BLOOMINGTON — The most memorable scenes from Indiana basketball’s recent trip to West Lafayette were a far cry from the joyous celebration that unfolded at Assembly Hall after the team’s upset wins over Purdue in coach Mike Woodson’s first two seasons as coach.
Oumar Ballo had a heated exchange with Myles Rice in the final seconds of an 81-76 loss on Jan. 31 and stormed off the floor without going through the handshake line.
The dysfunction in the final seconds — Woodson tried and failed to get Rice’s attention to call a timeout — wasn’t an anomaly during a five-game losing streak that culminated with Woodson announcing he would be stepping down at the end of the season.
Indiana’s focus has turned to giving Woodson, who is in the school’s Hall of Fame, a proper send off.
For players, that means trying to secure a long-shot bid to the NCAA Tournament that will require some Quad 1 wins in the coming weeks.
The Hoosiers’ best opportunity to bolster their resume is Sunday’s game against No. 14 Purdue at Assembly Hall. It’s their final game against a ranked opponent and would have the added benefit of sending Woodson out with a .500 record against the Boilermakers as a coach.
It would be quite the achievement for Woodson considering Purdue has never ranked outside the top 15 in head-to-head matchups during his tenure, and it’s a rivalry that’s brought the coach heartache and joy in equal measure going back to his days as a fresh-faced youngster coming out of Broad Ripple High School.
Will he get the last laugh against the Boilermakers? Or will Matt Painter’s squad help land a knockout blow to his tenure?
More: How Mike Woodson stepped down. What’s next in Indiana basketball coaching search?
Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson earned his stripes in memorable matchups against the Boilermakers
Woodson’s first taste of victory in the rivalry came during his sophomore year. He led IU to a 65-64 win over the Boilermakers on Feb. 9, 1978, at Assembly Hall after starting 0-3 in the series.
‘I really wanted to beat Purdue bad,” Woodson said at the time.
Then coach Bob Knight broke out a new look starting lineup for the matchup featuring Woodson and three other guards playing alongside center Ray Tolbert. Knight gave his guards very specific marching orders in hopes of knocking off a No. 13 Purdue team that came to Bloomington tied atop the Big Ten standings.
“He wanted everyone to take the ball to the bucket,” Woodson said. “They kinda let us do what we wanted to do.”
Woodson, who had 16 points (8 of 13) and four rebounds, was the only player for either team to play all 40 minutes. Knight also leaned on Woodson to slow down Purdue’s leading scorer Walter Jordan.
He helped get a key stop in the final minute with Jordan backing him down in the post.
“I played against him a little last year,” Woodson said. “And he kinda got the best of me. He scored quite a bit. I gave it everything I could.”
While Jordan credited Woodson with playing a “fairly decent game” — he finished slightly below his season scoring average with 15 points — his coach Fred Schaus was a bit more impressed.
“He hurt us,” Schaus said of Woodson. “He’s just a great, great player, one of the finest offensive players in the country.”
The rivals had another notable one-point battle a year later in the NIT finals at Madison Square Garden. Butch Carter hit the game-winner in the final seconds to give the Hoosiers a 53-52 win in the first game between the programs outside the state of Indiana.
Knight drew up a play for Woodson to get the ball on IU’s final possession, but he couldn’t get an open look along the baseline and set up Carter’s game-winner. Woodson was named to the NIT All-Tourney team after finishing the game with 10 points, six rebounds, and five assists.
Woodson referenced the matchup when he was asked for his favorite memory of the series back in 2022.
“The games were a major battle,” Woodson said. “Nobody wanted to give.”
The Hoosiers ran more than three minutes off the clock on one single possession down the stretch even though they were trailing 52-51. Woodson, Carter, and fellow guard Randy Wittman worked the ball around the perimeter to shorten the game in what turned out to be the lowest-scoring NIT finals in three decades.
Thousands of Indiana fans took to the streets to celebrate the win back in Bloomington and a couple hundred of them stayed up to greet the team at the airport, but the team experienced its fair share of disappointment in the series during Woodson’s playing days, including his debut against the Boilermakers on Jan. 6, 1977.
Indiana suffered an ugly 80-63 loss at Assembly Hall that ended the program’s streak of 37 straight conference wins. Three years later, Woodson’s playing days came to an end with a 76-69 loss to Purdue in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
“There was a lot at stake that year for me personally,” Woodson said in 2022. “The Final Four being in Indianapolis where I grew up, on my birthday to be exact, on March the 24th, and this being my last year, I mean, there was just a lot.”
Woodson missed both regular season games against Purdue during the 1979-80 season after undergoing back surgery. He made a miraculous return for the stretch run and his dominant play lifted IU to a Big Ten title and tournament berth.
“To lose and go out the way we did, it was a tough day for me,” Woodson said in 2022. “Again, I didn’t have as much in the tank that I thought I had coming back from the back surgery. That was tough. And I played. I asked Knight to play me; don’t baby me. When I came back from the surgery, I think I averaged probably 36, 38 minutes all the way out.”
Knight agreed after watching Woodson foul out with 14 points while trying to kickstart a rally in the second half with IU trailing by as many as 19 points.
“He may have done as much for a basketball team as anybody I ever saw — coming back the way he did and doing all the things he did for us down the stretch,” Knight said at the time. “I honestly think he was just worn down. The kid is probably almost worn out right now. He took us about as far as he could.”
More: It’s official. Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson stepping down at end of 2024-25 season
Indiana basketball’s season sweep of Purdue in 2022-23 was a high point of Woodson’s coaching tenure
Indiana basketball turned to an unlikely hero in Woodson’s first matchup against Purdue as a coach.
Rob Phinisee, a native of Lafayette, scored a career-high 20 points off the bench including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 16.5 seconds left to help the Hoosiers snap a nine-game losing streak in the series and knock off the No. 4 team in the country.
Some fans camped out overnight to attend the game in snow flurries and freezing temperatures, and the night ended with them storming the court.
“It’s all about these guys, these 17 guys that wear the uniform,” Woodson said after the game. “It’s not about me, but any time you can beat Purdue — and they feel the same about us, and it’s been a while since we’ve beaten them — it’s special. Hell, I didn’t dribble one ball or make one shot, man.”
“It was those guys in that locker room that got it done. I couldn’t be more proud of a team, boy. They played their hearts out tonight.”
Indiana put together similarly inspired performances the following year to sweep the 2022-23 season series against Purdue for the first time in a decade.
The Boilermakers were the country’s top-ranked team when they came to Assembly Hall on Feb. 4, 2023, for the first time in the then-216 game series, but they left Bloomington having to escape the throngs of fans that stormed the court for a second straight year.
After Purdue erased a 15-point halftime deficit, it was never more than a two-possession game for the final nine and a half minutes The Hoosiers closed out the 79-74 win with a series of clutch plays that ended with Jalen Hood-Schifino throwing down a breakaway dunk with two seconds left on the clock.
“We delivered what we needed to deliver,” Woodson said at the time. “A win.”
They did the same thing when they went into West Lafayette a few weeks later.
Hood-Schifino scored a career-high 35 points and Trey Galloway powered a 12-0 run — he scored eight points and had an assist during the stretch — in the second half to put the Hoosiers in the driver’s seat.
“It has been a long time,” Woodson said after the game. “That’s the first time I’ve ever won here in Mackey. Four years in college, I never won here. It’s a tough place to win. They’ve always had great teams here, well-coached teams so we beat a good team, a well-coached team tonight.”
Those victories looked like the building blocks to a potential deep postseason run that didn’t materialize, and Purdue regained control of the rivalry in 2023-24 by beating IU by 20 or more points in both games while losing sight of what propelled them to those upset victories.
“I just think it’s a toughness factor,” former IU forward Trayce Jackson-Davis said of beating Purdue in 2023. “We kind of found our niche.”
Mike Woodson vs. Purdue as a player
-
Jan. 6, 1977: L, 80-63 at Assembly Hall
-
Feb. 20, 1977: L, 86-78 at Mackey Arena
-
Jan. 21, 1978: L, 77-67 at Mackey Arena
-
Feb. 9, 1978: W, 65-64 at Assembly Hall
-
Jan. 6, 1979: W, 63-54 at Assembly Hall
-
March 1, 1979: L, 55-48 at Mackey Arena
-
March 21, 1979: W, 53-52 at Madison Square Garden (NIT)
-
Jan. 26, 1980: W, 69-58 at Assembly Hall*
-
Feb. 2, 1980: L, 56-51 at Mackey Arena*
-
March 13, 1980: L, 76-69 at Rupp Arena (NCAA)
* Did not play
Mike Woodson vs. Purdue as a coach
-
Jan. 20, 2022: W, 68-65 at Assembly Hall
-
March 5, 2022: L, 69-67 at Mackey Arena
-
Feb. 4, 2023: W, 79-74 at Assembly Hall
-
Feb. 25, 2023: W, 79-71 at Mackey Arena
-
Jan. 16, 2024: L, 87-66 at Assembly Hall
-
Feb. 10, 2024: L, 79-59 at Mackey Arena
-
Jan. 31, 2025: L, 81-76 at Mackey Arena
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Can Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson get the last laugh against Purdue?
