BLOOMINGTON – The thought seemed to occur to Greg Miller almost by accident, the sort of thing you stumble upon rather than search for it.
Miller was casting his mind back half a decade, to a time when college basketball coaches routinely called or stopped by the gym at Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minn. In an area rich with talent, Miller — Plymouth’s head coach — had a long, lithe forward with an impressive athletic background and enough upside to make those coaches dream of what might be.
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Race Thompson was so skilled, Miller and his staff installed Fred Hoiberg-inspired sets to let him run point guard some of the time. Those coaches were desperate to sell Thompson on what they might do with him, how they might marry his talent to their methods and win games together.
Now, they are all gone. Steve Prohm at Iowa State, Richard Pitino at Minnesota, Steve Wojciechowski at Marquette, John Beilein at Michigan, and Archie Miller at Indiana — not one of the five coaches whose schools made Thompson’s final cut is still employed where they were then. Only one is currently a head coach anywhere.
But Race Thompson is still here.
He missed one year to a planned redshirt. The bulk of another to a concussion so bad he couldn’t even attend classes. He entered the transfer portal during the chaos of a coaching search and withdrew to become a captain, leader and ground-level investor in Mike Woodson’s effort to restore IU basketball’s proud tradition of success.
He has done for five years what his team needs him to do now: Persist through adversity, to hard-earned success.
“It’s part of growing up,” said his father, Darrell. “Realizing the situation you’re in and the gifts you’ve been given. It’s part of the process for him to grow up and realize he’s got to be part of the solution.”
Playing the long game
Patience was Thompson’s plan from the beginning. He can’t have known how it would be tested.
First by a mutually agreed upon redshirt year to adjust physically to life in college, a promise Miller kept even as injuries thinned his frontcourt. Then by a concussion worse than either of his parents, a former Minnesota running back and a former Iowa volleyball player, nor IU’s medical staff had ever seen. Then by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that prematurely ended what might turn out to be the only NCAA tournament-worthy season of Thompson’s Indiana career.
And finally by a coaching change last spring, when Thompson saw the staff that recruited him from Minneapolis to Bloomington shown the door for a program legend with an NBA pedigree and tough love for anyone willing to buy into his vision for his alma mater.
Thompson entered the transfer portal during the transition from Miller to Woodson. He would say later that he just wanted to be somewhere he was sure he was wanted, and his contributions were valued.
Woodson saw something deeper. In their first meeting, as Woodson outlined the role he envisioned for Thompson and how he would help Thompson develop, IU’s first-year coach told his fifth-year forward he would be a team captain.
“You have to hold yourself to a higher standard,” Woodson told Thompson that day. “Come to practice ready to go every day, and be a leader — on the floor, off the floor.”
Thompson embraced that challenge. He pushed himself to be more vocal. He improved his body and his game, evidenced by shooting percentages and scoring averages as high as any in his career.
In a season of transition and flux in Bloomington, Thompson has been a steadying force for the Hoosiers, the leader Woodson challenged him to be and a spark for a team desperate to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in six years.
“He’s the glue to our team,” senior guard Rob Phinisee said. “He’s been through it all.”
From that first conversation in Woodson’s office, Thompson has embraced all the attendant challenges that come with being the leader his team needs, leaning on lessons he learned first at home.
Born into sports, activism
Thompson comes from a tremendously athletic family.
Hisparents were college athletes. So were both of his sisters, and his brother. Darrell Thompson still holds Minnesota’s career rushing record, and played for the Green Bay Packers. He’s also president of a nonprofit organization in the Minneapolis area called Bolder Options, which supports youth mentoring in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Rochester.
Darrell and Stephanie Thompson never forced their children into sports. They supported whatever Dominique, Indigo, True and Race wanted to do. All they ever asked was for their children to stick to their commitments, and try their hardest.
“Do the best you can do,” Darrell Thompson said. “If you can’t do it, that’s fine, but if you can, then you should.”
The spirit of that message is part of the reason that, in the troubled, painful summer of 2020, when Minneapolis was the site of numerous protests and marches following George Floyd’s murder, Race turned to his father for guidance and leadership.
“He called me during the (protests following) the murder of George Floyd and said, ‘What are you going to do? You’re a leader,’” Darrell Thompson said. “The next day we went on a march.”
Race Thompson attended numerous marches that summer.
“Race said, ‘I want to go, I want to be part of the solution,’” Darrell Thompson told IndyStar in a 2020 interview. “‘We need to have a solution.’”
Race was present for the I-35 march that ended in a terrifying scene, when a truck drove through a crowd of protestors.
When IU returned to campus that summer, the Hoosiers wanted to make a statement about the turmoil around them, and the pain it caused. Many, like Thompson, had attended marches or otherwise spoken out. Now, they wanted collective action.
Race Thompson’s was the first voice raised, the loudest and the clearest. When Indiana distributed a teamwide video message meant to spark action and encourage change, Thompson told his story.
“It was this feeling I had in my stomach,” he told IndyStar in an interview later that year. “I was sick, and I just needed to say something. I can’t hold this in.”
There’s no denying Thompson’s teammates saw a different player return from the COVID summer. More mature. More authoritative.
More of a leader.
“Anybody would’ve done that,” Thompson told IndyStar in 2020. “I was just speaking to what everybody was feeling. I’m not the only one who felt that way.
“I just had a story to tell.”
Building maturity, leadership
Can you trace the through-lines connecting all of it? The maturity to take on college a year early. The resilience in the face of a scary, frustrating injury. The willingness to step forward and lead, to demand equality and justice in a world where it is too often absent.
And should it then not surprise you that, amid the uncertainty of a coaching change, the person described above would embrace the challenge Woodson laid before him in that meeting last spring, rather than walking away from it?
“Race in general just is a totally different player from this year to last year,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “Not necessarily just his play on the court, but how he handles himself and carries himself.”
His play on the court still speaks volumes. Thompson is currently averaging career bests in points (11.8) rebounds (7.7) and assists (1.5) per game. He’s finishing at the best rate in his career. He’s mixed his 3-point shot in more often, at 11-of-38 from behind the arc in Big Ten play.
A permanent starter in Woodson’s first season, he has been an indispensable member of a frontcourt that no longer feels like Jackson-Davis plus one, but rather Race and Trayce as equals, pulling IU along with them.
“He (Race) has been one of the most consistent players in the Big Ten. I mean, his numbers are very, very consistent in terms of how he's played,” Woodson said recently. “You've got to pat him on the butt and say, ‘Hey, job well done.’ Still got a lot of work still left, but the work that he's put in in practice and on the floor has paid off for him and we've benefited from it.”
Thompson’s intangible impact might be just as important. The same player who once sponged up advice from Juwan Morgan is now handing it out. Redshirting freshman Race Thompson has been replaced by a tough, smart locker room leader whose teammates — and particularly position mates — hang on his words.
“On the court,” Jackson-Davis said, “(he’s) putting people in positions to succeed, helping younger guys, especially JG (Jordan Geronimo) in his role, because he knows next year he’s going to be in that situation.”
A sixth season?
Next year.
The last question to ask of Thompson’s career lingers for him and for classmates across college basketball: When is it over?
A fifth-year senior, this would normally be Thompson’s final college season. But the COVID-prompted eligibility exception gives him a sixth season, if he wants it.
Thompson defers the decision until after the season when asked. He’s talked to his family about it a little bit. Everyone agrees it’s best to push it aside and focus on the task at hand.
“They’re just telling me, don’t worry about that right now,” Thompson told IndyStar. “The end of the year, just focus on that. When the time comes, you’ll be able to focus on what’s the best decision for you.”
That said, Thompson was one of two Hoosiers to participate in Senior Night festivities after the Hoosiers’ loss to Rutgers last week.
He choked up during his speech, thanking coaches, teammates, family and fans. He sounded more like a man near the end of his story, than one preparing for another new chapter.
Asked again during a post-practice Zoom meeting with the media about his decision, Thompson reiterated his decision will take a backseat to the season until the latter concludes.
"I haven't made any decision yet," he said, "if I'm leaving or if I'm coming back. Either-or, it's up in the air. Yeah, it was emotional (on Senior Night) because I'm in the unknown. Coming off an emotional game, the feelings I had towardmy teammates, towardmy managers, towardmy coaches, towardthe fans, really.If that was my last game in Assembly Hall, it's definitely an emotional one.
"But again, it's very possible I could be coming back. It's just really up in the air."
Whatever his future, Indiananeed only concern itself with his present.
The Hoosiers need a win. Maybe two. They go to Indianapolis for this week’s Big Ten tournament looking uphill at an NCAA tournament field Thompson has never joined in five years at IU.
Thompson, whose baseline has been so high for Indiana this season, will be crucial to any success at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Woodson’s assertion that Thompson has been among the most consistent players in the league this season has merit. In 20 conference games, Thompson has posted at least eight points and six rebounds 17 times. That’s the same number as Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis, and better than Jackson-Davis (15), Kofi co*ckburn (16), Hunter Dickinson (14), Zach Edey (15) and EJ Liddell (16).
No Big Ten player has more.
“These last two years, he’s really shown (how good he is),” Phinisee said. “He’s a huge part of our team.”
Race Thompson has endured a lot in his five years in Bloomington. He has come to embody even more to his team. In what might be his final season, he has been its glue, its engine and its conscience; the confident, veteran leader Woodson challenged him to be in their first meeting last spring.
“To bring someone along is harder than just saying, ‘I’m good at this. I’m just going to do it,’” Darrell Thompson. “(Being a leader) has made him stronger.”
In this final furlong, the math is simple. The Hoosiers need wins in Indianapolis.
One might get them into the tournament field. Two certainly would. For their redshirt senior captain, focus does not stray from that.
“Stay the course,” he said. “Don’t hear any of the noise. Our season’s not over. We’ve just got to put a couple games together and make the NCAA tournament.”
Staying the course might be Race Thompson’s greatest strength.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
