When coach Curt Cignetti brewed up the recipe for the Indiana University football team roster in 2024, he kept a group of guys who were already Hoosiers, accepted transfer guys from his old school, James Madison, and took in transfers from elsewhere.

One of those players was running back Justice Ellison. Ellison, who has one year of eligibility, was a regular for Wake Forest in the Atlantic Coast Conference and rushed for 548 yards on 120 carries last season for a 4-8 team. He produced more in 2022, rushing for 707 yards while being named third-team All-ACC.

Ellison hopes he can do more for IU in Cignetti’s first campaign, one beginning Saturday at 3:30 p.m. versus Florida International at Memorial Stadium.

Freedman

Ellison, who is 5-foot-9 and 210 pounds and is nicknamed “Juice,” said he turned to Bloomington “to be a part of something new. I found it.”

Indiana, coming off a 3-9 season, has not fielded an exceptionally strong ground game recently. Whether the Hoosiers needed a better offensive line, some faster runners out of the backfield, or just what, on many occasions the team could not move the ball overland when it needed to do so.

Ellison is a new face to Indiana fans and hopes he can show some good stuff. When asked about any special skill he has, he said, “I like my spin move.”

He would like to be seen as a clutch runner.

“I have never really been the one and only guy,” Ellison said. “I just want to bring that juice.”

He is familiar enough with Indiana’s history to know the new Hoosiers must prove themselves, must carve out a new winning identity under Cignetti before Big Ten Conference watchers take them seriously.

“It’s kind of that underdog mentality,” said Ellison, who is from Ashburn, Virginia.

He had to make an impression on Cignetti and the coach had to make an impression on him, as well. That’s in the past now, though, as the countdown to opening day accelerates.

A week ago, Cignetti still seemed very much involved in using every available minute to prepare for his first IU game.

“I definitely think we’ve made progress, but we’re still in camp and we’re not there yet,” he said. “You never arrive, that’s the thing about athletics, you’re always fighting human nature. You have a good day, you can’t relax, you have to come back with a better day because you get better, you get worse, you never stay the same. You’ve got to keep the standards high. You can never lower your standards. It’s what makes this a great game is the edge, the difference between victory and defeat is always very narrow.”

At a Monday press conference, starting final prep work Florida International – against whom IU is favored by 21 ½ points – he discussed the Panthers.

“The game is finally here,” he said, “and we’ll have to play well. And I want to see us play fast and physical and work out some of the mistakes we made in the first two scrimmages. But we do want to attack, be that kind of team and play well.”

Cignetti follows Tom Allen, whose teams had their moments, but could not sustain success. Indiana has embraced new coaches’ arrival with optimism, but wound up being disappointed in the long run most of the time.

Dating to 1887, when IU first played football, the program has lost 203 games more than it has won. Over the decades, the Hoosiers have won the Big Ten title just twice, in 1945 and 1967. Bowl games have also been at a premium.

Cignetti is the latest regime counted on to lift the Hoosiers from the doldrums and he has won wherever he has coached. The administration and fan base hope he can count on the Ellisons and others on the new-look roster to win early and carry the team to bowl games regularly.

When things were at a peak of frenzy, Cignetti was trying to conjure up an entire team in weeks. Since then, he has worked the players, himself, and assistant coaches hard. He rises at 4 a.m. and is in the office by 5 a.m. Monday, he said the Hoosiers would not leave the field until 8:15 p.m.

“December was very much that way,” Cignetti said of the pace. “We have some rest banked right now, coaches and players.”

Ellison’s only connection to Indiana was knowing Xavier Johnson, the recent former Hoosier basketball guard and spoke to him about what school at IU was like.

“I kind of trusted his judgment,” Ellison said of what tipped his choice of IU for his final year of college football.

Players fresh to the program don’t know much about traditional rivals, though even well before the season Ellison was boning up on how he was supposed to feel about going against Purdue later in the Old Oaken Bucket game.

“I know everyone from Bloomington hates them,” Ellison said. “I guess I have to, too.”

It’s primarily all of those people want Ellison to beat Purdue, whether he loves the Boilermakers, hates them, or is indifferent.