Can you imagine the ammo Coach Cig now has leading up to that Illinois game with them rated significantly higher than us? Call me crazy, but I find these rankings to be the perfect storm. We will have plenty of time and opportunity to move on up.
Funny story,I have a friend who lives in Illinois,she is ann IU fan but her husband is a big Illinois fan.
i helped her get tickets and told her she better call the ticket office to get a parking pass.
Well,that was 6 weeks ago and she didn’t call the ticket office til last week and of course parking passes are sold out.
Her Illinois husband and his friends were pissed so I told them I was sure they could sell the tickets if they didn’t want to go.
They all said oh hell no,we are going so we can watch Illinois put the beat down on them.
i laughed when she told me that and said they might be a bit disappointed when the game is over
She said all the fans over think it’s going to be an Illinois blowout.
So Indiana has a difficult schedule. Noted.
@olympian97 I do think the preseason ranking helps. Last year IU was so low that they had a lot of ground to make up and it seemed to take forever for them to break into the rankings. If they had started in the top 20 like this year they would have zoomed up the charts a lot faster and I think a lot of the doubters would have been less so. Just my opinion.
IU was ranked 5th in the AP poll at one point last November. Their preseason ranking did not harm their postseason prospects.
@iugradman I agree for the most part. But one could look at it the other way and argue that had they started in the top 10-15 and gone 11-1, they would have been ahead of the two loss teams at the end of the year and gotten a home playoff game. Simply because the perception of them at the beginning of the year was already high and they just solidified it. Rather than the narrative that they came out of nowhere only because of their weak schedule.
They were very similar to Notre Dame and Penn State last year as far as playoff resumes go. But the difference was that those teams started at the top and stayed there, despite weak schedules.
Smoke Illinois and this all takes care of itself.
Ranked in the top 20 makes it that much easier for Cig and Co to reach the playoffs.
The fewer teams one has to jump, the better our chances are. Just gotta get in front of 19 more teams and stay there.
I'd like to see Illinois sneak into the top 10 before that week 4 game. Let's hope they don't stumble against Duke