Mike DeCourcy on the Brian Dutcher and Mike Woodson Contracts
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:03 >> What was your reaction to the Woodson news and the Dutcher news?
00:07 I think I would say Dutcher automatically deserved that deal.
00:11 And I think there are a lot of people,
00:13 Indiana fans that don't like that Woodson decision.
00:17 >> Well, for Brian Dutcher, it was just a question of how long he wants to go.
00:23 And I was happy to hear that he wants to go for a little while.
00:26 There's no question that he's earned the ability to extend his contract.
00:31 He has done a terrific job of making what Steve Fisher brought to San Diego State.
00:38 Gosh, it's been basically 25 years ago.
00:42 What he brought, what Steve and obviously Dutch was part of that as well.
00:46 But continuing that is not an easy deal.
00:50 We've seen lots of assistant coaches follow their head coaches and not succeed.
00:55 It's working at Duke with John Shire following Coach K.
00:59 And it's working for Dutch taking San Diego State where even
01:04 Steve Fisher couldn't get them with some tremendous teams over the years with
01:08 the Aztecs, they never got to the final four and yet Dutch did that.
01:12 So I'm really happy for him that he's getting paid and
01:15 he's getting paid for as long as he wishes.
01:17 And as far as Woodson, there was never any doubt.
01:21 They weren't gonna do this.
01:22 I don't know, look, when he was hired, there weren't any complaints about this.
01:28 I've said that publicly and I've gotten some pushback on this.
01:33 In some Reddit subgroup somewhere,
01:35 there were like four people that said it was a bad hire, but there was no outcry.
01:40 It was warmly embraced by the public group.
01:45 So and so then what happens?
01:48 Okay, he goes to the tournament the first year,
01:50 he goes to the tournament the second year, and then they have to rebuild.
01:53 Well, I mean, for a rebuilding year, certainly there have been disappointments,
01:57 starting with the Penn State game at home about a month ago.
02:01 I really thought that was gonna be the game that turned them forward and
02:04 instead it was the game that turned them backward.
02:06 But even that, they recovered nicely this week,
02:09 had a good win at Maryland, good win at Minnesota.
02:12 It's not easy to get two wins on the road in this league, it's just not.
02:17 I cover it every weekend with the Big Ten Network and
02:21 it is not easy to get any road wins.
02:23 Nebraska's only got one or two, and they are gonna make the NCAA tournament.
02:28 So I'm not defending everything about the way Mike has operated the program or
02:34 the team, I'm not.
02:36 But there's no way he has earned dismissal at this stage.
02:41 It's not even close to that.
02:42 So I'm not at all surprised.
02:44 I've known for weeks that this is what's going to happen.
02:47 [MUSIC]