Tom Allen Feels Good About Where the Team is Heading to Iowa

Written by Matt Smith

Two days remain before Indiana kicks off their season at Iowa, and head coach Tom Allen met with the media one final time on Thursday to discuss the team's preparation going into Saturday.

“I feel good about where we are. Like you said, the first game always has a lot of unknowns. A lot of things that make you nervous and keeps you up at night, but the bottom line is that our guys have works extremely hard and I thought we had a really good week of preparation,” Allen said on Thursday. “We coach until kickoff. That is our philosophy here and our guys have prepared extremely well. We have a lot of guys that have played a lot of football and we are going to rely on that for them to be able to prepare well from now until the game starts on Saturday.”

In addition, the Hoosiers are back and finally healthy for Saturday’s game against Iowa. The only one banged up according to Allen is David Ellis who is still being evaluated and is unsure if he will be ready to go. Michael Penix Jr, Thomas Allen, Marcelino McCrary-Ball, and Raheem Layne are all healthy and back from injury and expected to go.

The Hoosiers have very physical practice on Tuesday and Wednesday during the week in order to get ready for the game.

“We go full pads on Tuesday and shells on Wednesdays. We practice a lot in shells and call it thud tempo, like everybody else does. We really work hard to practice very physically in those two practices, keeping guys up off the ground, do live tackling drills in regard to taking [tackling] dummies and shields and other mechanisms to the ground, but not bodies, unless it is a controlled type of deal,” Allen said.

One thing to note about Iowa is their physicality as a team, they are very tough against the run and constantly send offensive linemen. 

“I think that's something they have done a really good job of in the past and that is a tribute to [Iowa], a testament to [the coaching staff] and is a huge part of this football game. Yes, there is no question about that [being focused on Iowa being physical up front]. Also, the thing that sticks out to me with them is the soundness of what they do on both sides of the football and special teams,” Allen said.

This game means a lot to IU because they need to prove that last season wasn’t a fluke and a big road win would do a lot for the program.

“Bottom line is that it is one game, not multiple games. It is one game, but it does have a lot of value. It is a great opportunity for both teams, as is the case for everyone that is playing conference opponents week one. You always want to set the tone and that never changes no matter who you are playing,” Allen said. “We are focused on one thing and that is playing our best football on Saturday. That is all we can control right now is how we are preparing to do that, and we understand that the opportunity that is presented by this game and who we are playing and the quality of who we are playing and the venue we are playing in. So, it also makes for a very exciting opportunity for our guys. Our guys are very excited about this, but we have to keep coaching to kick off.”