How far IU basketball goes depends on how far Mike Woodson can push Trayce Jackson-Davis

BORDEN – On Friday, Trayce Jackson-Davis announced his intention to withdraw from the NBA draft, and return to IU. On Monday, he outlined expectations with nearly no limits for his senior season. By Wednesday, Mike Woodson had upped the ante.

Trayce Jackson-Davis wants IU to test its limits in 2023. Mike Woodson needs Trayce Jackson-Davis to test his.

“That was a major piece to our puzzle, getting him back,” Woodson said during his first appearance at IU's annual booster dinner at Huber’s Orchard, Winery and Vineyards. “He’s got to make a major jump. We’ve got to ride him like we did (last) year.”

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Woodson used words like “Big Ten title” and “national title” Wednesday the way he always does. An All-American conference champion during his IU career, the team Woodson left behind when he graduated in 1980 won a national championship a season later. In his mind, whether you agree or not, that is the bar for success in Bloomington.

Clearing that bar rests on Jackson-Davis’s shoulders now. The senior from Center Grove welcomes that, but there is a difference between self-made pressure and pressure thrust upon you.

A year ago, by Woodson’s own admission, it was Jackson-Davis’ buy-in that led a parade of players to withdraw from the transfer portal and return to Bloomington, giving Woodson the tools to build the Hoosiers’ first NCAA tournament team in six years.

“He gave me the opportunity to coach him,” Woodson said, “and everybody else seemed to fall in line, and we were off and running.”

Now, Jackson-Davis’ return has prompted a renewed sense of optimism once more.

Once, his trust in Woodson allowed others to trust him as well. Now, national media are talking about IU like they haven’t in half a decade:

Maybe preseason top 15, maybe the Big Ten frontrunner, maybe the conference’s surest thing — as much as anything is in May — to reach the Final Four.

It’s far too early for anyone to either manifest those expectations, or dismiss them as fantasy. But what’s true even on May 25 is that Jackson-Davis’ return puts him front and center like no Hoosier since Yogi Ferrell, with expectations to match.

Provided he stays healthy, he will likely end next season as IU’s first 2,000-point scorer since A.J. Guyton. He is within touching distance of the school record for blocks, and there’s a world where he threatens Alan Henderson’s career rebounds record as well.

The main reason college basketball is inclined to trust IU over most everyone else in the Big Ten is that the Hoosiers have proven talent.

Their best players played their best basketball in late February and March of last season. Four of five starters are back. Woodson signed a top-10 recruiting class he expects to contribute right away. Race Thompson returned for a sixth year.

But Jackson-Davis is center stage. He knows it. And his coach will say it without a hint of reservation.

“I thought it was great Race made the commitment to come back, but I was chasing Trayce all summer, trying to get him to commit to come back,” Woodson said, admitting he even traveled to Los Angeles, where Jackson-Davis worked out during the pre-draft process, to talk him through the possibility of returning to school.

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There was a fair bit of discussion Wednesday of the relationship player and coach built, perhaps through growing pains, last season.

Coming from the NBA, Woodson had coached athletic bigs like Josh Smith and Amar’e Stoudemire before. But he’d never built an offense as purely post-reliant as the one he settled IU into last winter.

“Last year was the first time I had ever coached a low-post player and featured him, in my whole career,” Woodson said. “That was new for me, and Trayce and Race both benefitted from it, but … if we’re talking about winning a Big Ten title and going to the Big Dance, and perhaps winning a national title, you’ve got to have a balance.

“You can’t just be inside. I hope the summer work these cats are putting in, it pays off for us.”

That led to more talk of stretching Jackson-Davis out offensively. Woodson again encouraged him to embrace more shots away from the basket and fire without thinking when defenders give him space 12 feet and out.

The practice of that sentiment is just that Woodson doesn’t want Jackson-Davis afraid of his jumper.

“I’m not gonna put added pressure on him,” Woodson said, “but this past season, it wasn’t like we didn’t tell him to shoot the basketball. He’s got to shoot the ball and feel good about shooting it.”

The theoretical portion of the discussion is more interesting.

All last season, we got conflicting information between Woodson, who said he wanted Jackson-Davis to stretch his offensive game more often, and Jackson-Davis, who talked like his understanding was that what was best for IU was getting him in the post early and often.

As that season wore on, it felt less like player and coach not always connecting on what a good shot was, and more like two men — one young, one old — trying to figure out how to best marry their skills and expectations of one another. It did not feel by accident that the best stretch of IU's season, in late February and March, was preceded by a heart-to-heart between Woodson and Jackson-Davis about getting more ball screen-heavy offensively.

Those weeks were Jackson-Davis’ best of the season as well. Even if they did not necessarily see him knocking down jump shot after jump shot, they represented tangible steps forward in getting Jackson-Davis in space offensively, changing his entry points into Woodson’s offense and using that mobility to move defenses where they did not want to be.

They were also easily his most dominant, again not by accident.

Between the Hoosiers' crucial wins over Michigan and Illinois in the Big Ten tournament, without which they would not have made the field of 68, Woodson compiled Jackson-Davis' numbers from all eight of his games against former Illini star center Kofi Cockburn. His message: I don't think you believe you can beat this man.

"I put the stats right in front of his face," Woodson told a room of more than 1,000 IU fans. "I said you're scared of him. He said, 'No I'm not, coach.' I said, 'Well, the stats indicate that.'"

Jackson-Davis delivered the best performance of his career against Illinois, scoring 21 points and pulling down seven rebounds in a critical win.

Without wanting to be overly metaphorical — to some extent, a jump shot is still just a jump shot — how those two manage that marriage this season will determine whether the lofty ambitions player and coach both hold can be realized.

Yes, the Hoosiers will be a better outfit if Trayce Jackson-Davis can hit jumpers. But given IU did not add any guaranteed 3-point shooting this offseason, and Woodson will still need to rely on player development to improve in that area, Jackson-Davis figures to play a lion’s role in that offense once again.

Woodson talked about Jackson-Davis’ jump shooting Wednesday, but more fundamentally he talked about confidence, and trust, and a player’s faith in his own abilities.

“I’ve just got to get Trayce in a better place,” Woodson said. “His shot is not that bad when he shoots it. I’ve just got to get him here mentally, where he’s OK, because it’s OK with me. If the coach says it’s OK, it should be OK with you.”

Put another way: The more Jackson-Davis is willing to dare this season, the more IU will be allowed to dream.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball: Mike Woodson wants to push Trayce Jackson-Davis