It has not been a good January for Indiana basketball.

First came the Hoosiers’ 86-70 loss to a Nebraska team they had owned in recent years. Then there was yet another loss to Rutgers, a team the Hoosiers can’t seem to beat away from Assembly Hall. The coup de grâce was Tuesday, when IU suffered an 87-66 loss against rival Purdue, the biggest margin of victory for the Boilermakers in Bloomington since 1934.

The defeat to the Boilers left Indiana with a 12-6 record, a 4-3 mark in Big Ten play and a rapidly narrowing path to NCAA Tournament contention. And life does not get any easier – the Hoosiers must next travel to Wisconsin to take on the Big Ten-leading Badgers at the Kohl Center tonight. IU has lost 19 in row to Wisconsin on the road and the current iteration of the Cream and Crimson shows little sign of being able to end that streak.

Indiana’s recent struggles have brought criticism raining down on coach Mike Woodson. For his first time as leader of the program, Woodson is now hearing calls for his job, insistence the Hoosiers are not where they should be in Year 3 of his tenure and rage at the stagnation of the team after a modestly successful 2022-23 season.

To those members of one of the most passionate fanbases in the country who want the Hoosiers to move on from Woodson, there is a simple answer: Take a breath. The coach isn’t going anywhere, nor should he.

It’s true, there are plenty of reasons to criticize Woodson’s performance as head coach. His substitution patterns, which often put three or four players from a less-than-effective IU bench on the court at the same time, have not worked and have cost the Hoosiers early leads a couple of times this season.

More broadly, Woodson made a mistake in not getting another guard in the transfer portal this offseason. IU has a roster spot open and injuries to sixth-year senior Xavier Johnson and freshman Jakai Newton have torpedoed the Hoosiers’ backcourt depth, a reality on full display against Purdue, when the Boilermakers’ three-guard rotation helped snuff out IU’s second-half comeback attempt.

But the reasons to keep Woodson around for a while longer are both logical and practical.

Logically, Woodson has earned more time. He took over a team that had spent four years wandering in the wilderness under failed coach Archie Miller and took it to the NCAA Tournament in his first season.

In his second season, the Hoosiers started 7-0, then suffered injuries to an honorable mention All-Big Ten guard (Johnson) and an honorable mention All-Big Ten forward (Race Thompson) around the same time. Woodson re-tooled on the fly, helped freshman point guard Jalen Hood-Schifino get confident running the show and led IU to a No. 4 NCAA Tournament seed, its highest since 2016, plus a pair of wins over the otherwise-dominant Boilermakers. The step back this season does not erase the success of the last two years.

During his tenure, Woodson’s recruiting and development have been excellent. He started out by convincing Trayce Jackson-Davis to return to IU in one two-hour conversation and then helped him develop into one of the best players in Hoosiers history. Under his tutelage, Hood-Schifino, Malik Reneau, Kel’el Ware and Mackenzie Mgbako, among others, have improved immensely. He has brought six five-star recruits into the program in four recruiting cycles and consistently has IU in contention for the type of talent to which Miller only rarely got close.

Even the issue with the guards this year is relatively explicable. Woodson returned a pair of veteran starters in the backcourt – Johnson and Trey Galloway – and had talented freshman backups at both spots in Gabe Cupps and Newton. As a result, he couldn’t promise much playing time to guards in the portal, making recruiting difficult. As they did last season, injuries have undercut Woodson’s team-building strategy.

Woodson’s overall record as IU’s coach (56-32) – not to mention his track record of previous success with two NBA franchises – means he deserves the benefit of the doubt and time to build in Bloomington.

But the fanbase knows all that and many still want Woodson gone. The problem the coach has run into is that of Backup Quarterback Syndrome. Every starting signal-caller knows the backup QB is the most popular player in town. For IU fans, the backup quarterback is Florida Atlantic coach Dusty May, who led the upstart Owls to the Final Four last season. May, 42, happens to be an IU graduate and the fans clamoring to fire Woodson are dreaming of bringing him back to his alma mater.

This is where the practical reasons to keep Woodson come in. Indiana has hired five coaches since 2000. The first four of those coaches have been fired. Firing the fifth, too, after just three seasons at the helm, would only bolster IU’s reputation for an itchy trigger finger, the exact type of reputation that could scare off a rising star such as May.

Far better to give Woodson at least the four years Miller received and maybe even a fifth, to ensure the coach has every opportunity to find success. IU athletic director Scott Dolson almost certainly feels the same way; there is virtual certainty Woodson will be back next season.

With that in mind, Indiana fans should simply sit back and relax. Enjoy every monster Ware dunk, every wily Reneau move on the post. Then think of five-star signee Liam McNeeley raining 3s off of passes from the transfer point guard Woodson will bring in this offseason.

Don’t listen to Chicken Little; the sky is not falling yet.

Dylan Sinn covers Notre Dame, Indiana and Purdue for The Journal Gazette. He can be reached at dsinn@jg.net.

Dylan Sinn covers Notre Dame, Indiana and Purdue for The Journal Gazette. He can be reached at dsinn@jg.net.