What Worked and What Didn’t in Indiana’s Dominant Finish to the Non-Conference Slate

Image: Sammy Jacobs Hoosier Huddle

Written By Nathan Comp

In the final stage of Indiana’s non-conference slate, Indiana overpowered their intrastate foe the Ball State Cardinals. After numerous close battles in their previous meetings, many of which Ball State actually finished victorious, Indiana was able to out-physical the Cardinals this time around and win rather comfortably.

What Worked?

Fortunately for Indiana, there was very little that did not work in their favor. However, two facets of the game stood out as most impressive.

The first of these had to be the play of Indiana’s offensive line. In both pass protection and run blocking, the offensive line easily handled the defensive attack from the Cardinals. Holes opened up for the rushing attack; this allowed four total rushing scores between Stevie Scott, Ronnie Walker, and Peyton Ramsey. Meanwhile, the pass protection gave Ramsey plenty of time to go through his progressions and complete 75% of his passes. A game ball could have gone to the big men on the offensive line.

However, the game ball instead went to the second primary facet of the game that worked for Indiana, the heart-warming story that is J-Shun Harris. After tearing his ACL for the third time last season, the easy decision would have been to hang up the cleats. In fact, no one would have batted an eye or blamed him one bit for deciding to do so. Instead, J-Shun returned to the Indiana team this season and showed that he’s still got speed in the return game. J-Shun returned a 2nd quarter punt 86-yards for a touchdown to put Indiana up 17-3. The man knows no limits, and truly earned the game ball in this game.

What Didn’t?

This section will have to be relatively short, simply because this was an all-around dominant performance for the Hoosiers. In fact, it will be relatively nit-picky. But the two aspects of the game that Indiana somewhat struggled with were their defensive contain and defense on first downs. When Ball State had success on offense it was because of great success on first down.

The Ball State offense never truly got going. The Indiana defense forced eight punts and allowed under 350 yards of total offense. However, when the Ball State offense was clicking, it was because the defense had lost backside contain. This allowed a long run by BSU quarterback Riley Neal in the first quarter and their only touchdown by running back James Gilbert in the third quarter. IU did allow over 200 yards on the ground, something that will need to be shored up as the Hoosiers enter Big Ten play.