Postscript

 And now the endgame, as Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson makes it official that Mike Woodson will step down at the conclusion of this season. The endgame, or ... or ...

Well, what do you call this last month, with Woodson still running a program that has moved on?

Postscript? Coda? Epilogue? The Long Goodbye?

Strange and stranger, these deep winter days down in Bloomington. Yesterday, for instance, 24 hours after Dolson's announcement, Woodson got a nice round of applause in Assembly Hall as his team took the floor to face Michigan. No one booed. No cries of "Fire Woodson!" floated like mustard gas from the upper reaches. There was even full-throated support for Woodson's Hoosiers as they roared back from a 17-point deficit to almost, but not quite, get the W.

Instead, they lost again for the seventh time in eight games, 70-67.

They're 14-10 now, 5-8 in the Big Ten, and even Woodson admitted in the postgame his players were adrift both mentally and emotionally. But then how could they not be at this point?

They, too, heard the fans who booed them off the floor the last time they were in the Hall raucously cheer them yesterday.

They, too, heard those same fans applaud their coach.

And they, too, heard them also applaud Michigan coach Dusty May, IU alum and now an official object of desire for Candy Stripe Nation.

Strange days, indeed.

In the postgame yesterday, Woodson spoke of how it's his job now to lift his team emotionally for the stretch run, but it remains to be seen how he does that. From here on out, after all, "his job," amounts to keeping a seat warm, because someone has to. From here on out, in the minds of everyone in B-town, it is already someone else's job.

Dusty May's?

Yeah, maybe, but doubtful. He's only in his first season at Michigan, where he has indeed already lifted the program.  But despite his success there, and the miracle he worked at Florida Atlantic,  there's still the tiniest flavor-of-the-month feel to him. And even if Indiana decided it wanted him badly enough to throw very large green at him, Michigan's one of the few schools that can go checkbook-to-checkbook with it.

So who else?

And please don't say "Brad Stevens," although some IU fans deep into the hallucinogens these days will. Stevens is one of the best front-office talents in the NBA and a Celtic through-and-through after a dozen years in Boston. Indiana would have better luck getting Red Auerbach to come to Bloomington, and Red's been dead for 18 years.

So who, then?

Beats me. The field of candidates is wide open. The only prerequisites, it seems, would be A) a college buckets guy who gets how college buckets work in 2025, and who isn't yet sick of it; and B)  a college buckets guy who gets how college buckets work and isn't yet sick of it, and who also has a long record of consistent success, particularly in March.

Alas, Tom Izzo ain't comin'.

Meanwhile, Mike Woodson and his team soldier on, with the rest of February and a piece March still stretching out before them. They soldier on -- through a dead present and a live future, travelers on a road that has already ended.

Strange and stranger.