Written By Nick Gonzales

The Hoosiers are coming off of a big win to start the season and are looking to keep that train going. However, with an overall solid performance in the season opener, Cignetti wasn’t all that happy with how they performed. He noticed a lot of mistakes that led to missed opportunities to score. He was very dissatisfied by the number of penalties the offense had against FIU.

“Offensively, penalties obviously, too many on offense. Got to cut those out… Now you can teach it off tape and the consequence of having a holding penalty and how it puts you behind the chains. We’ve got to get better with our hand placement, got to get our hands inside, they can’t be outside. It’s always a concern going into the first game.” Cignetti said during his Monday press conference.

Indiana had 80 penalty yards against FIU on Saturday. However, it was the first game of the season, and they don’t have officials at every practice to help notice when players are making penalties. Cignetti emphasized cleaning up penalties before WIU this Friday in order to not shoot themselves in the foot again. Now that they know what to look for, they know how to coach the offense better, so they don’t interrupt their momentum with unnecessary penalties.

Coach Cignetti made it obvious that IU will be an all gas no brakes type of team that continuously attacks, even when they are up big, which explains why the offense was airing the ball out a lot during the fourth quarter.

“We were still in attack mode. At that point we weren’t really satisfied with how we had played since really our last touchdown drive. Even the one we went down and kicked the field goal, we weren’t pleased we had to settle for the field goal.

There were some missed opportunities out there, and sometimes we got behind the sticks because of penalties. So we wanted to keep attacking.” Cignetti responded when asked about the aggressiveness when up by three scores.

A lot of the team seemed to be dissatisfied by how the offense performed during the second half due to a lot of missed chances to score. Coach Cig stressed that they want to finish the game as aggressive as they started the game. To not let up and give the opponent a chance to catch up or take the lead.

If Indiana can straighten out their penalty situation, they will be in a lot better shape during this season. Additionally, Rourke has to fix up his reads going forward as well. Cignetti noticed a couple of plays that should have been a touchdown such as the deep cross to Omar Cooper Jr. (that should’ve gone to the post) and the post to Andison Coby.

“I thought he (Kurtis Rourke) did a nice job. He made some plays when he was under pressure, getting out of the pocket, and made a throw or two and threw the ball fairly well. He missed a couple of reads, but I thought it was a good first time out for him.” Coach Cig replied about what he took away from the quarterbacks during the game.

There was also the halfback pass by Lawton that wasn’t completed and would’ve been another touchdown. Rourke played well for his first game in the Big Ten, but the Hoosiers need to use the field more and make some plays. Other than the missed reads and working out some of the kinks, the offense did well. Luckily the majority of their problems are easy fixes if coached correctly.

The Hoosiers got the win and will have all week to review film and practice in order to correct their mistakes. Indiana hopes for a much cleaner game against Western Illinois this Friday.

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