing Woodson’s pay increase when the university announced it the previous month. Obtaining a copy of the full amendment was as much housekeeping, standard operating procedure, as anything.
A few weeks ago, with Indiana struggling and questions — fair or otherwise — mounting about Woodson’s job security, I read back through the amendment just to familiarize myself with updated buyout language. That’s when I realized the structure had changed.
One of the core tenets of journalism education is an understanding of the way your work affects the public narrative. Being completely transparent, I didn’t write on the added language for some weeks for, essentially, this reason. It would have felt irresponsible to inject something into the information stream that might suggest more than it was meant to.
But news organizations also have a duty first to inform. As discussion of the direction of the basketball program increased in volume, so too did the newsworthiness of information surrounding Woodson’s buyout. Rightly or wrongly, a position like his will always receive more public scrutiny.
At that point, it felt relevant to present information we were aware of that might be public interest. Not with analysis or commentary, but simply, again, to inform. Any suggestion our decision was guided by a hand beyond our own is well, well wide of the mark.
If you need proof, here’s some: Jeff Goodman from Field of 68 actually reported the buyout situation about a week before we did. I didn’t realize he’d already published that information, otherwise I’d have acknowledged his work (sorry, Jeff). But it was already public — which in theory it always had been; Woodson’s contract is available to anyone via public records — when our story was published.
Anyway, that’s a lot. But it felt important to pull back this particular curtain, given recent events.
Assessing tournament hopes
Indiana’s brief burst here near the end of the season has alleviated at least some of the disappointment of a frustrating winter. It has also, if very quietly, raised again the question of just how far the Hoosiers sit from the NCAA tournament bubble.
Short answer: Don’t get your hopes up. Long answer: OK, here goes.
IU’s three-game win streak has added some needed heft to the top line of the Hoosiers’ tournament resume. Maryland and Wisconsin stand for the moment as Quad 1 wins — neither is assured of staying there — and Minnesota is the narrowest of Quad 2s, which means it could eventually rise to Quad 1.
That gives Indiana eight Quad 1 and 2 wins, per the NET, as well as two more KenPom top 75 road wins and an even chance at finishing .500 in conference play. Defeating Michigan State at home on senior day Sunday would add another win to the Quad 1 column.
Living briefly in that hypothetical, nine Quad 1 and 2 wins is good! Teams considered shoe-ins for the field of 68, like Illinois (10), Gonzaga (six), Dayton (eight) and Kentucky (seven) all live in the same general neighborhood. Given IU only puts one loss from Quads 3 or 4 (Penn State at home) on the table, that’s a solid data point to stand on.
If only there were more.
Just about any other measure works against the Hoosiers. The computers hate Indiana’s body of work, likely because of their efficiency issues. IU has neither been particularly prolific offensively or stingy defensively this season (Nos. 93 and 91 in KenPom, respectively, at time of writing). Wins have been narrow and losses have been large. Against KP top 100 opponents, Indiana has seven losses of at least 14 points and just three wins of at least 10 points.
As has been recently discussed in the national mainstream, efficiency numbers matter, because computer rankings tend to weight — justifiably, it can be argued — more toward teams that aren’t just winning consistently, but also winning well.
Barring a dramatic reversal of fortune, the computer rankings will remain a drag.
Per ESPN, since the advent of NET, 2022 Rutgers stands as the lowestranked team selected at large. The Scarlet Knights, who landed among the last four in in 2022, reached Selection Sunday No. 77 that year. IU currently sits No. 95. Rutgers finished that season 6-6 vs. Quad 1 opponents. Indiana currently stands 3-8.
The committee also wants to see resumes that suggest teams are of similar caliber to tournament competition. Even assuming a win against Michigan State this weekend, Indiana would enter the postseason with just two such wins against legitimate at-large candidates: Wisconsin and MSU. Iowa could also factor into that discussion, but the Hawkeyes sit tenuously on the bubble right now too.
There’s not a ton going for IU’s tournament resume, even given this recent upturn in form.
Could a deep run in the Big Ten tournament change that? Possibly. Even that would not just require Indiana to win at least three games, but it would probably need those three wins to all be against the right set of opponents. The Hoosiers need quantity, quality and frankly a lot of help.
Just to be safe, Talking Points consulted an old friend for more expert opinion. Eamonn Brennan, who does excellent work on his newsletter “Buzzer,” is as versed in the intricacies of bubble discussion as anyone in college basketball media.
“IU will almost certainly have to win the Big Ten tournament,” Brennan told Talking Points. “Indiana’s atrocious metrics are bad enough, but their sheer record and collection of specific wins doesn’t stack up that favorably with most of the rest of the bubble either. Even after three-straight wins, there’s not much there.
“A deep run in Minneapolis might start a conversation. But it’s hard to imagine this team, in this watereddown edition of the league, being more than an at-large afterthought.”
It’s difficult — though perhaps not impossible — to see IU in position to grab an at-large berth. Winning the Big Ten tournament probably remains this team’s only viable path.
And for whatever it’s worth, if the Hoosiers miss the field of 68, there’s a chance the season will end in Minneapolis. Things can always change, but the modern appetite for participation in the NIT just isn’t particularly strong. Even if invited, I’m not sure Indiana would accept.
Mackenzie Mgbako’s late push for Big Ten freshman of the year
Talking Points is running long this week — there were a lot of points to talk about — but we’ll wrap this week with a look at Mackenzie Mgbako’s intensifying argument for Big Ten freshman of the year.
For a while, Iowa’s Owen Freeman looked like a shoo-in for the award. Minnesota’s Cam Christie came on strong in February with a series of high-scoring performances. But Mgbako might be surging in to the lead pack, if not slightly ahead of it, just at the season’s finish line.
Freeman: 10.7 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 64.4% eFG
Christie: 11.7 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 2.2 apg,
41% 3PT
Mgbako: 12.1 pgg, 3.9 rpg, 34.3% 3PT (38.2% in Big Ten play)
Freeman has been the clubhouse favorite thanks to strong early season performances. But his impact has waned — he has just three double-figure scoring games in Iowa’s past 10.
Christie won freshman of the week after a pair of explosive performances against Illinois and Penn State. He’s also been pretty roundly outplayed the two times he’s faced Mgbako, the latter scoring 34 points to Christie’s 15 across a pair of Indiana wins over Minnesota this winter.
Mgbako, the preseason favorite for this award, was nowhere near the running for much of the season. Woodson struggled to trust him defensively, Mgbako himself had issues with foul trouble and, like many teammates, his offense wasn’t coming consistently enough to mitigate deficiencies elsewhere.
That’s changed in Big Ten play. Mgbako has visibly improved defensively. His turnover and foul numbers are down. He’s probably Indiana’s steadiest free-throw shooter. Across his past seven games he’s averaging 16.3 points per, and that number ticks up to 17.7 during the Hoosiers’ three-game win streak.
Mgbako has become, essentially, the dangerous shooter-scorer we thought he could be for this team, and it’s been a significant factor in Indiana’s turnaround.
If we’re handicapping the freshmanof-the-year race in odds terms, Freeman probably remains the betting favorite. He’s been in that frame the longest, and familiarity tends to be helpful in these situations. But Mgbako has inserted himself firmly back into that conversation. He might even have the best case right now.