Indiana coach Mike Woodson joined the CBS Sports Eye of College Basketball podcast from Big Ten media day in Chicago.
The podcast was also released in video format, which you can watch here. We’ve also transcribed everything Woodson said, which is available below:
On how sick he is about being asked about how good the team’s 3-point shooting is going to be:
“It’s always a concern. But let me make it clear. I’m not dumbfounded to shooting 3s. I mean if you go back to my Knick team, we led the league in 3s taken and made and was third in field goal percentage. And we were putting up 30 at that time and the NBA now is putting up 40 to 45.
“So the game has changed. But you’ve gotta have players that can make them, too. And I think we’ve struggled in that area over the years that I’ve been here. We just haven’t had enough guys to be able to take that many, but I think the fact that we’ve gone out into the portal this summer and revamped our whole team, we’ve put ourselves in a different position now that maybe I can please some people about making 3s and shooting them.”
On what it’s like to live day-to-day in charge of the IU program:
“It’s been my whole life. You think about it, I mean I grew up in Indianapolis watching Indiana University basketball, Purdue basketball, Notre Dame basketball, Indiana State, Butler, I mean it goes on for days, the basketball part of it. But there’s nothing like Indiana basketball. Expectations are always high. It was that way when I played for Coach (Bob) Knight and it hasn’t changed.
“Our fanbase is probably one of the best fanbases in all of sports. So, I don’t take that very lightly. I knew taking the job there was a lot of work that came behind it. When I took over, they hadn’t made the (NCAA) tournament in, I think, six years and we were able to get them in the first two years and we had some slippage last year, which is unacceptable, I think. I take full responsibility of that. So that’s why we had to go out and retool and revamp our team this summer to put ourselves in the best position possible moving forward this season.”
On why the program took an unexpected step back in year three:
“Well again, I don’t call it a big step back. We didn’t make the tournament. We won 19 games and I don’t really like talking about it but you’re not going to win a lot of college basketball games without your starting point guard who only played half the…