Mike Woodson Might Actually Be A Coaching Genius With The New Ways He's Finding To Lose Games
The play Mike Woodson drew up for the game winning shot vs Maryland was unbelievable. The entire fanbase knew we were about to see a complete coaching disaster, and somehow Woody went and out did himself with an inbound play so perplexing his own team didn't know what was happening. My jaw was on the floor. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. The confusion on the subs, subbing out two of your most important players in Leal and Ballo, running two people into the corner, inbounding the ball to said corner, having your shooter do a little spin to chuck up an air ball 3 when you could have gotten with win with a bucket from 2. Incredible stuff. It's actually hard to reach a new level of terrible that people haven't even seen before.
Considering on the previous play Indiana's defense had a foul to give, and chose not to use it so Maryland could hit what would be the game winning shot, I'd say this was the worst coaching these eyes have ever seen. But, what if that's exactly what Mike Woodson wants? What if Mike Woodson is trying to lose these games?
Yes, winning is great, shaping young adults into men has to be rewarding, but you know what probably feels even better? Getting a massive lump sum of cash in a buyout, and doing whatever your little heart desires. Coaching is hard, there's a lot of not so glamorous stuff goes into the job. Charity events, learning recruits names, disciplining kids for playing blackjack till 3am in the Bahamas going to the bars the night before a game. Not to mention you have to travel to places like Minnesota and Wisconsin in the dead of winter, yuck. No thanks. Who wouldn't want to simply sit around smoking cigars and playing cards with your buddies? An 8.4 million dollar buyout would let you stay in and order pizza every night. Hell! You could put your own personal Pizza X in your house like Davante Adam's did with a Taco Bell. Woodson already thinks he's the best, he tells people he is the king of Indiana, so if he knows he's great, why would he feel the need to prove it with results?
Either Woody is playing 4D chess and trying to live every bad coaches dream of receiving a massive buy out, or he's just actually a bad coach with too much of an ego to connect with players and figure out that fundamentals are important. He's a genius, or just incredibly stubborn dumb guy. Either way, Indiana doesn't stand a chance against Purdue on Friday night. I'm trying to remain positive ray of light in a season and world filled with negativity, but despite Woodson telling us it's a long season and he needs to have these guys ready to play, I've got a strange feeling he won't have these guys ready to play. BUT, maybe that's all part of the ingenious plan.