With two weeks in the books, the Hoosiers turn their attention to their final non-conference tuneup this Friday before officially entering conference play when they welcome Terre Haute’s Indiana State into Bloomington. The Hoosiers looked better this past weekend with the offense looking more comfortable in the red zone and the defense ultimately allowing just three field goals. This should be a “name the score” kind of contest against an improved, but should be overwhelmed, Sycamores team.
“Saturday definitely took a step forward, but it was far from clean,” said Curt Cignetti this Monday. “Still a lot of areas of improvement. Must improve. You always have to improve.”
The main area of improvement I am hoping to see with the Hoosiers this weekend, and my matchup to watch, is the Indiana defense versus Indiana State’s explosive plays. Though the Hoosier defense held Kennesaw State to just nine total points this past weekend, the defense appeared lost in a few moments when the Owls went uptempo with their offense.
“Defensively we gave up nine plays of 15 yards or more,” added Cignetti. “They had drives of 63, 64, 44 and 50 consecutively, and we had a number of missed assignments, poor alignments…”
With an injury at quarterback for the Sycamores, the Hoosier defense will turn to narrowing in on second-string Keegan Patterson. Patterson did see action in their most recent game in which they defeated Eastern Illinois. He threw for 111 yards and two touchdowns, adding five rushes for 78 yards as well. The longest rush went for 47 yards. The Indiana defense has shown some difficulty navigating mobile quarterbacks thus far, so it will be an area to watch.
For the Indiana defense, the main goal should be to overpower the Sycamore offensive line and continue to make plays behind the line of scrimmage, stifling any momentum early and often. This should give the secondary some time to figure out some of the miscues we saw in last week’s contest. Much of what we saw was good, but a few big plays put a damper on what could have been a truly dominant defensive performance.
“The first four series three-and-out, and the last four series, they had one 1st down,” Cignetti continued. “We won the turnover ratio 2-0. We had 14 TFLs on defense.”
“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.”
If Indiana can limit explosive plays, this should be an opportunity to get some of the depth into the game early and comfortably look forward to Illinois under the lights next Saturday.
The Hoosiers kick off against the Sycamores Friday on Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium at 6:30 EST.