BLOOMINGTON— By starting the 2024 season 5-0, it has taken barely a month for the Indiana University football to take one giant step for mankind against the tide of its nearly 100 years of non-stop losing.
Saturday afternoon, the Hoosiers illustrated their campaign to capture hearts and minds by topping Maryland, 42-28, before 48,323 soggy fans at Memorial Stadium, continuing to rewrite the team’s annual script of falling in the Big Ten Conference standings as inevitably as fall’s leaves tumble from trees.
5-0 Indiana? The last time that happened was 1967. There were protests against the Vietnam War, Elvis Presley got married, the NFL played the first Super Bowl, and first-year IU coach Curt Cignetti turned six years old.
“We’re 5-0, (first time) in 57 years – I’m older than that, by the way,” Cignetti said after the Rain Bowl.
Cignetti’s team is averaging nearly 50 points a game and broke into the national rankings at No 23 with this victory by beating a dangerous Maryland (3-2) counting on a stouter-than-it-appeared defense. This was the first time the Hoosiers have been ranked since 2021 and gave the Big Ten seven teams in the Associated Press top 25.
Through four games, the Hoosiers had not committed a turnover, but IU made up for it all at once, with two fumbles and two interceptions, as well as an oops play allowing a long Terrapin touchdown.
“Defense really responded to every one of those turnovers,” Cignetti said.
At no time, despite his errors, did quarterback Kurtis Rourke seem anything but calm and under control.
Rourke dissected Maryland in the Big Ten Conference contest for 359 yards and three TD tosses and behind Ty Son Lawton (93 yards) IU added 151 yards rushing, totaling 510 yards in offense. The game was tied at 7-7, 14-14, and 21-21, so Maryland was no pushover after the Hoosiers’ crushing of Florida International, Western Illinois, UCLA, and Charlotte.
As a fifth-year senior, who in another life was the Mid-American Conference player-of-the-year, Rourke was beyond panicking, only focused on fixing.
“It’s just about trying to flush right away and not even thinking of it,” Rourke said of brushing aside turnovers, which included one fumble by him. “You just have to move forward.”
It helps even a mentally agile QB when he has receivers possessing acrobatic skills the equal of winning contestants on America’s Got Talent. The partnerships between Rourke and Elijah Sarratt (7 catches, 128 yards) and Omar Cooper Jr. (4 catches, 83 yards) enabled IU to fend off Maryland’s explosive quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. (26 completions, 289 yards, 3 touchdowns, zero interceptions).
“In any given game, someone can go off,” said Sarratt, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound junior transfer from James Madison, who accompanied Cignetti to the Midwest from his last job. “It helps me a lot to not get double-teamed.”
Sarratt (36 yards) and Cooper (27 yards) each caught a touchdown pass.
Afterwards, the Terrapins were still trying to figure out how they did not win.
“We won the turnover battle, but lost the game,” said Maryland coach Michael Locksley. “Obviously, a frustrating game for me as the coach. The first thing that jumps out to me is scheme-wise. Are we doing the things that help our young line?”
A reasonable question since IU amassed five sacks and put more squeezes on Edwards than a trash compactor.
IU’s James Carpenter, a 6-2, 288-pound defensive lineman, had two of them. “We came out strong and we came out fast,” Carpenter said. “That’s our thing.”
The defense had one “wish-we-could-take-it-back play.” Maryland’s Roman Hemby (117 yards) juked through the line for a 75-yard TD midway into the third quarter.
From the Maryland 25-yard-line, the Indiana end zone was barely visible through the light fog. Hemby grabbed the handoff, and was gone, untouched.
“The offensive line did a great job on that run,” Hemby said. (“It) was just getting vertical as fast as I can.”
Beforehand, Cignetti, whose team had delivered the goods over the first four games, recognized a still-somewhat lukewarm fan base. Slow-to-trust crowds had been tame and left games early.
From the team hotel, Cignetti sent a computer message to masses of IU students urging them to attend the game – and stay to the end. They listened, contributed to the largest attendance of the year, defied the elements, and turned the building into a sound machine.
The players saw, heard, and appreciated them.
“It was huge today,” said linebacker Aiden Fisher of the support. “You can feel them on every big third down and fourth down.”
As usual, Fisher was in the forefront of the smackdowns, in on 12 tackles, credited with half a sack and a tackle for loss. Without an ironic nod to the weather, Fisher noted the D had made several “splashy” plays. It was a day, with the mists, the drizzle, and occasional hard rain, that every play was a splashy play.
Fisher was asked if this bunch is “the new Indiana.” Compared to recent squads going 3-9 2023, 4-8 in 2022 and 2-10 in 2021, winning definitely has been new.
While happy for this victory, Fisher made no such brash claims.
“We still have a long way to go,” he said.
Post-game, Cignetti revisited social media. For the fifth game, his players had done their part. He messaged that this time, the fans did their part, too.