[IUFR] Indiana Basketball's Problem Isn't Institutional; It's Making Bad Hires

Coach Adragna explores Indiana's coaching hires post-Knight and discusses whether they were institutional failures or just bad hires.

Tony Adragna

Feb 07, 2025

Indiana Basketball has a problem.

Since firing Bob Knight in 2000, the program has cycled through five head coaches without finding sustained success.

The national narrative suggests you can't win at Indiana anymore - that the institution itself prevents success.

But a closer look at each coaching hire tells a different story.

The Post-Knight Era: Mike Davis (2000-2006)

The firing of Bob Knight in September 2000 sent shockwaves through college basketball. Indiana Basketball hasn't been the same since — not because they can't win without Knight, but because they keep making the wrong coaching hires.

Indiana chose Mike Davis as Knight's successor, largely because the players wanted him. Davis himself later admitted he wasn't ready for the job, and his long-term results proved it.

Yes, he made a Final Four run in 2002, but that was with Knight's players. After that peak, the program steadily declined under his watch.

When Davis left Indiana, his career path told the story.

At UAB, he made the NCAA tournament once in six seasons. Then came a decade at Texas Southern in the SWAC, where he found stability but never national relevance. His recent stint at Detroit Mercy ended with a catastrophic 1-31 season in 2022-23, and he's now an assistant at Memphis.

Looking at Davis' post-Indiana career, it's clear: he was a good leader of young men, but never had the coaching chops to lead a program of Indiana's caliber.

High Risk, High Cost: Kelvin Sampson (2006-2008)

Indiana followed Davis by hiring Kelvin Sampson — a proven winner who, on paper, had the coaching acumen to succeed in Bloomington.

But Indiana took an unnecessary risk: they hired him while he was already on NCAA probation for recruiting violations at Oklahoma.

Sampson didn't change his ways at Indiana. He continued breaking NCAA rules regarding phone calls to recruits.

You can argue that these violations would be legal by today's rules, but the reality was simple: Indiana hired a coach who was actively being punished for breaking rules, and he kept breaking them. (While also seeming to exhibit very little internal control over the off-court conduct of players in his program.)

Just 1.5 years into his tenure, Sampson was fired and hit with a five-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA.

He had to rebuild his career through NBA assistant coaching jobs while waiting for the penalty to expire. While he's since found success at Houston, the Sampson hire devastated Indiana's program. They gambled on a coach with a history of violations and lost badly.

The Rebuilder: Tom Crean (2008-2017)

Tom Crean wasn't necessarily a bad hire. Indiana's options were limited given the smoking crater Sampson left behind.

In fact, Crean did exactly what Indiana needed initially: he reinvigorated the fanbase and returned the program to national relevance, peaking with that 2012-13 team that spent much of the season ranked #1.

But his tenure went stale. In his final four years, Indiana missed the tournament twice, including an 18-16 record in his last season. His recruiting, once a strength, deteriorated to signing players like Tim Priller, Jeremiah April, and Grant Gelon.

Crean's post-Indiana stint at Georgia (57-89 in four years) confirmed what many suspected - he wasn't the coach to return Indiana to consistent excellence. He's currently out of coaching.

The Hot Name: Archie Miller (2017-2021)

The Archie Miller hire seemed perfect on paper.

He was the hottest coaching candidate that cycle, having maintained Dayton’s status as a consistent winner with a tough, defensive mindset. His basketball pedigree as Sean Miller's brother only added to his appeal.

But from the opening game — a stunning blowout loss to Indiana State — it was clear something was off. While his team likely would have made the tournament in year three before COVID hit, his tenure was a disaster marked by lengthy losing streaks and historically bad offense.

Miller's struggles weren't unique to Bloomington. At Rhode Island, where he landed after Indiana, he's continued to underperform despite the program's proud tradition. Thus, Miller will likely enter this offseason on numerous coaching hot seat lists.

The Program Legend: Mike Woodson (2021-2025)

Mike Woodson was an unprecedented hire that Indiana pivoted to after Brad Stevens declined the position. He hadn't been a head coach in years and had zero college experience. To offset these concerns, Scott Dolson brought in Thad Matta to help navigate the college landscape and added Dane Fife to the staff.

But both Matta and Fife were gone after year one, leaving Woodson to run the program alone. While he made the tournament his first two seasons, year three was an unmitigated disaster. Even after a promising portal haul for 2024-25, Indiana has vastly underperformed.

Indiana is framing this as a retirement to give their program legend a graceful exit. This will likely be Woodson's final coaching stop, as other college programs won't be lining up for his services.

Once again, Indiana hired a coach who couldn't deliver sustained success.

Institutional Failure or Bad Hires?

Don't let national pundits sell you the narrative that Indiana is too hard of a job or the institution itself prevents winning. That's nonsense.

Look at the evidence: none of these coaches proved capable of sustained success at Indiana's level, and their subsequent career stops confirm it (save for Sampson, whose show-cause penalty forced a different path).

Indiana's problem is simple: they keep making bad hires.

For proof of how much leadership matters, just look across the parking lot on 17th Street. Indiana football was historically the losingest program in college football history. Yet in one year, with the right person at the helm, they reached the College Football Playoff.

Before this season, you might have believed Indiana football was institutionally cursed. But with proper resources and the right leader, everything changed.

For Indiana basketball, every piece is already in place. The resources, the passionate fanbase, the storied tradition — it's all there. They just haven't found the right person to lead it.

This offseason presents an opportunity to finally get it right and put the program back on track.

Will they? Time will tell.

Now, over to you:

What are your thoughts on this topic?
What does Indiana have to do to get this hire right?