Indiana’s Offense Scores 47 Unanswered Points to Reclaim Old Brass Spittoon

Written By: Ben Gillard (@benjgillard)

Never daunted. It’s Indiana’s slogan, and yet they haven’t even had a chance to be daunted this season. Through the first 8 games of the season, the Hoosiers had not trailed for a single second. That changed on Saturday. Michigan State capitalized on a pair of three and outs by the Indiana offense to jump out to an early 10-0 lead.

Part of this slow start could be due to Kurtis Rourke’s thumb. The Maple Missile returned after missing the Washington game following the thumb injury he suffered in the first half against Nebraska. Wearing a cut-up glove over his right thumb, it was clear that it was going to take a few plays for him to get comfortable throwing the ball. When asked about it after the game, Rourke said, “My thumb was pretty swollen and it still is; I lost a little bit of grip, so I needed something that would be sticky enough that I could play with but not inhibit throwing the ball.” Rourke further explained that, “It was definitely a little bit sore with every throw, but it’s something that I knew was going to come and I wanted to play through, because you don’t get a chance to play football a lot.”

It’s a credit to both Rourke and the Hoosiers that they didn’t flinch when they went down by two scores. The Hoosiers were shut out of the First Quarter for the first time all season, and yet they responded with a 7-play 75-yard drive that ended with a 17-yard touchdown pass to TE Zach Horton. When asked about how his team responded to adversity, Head Coach Curt Cignetti joked after the game, “I didn’t talk so much about wanting adversity; you guys did. I knew at some point we would be behind and I knew we would be fine. So now we’ve been behind, and we responded.” 

“Fine” may be the understatement of the century. It was as if a switch flipped as soon as the second quarter. Following the Horton touchdown, IU’s offense was dominant, scoring 47 unanswered points to win the game 47-10. Much of this was thanks to Rourke, who caught fire, finishing the game 19-29 (66%) with 263 yards and 4 TDs. On his performance, Rourke said, “I just kind of got a feel about what their plan was for the game, and they played some good defense on those first two drives; but we have a lot of great guys on our offense, and so we just needed to settle down and stick to our game plan.” The game went about as well as Indiana's coaches could have planned. As Coach Cig says, “It was a pretty dominant win—47 straight points on the road against, I think, a good football team.” While this is a historic win (Indiana’s first 9-0 start in program history), the team will not dwell on it for long. As Cignetti said, “It’s a good win. We’ll enjoy it for 24 hours, and the staff will enjoy it for about 12.”