Head Coach Curt Cignetti sat down with “Voice of the Hoosiers” Don Fischer for another edition of “Inside IU Football.” Over the course of the hour-long show, Coach Cig spoke on how he feels the Hoosiers are playing and what he wants to see from the team heading into their road matchup against #3 Oregon on Saturday.
Cignetti opened by giving his thoughts on Indiana’s thrilling 20-15 win over Iowa. “You play at a place like Iowa, who has a great reputation for being hard to beat at their place, and they were juiced and ready to play us too. Some people would have called that a “trap game” coming off the Illinois game and then you have an All-American corner [D’Angelo Ponds] and he ends up not playing… we had our backs against the wall, but our guys hung in there, they were resilient, gritty, and we made the play when we had to. Coming out of there with a huge win.”
While the Hoosiers left Iowa City with a huge victory, the ending was not without controversy. The refs repeatedly blew IU’s victory formation plays dead before QB Fernando Mendoza’s knee touched the ground. When asked about this on Thursday, Coach Cignetti said, “I don’t want to talk about it too much publicly because I think the Big Ten prefers to keep this between us. But at the end of the game there are 16 seconds left but Iowa has all three timeouts left…but [Fernando] started back and there was no rush and [the ref] blew the whistle, and I’m going nuts on the sideline. Bottom line is that we had to take a 40-yard loss to secure our win.”
Coach Cignetti was quick to point out, however, that the final series was not indicative of the officiating as a whole, saying, “The officials in the Big Ten do a great job, the head of officials really is on top of things and does a great job. Tony Pettiti is a great leader in our conference, and [the officials] have a difficult job; 7 guys trying to see 22.”
Cignetti then turned his attention to the Hoosiers’ massive top-ten matchup against #3 Oregon on Saturday, saying, “[Oregon] is a great football team. I’m extremely impressed with them on tape. Coach Lanning has done a great job of recruiting and developing portal guys and coaching, it shows up on tape. Offense, Defense, and Special Teams…They’re huge up front and the quarterback has been playing lights out” Coach Cig continued by talking about the challenges that the environment at Autzen Stadium imposes, “The stadium is about 60,000 but it is one of the loudest stadiums in the country based on the way it is designed.”
Ultimately however, Cignetti feels good about how Indiana matches up against the Ducks, saying, “I have confidence in our team, but I have respect for Oregon and they had a huge win at Penn State, regardless of what Penn State did at UCLA….but here’s the bottom line: you’ve got to block, tackle, run, catch, protect the ball. You’ve got to make plays every single play.”
With that, Coach Cignetti ended the show as he gets the team ready to head to Oregon.