Indiana football head coach Curt Cignetti met with the media to discuss his team’s 56-9 win over Kennesaw State and previews Indiana State.
Notes
– IU comes in the AP poll at 22 and up two spots in the Coaches Poll at 19.
– IU hosts Indiana State at 6:30pm ET on BTN (Friday, Sept. 12)
– IU-Illinois (Sept. 20) will kickoff at 7:30pm ET on NBC
– A final Injury Report will be posted on Saturday prior to kickoff
Curt Cignetti Quotes
Opening Statement
Cignetti: Saturday definitely took a step forward, but it was far from clean. Still a lot of areas of improvement. Must improve. You always have to improve. But I don’t think the players want to look at the score and feel like, yeah, okay, we’re there, because we’re definitely not. I mean, defensively we gave up nine plays of 15 yards or more. They had drives of 63, 64, 44 and 50 consecutively, and we had a number of missed assignments, poor alignments, the fast balls, particularly in the middle of the field where they’re going fast, were not aligned correctly.
Really the play of the game is Jamari Sharpe’s strip where it’s 28-9 in the second half and they get a big play, and if they go and score, it’s going to be 28-16, and he makes a great play. On the very next play, we run the reverse for a touchdown, so it’s 35-9. But on that particular play, ball is in the middle of the field, they come out in empty three by two and we set the strength wrong, and then they motioned a four by one and we’ve got guys all over the place.
So, we’ve got to do a better job of that. I do think the last two teams we’ve played in terms of getting aligned are some of the bigger challenges we’ll face this year because of their tempo, particularly this last team who had a lot of — they could go extremely fast and then they had some oddball formations you had to adjust to.
Offensively we still had six or seven missed opportunities that we need to convert on. On the plus side, it was good to go seven for seven touchdowns in the red area on offense.
Defense, the first four series three-and-out, and the last four series, they had one 1st down. We won the turnover ratio 2-0. We had 14 TFLs on defense. Teams were good. All the kickoffs were out of the end zone. We blocked a punt. We had a 35-yard return.
So, things to build on, got to get better, and it’s an early game Friday night.
On lingering issues between both games…
Cignetti: I think every game is different without a doubt. You come out of this game, and you can say, okay, offense improved in certain areas, teams was still very consistently good, and defense gave up too many chunk plays. They had an opportunity for more chunk plays that they didn’t execute. We also had a lot of nice defensive explosives and TFL (tackles for loss).
But we missed tackles at linebacker more. We had some misfits. Safeties were out of position quite a few times.
Got to get lined up quicker. Communication has got to be cleaner. There needs to be a little bit more attention to detail in our preparation in the back end.
On Quinn Warren in the punt game…
Cignetti: Yeah. The punter has got a little bit of an issue, the first-team guy. He’s sorta day-to-day. But we’ve always had a lot of confidence in Quinn. The first one that we downed inside the 5 was a little bit of low kick and we got a good bounce. But he’s really capable of booming the ball, and he did a nice job.
On the perimeter blocking and the work from Riley Nowakowski
Cignetti: Yeah, he (Nowakowski) was the player of the game on offense, sort of an unsung hero, high effort, high character, gives you everything he’s got play in and play out, really dependable. Really played well Saturday. Scored a touchdown too. Caught a pass early.
The effort on the reverse by him and others downfield was really nice to see, and good player.
On Louis Moore, Anthony Chung and the safety position…
Cignetti: Right. That one is sort of day-to-day depending on the health status of a guy or two. We’ve got to get better at safety. We play three of them. We play a rover, a free safety and a strong safety. They’re capable of — they’re not playing bad, but they’re capable of playing better.
On what he wants to see from the offense moving forward…
Cignetti: Well, you don’t want to leave plays out on the field. When you have opportunities, you want to cash in on those opportunities because as we move forward, the windows will get tighter, et cetera, et cetera, so you don’t want to leave plays out on the field.
On where things have to step up for the defense to eliminate chunk plays…
Cignetti: Yeah, the calls are getting in quick enough, and the communication from Aiden (Fisher) is getting done quick enough. Now, one time maybe he set the strength to the right and maybe he could have set it to the left, but the guys in the back end got to get lined up faster, and that’s the safety position primarily.
On the difficulty in planning for two Indiana State quarterbacks…
Cignetti: Well, they’re doing a nice job on offense scoring 40 points a game. They’re fairly balanced, playing a couple running backs. They’re doing a nice job throwing the ball. The starter is completing about 77 percent of his passes. Defensively they’re doing a nice job as well.
I’m sure they’re going to come in excited to play. I want to see us play a clean game.
On how a Friday night game changes the week preparation…
Cignetti: Yeah, we’ll keep Monday Monday, Tuesday Tuesday, Wednesday Wednesday. Thursday will be a little shorter, and then we’ll have a meeting with the players Friday late morning and then get them back to the hotel and play the game.
We don’t alter our routine a ton. I may cut some reps during the week in practice.