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Can Indiana Football Get To Eight Wins?

The Indiana football team made a noble run at upsetting #2 Ohio State last night in Bloomington. The Hoosiers outplayed the Buckeyes in the first half and led 21-20 into the third quarter. Raw talent took over and the final ended up 49-21. That leaves Indiana to ask the question of how good they can expect to be in 2017 for first-year head coach Tom Allen.

“Breakthrough” was the operative word running through the Indiana program when they spoke to the ESPN crew. The Hoosier players and coaches meant it in the context of pulling off one of these big upsets—they’ve been close before, from games against Ohio State to Michigan in recent seasons, but never closed the deal.

I think whether or not Indiana can pull one isolated upset against these two teams or Penn State is really not the question. The question the Hoosiers should be asking is whether they can jump up to the eight-win level. That question turns the focus to games like the one at Virginia next weekend or the back-to-back road games against Michigan State and Maryland in October. Last night’s game gave mixed signals in that regard.

The biggest positive for Indiana is Simi Cobbs at receiver. The box score tells you he caught 11 passes for 149 yards and that’s impressive enough on its face. Watching live told you just how big, physical and athletic he is. The fact Indiana couldn’t block Ohio State’s defensive front or give quarterback Richard Lagow more than two seconds to get rid of the ball didn’t matter—just loft a jump ball to Cobbs and let him go get it.

If wide receivers from mid-level conference teams could get a fair shake for Big Ten MVP, Cobbs would have made a significant case for himself last night. He was singlehandedly responsible for the offense in helping his team get the lead in the third quarter.

But that’s also the problem. Cobbs might be able to carry this team to wins over Purdue and Rutgers and perhaps Illinois, but an offense has to be more than lobbing quick jump balls to a receiver. The protection for Lagow completely collapsed if he held the ball for more than two seconds and the running game was non-existent, with 17 yards on 27 carries.

This really wasn’t a fair test for the Indiana offensive line though. The Ohio State defensive front is easily the best they will see all year. If the Hoosiers can block better and broaden their play-calling options against Virginia, they’ll be a better team and far more difficult to beat.

Defensively, the 49 points allowed are deceptive. Indiana consistently won battles in the trenches throughout the first half and forced Ohio State to get a little more creative with their blocking schemes. Most opponents aren’t going to have the Buckeyes’ big-play explosiveness, and the improvement of the Hoosier defense over the last couple years is one of the more significant developments in the Big Ten.

Indiana hasn’t been at the eight-win level since Bill Mallory had them there in the early 1990s. This team has a real shot to get there and that makes the trip to Virginia next weekend more important than the higher-profile game last night.

1987 Indiana Football: Providing Quality Support To The Star

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Football was—and is–second fiddle to basketball in the state Indiana, especially in the days before Peyton Manning came to the state and most especially for loyalists of Indiana University. But the 1987 Indiana football team was an improving program under Bill Mallory. One year earlier they had made their first bowl game since the 1967 Rose Bowl and 1987 saw them be a reliable supporting actor to the basketball program that had won a national title in March.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
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17 starters were returning to the football team so hopes for a second bowl trip were high. An early loss to Kentucky didn’t give any sign of a special year, but on October 10 that all changed. Mallory took his team to Columbus, with Dave Schnell at quarterback and sophomore running back Anthony Thompson—the man who two years later would break the NCAA record for career touchdowns—leading the ground attack.

It took a 51-yard field goal for the Buckeyes to tie it 10-10 after one half and the Hoosiers dominated after intermission. They held Ohio State to ten rushing yards in the second half, Schnell threw a pair of TDs and Indiana had a stunning 31-10 win. Buckeye coach Earle Bruce, who would be fired in November, called it “the darkest day” since he’d been with the program, going back to 1979.

Two weeks later things got even better for Indiana. The Homecoming opponent was Michigan. While apparently no one told IU about picking an easy opponent for homecoming, the Hoosiers made sure the alums and current students had plenty to celebrate. In a driving rain, and trailing 10-7 in the third quarter, Schnell led a 14-play, 65-yard drive for a 14-10 lead that would stand up.

The defense was again dominant in the second half and even though the team took its first conference loss at Iowa the following week, they still reached a November 14 game at Michigan State in control of their destiny for the Rose Bowl. The stakes for Indiana’s November battle with Michigan State were simple. If the Spartans won, they were in the Rose Bowl. If the Hoosiers won, they needed only beat Purdue the following week.

If I can paraphrase Morgan Freeman from Shawshank Redemption—“I’d like to tell you Indiana came out, played its game of the year and went to Pasadena. I’d like to tell you that. But playing a great defense and a powerful running game on the road is no fairy tale.” Michigan State pounded IU from start to finish and won 27-3. The Hoosiers still won the Old Oaken Bucket over Purdue and at 8-3 concluded its best season in nearly twenty years by getting a Peach Bowl bid to play Tennessee.

Today, the Peach Bowl is known as the Chick-fil-A Bowl and the highlight of New Year’s Eve for those of us who don’t go out anywhere. It was still in Atlanta at this time, although played outdoors in Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium, where the Falcons and Braves used to play before the Georgia Dome and Turner Field came into existence.

Indiana got off to a slow start, only able to get a field goal from future NFL kicker Pete Stoyanovich and falling behind the Vols 21-3. A touchdown pass by Schnell cut the lead to 21-10 and the Hoosiers kept coming back. After a third-quarter touchdown, Mallory went for two to try and cut the lead to a field goal. It missed. Indiana scored another touchdown and Mallory tried to get the failed two-pointer back. That one missed. Instead of being up 24-21, the lead was only 22-21 and Tennessee could win with a field goal, with this game being another example of why you wait until into the fourth quarter before chasing points.

Conventional wisdom has come around to that way of thinking, but in 1987 going by the book had Indiana’s defense under a little extra pressure. It proved not to matter, as Tennessee drove it for a touchdown and won 27-22. The loss was disappointing, but no one could deny the progress Mallory’s program was making.

Mallory never did make the Rose Bowl, but enjoyed several more postseason trips and the best team beat Baylor in the Copper Bowl (today’s Insight Bowl) in 1991. In the mid-1990s, the same Indiana administrators that fired Bob Knight would also chase Mallory out of Bloomington, in an effort to get “to the next level.” They did, only that level was at least one floor down from what Mallory had the Hoosiers.

It’s become a textbook example of what happens to programs that get greedy, as Indiana football has never recovered. But the 1987 Indiana football team was one prominent example of the good years that Mallory provided the fans in a supporting role to the omnipotent basketball program.

Good Times For Indiana Sports As Colts Take The Field Thursday Night

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These are relatively high times in the world of Indiana sports, at both the college and pro level. The Colts, who play tonight at Tennessee (8:25 PM ET, NFL) are a Super Bowl contender, in spite of an awful performance last week against the St. Louis Rams. The Pacers are undefeated out of the gate in the NBA, and both the Indiana University basketball and football teams are competitive after spending years (or in the football team’s case, decades) in irrelevancy.

With Andrew Luck and the Colts in action tonight, we’ll start by looking at the Thursday NFL game and then take a brief look at the prospects for more success elsewhere in the world of Indiana sports.


On the surface, Indianapolis-Tennessee should be a big game in the AFC South, with the Colts at 6-3, the Titans at 4-5 and this being the first of their two games the rivals will play in three weeks. In reality, with Tennessee now stuck playing Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback the rest of the way, and having lost at home to Jacksonville last week, the Titans are a dead team walking.

The only real question for the Colts is whether they’ll stumble into the playoffs on the basis of winning a mediocre division, or if they’ll make a real run at the New England Patriots for the AFC’s #2 playoff seed and its accompanying first-round bye.

Whatever the Titans long-term problems, they’ve got homefield tonight on a short week, and they run the ball well, ranking 11th in the NFL in rush yardage behind Chris Johnson. This enables them to go right at the Colt weakness–Indy is 26th at defending the run. If Tennessee can control the game’s tempo and maybe force Andrew Luck into a couple interceptions, the Titans can win.

Las Vegas is more optimistic about Tennessee’s chances then I am. In spite of their problems, the Titans are only a 2.5 point underdog, and they’re only a (+135) value on the moneyline, the betting odds to win outright expressed in $100 increments.

To me, that suggests the odds are reacting to Indianapolis’ atrocious performance at home against St. Louis, and forgetting that this same Colts’ team has beaten San Francisco, Seattle and Denver. I’m all over Indy tonight at (-115), and look for them to eventually roll into the playoffs around 11-5 and be a real Super Bowl threat.

THE COLLEGE SCENE


Indiana University football has been making a slow, grinding crawl to respectability, and while the odds are now against the Hoosiers making a bowl game this season, it’s in part because they went out and played some good non-conference competition. And they can certainly put points on the board.

Kevin White’s team is 4-5, and while they should win the season finale against lowly Purdue on November 30, the Hoosiers are going to have to find a way to steal a victory against either Wisconsin on Saturday or Ohio State on November 23. Both of those games are on the road.

While most power conference teams find as many easy games as they can in non-conference, Indiana went out and challenged itself though. They beat Bowling Green 42-10, and the Falcons are one of the better teams in the MAC. Indiana lost a game to perennial bowl contender Navy and to surprise SEC power Missouri. If the Hoosiers would have just slipped a game against, say, Miami (Ohio) in place of one of these two games, Indiana would be poised to lock up a bowl bid.

Nor have any of the conference losses been embarrassing, with road defeats at Michigan State and Michigan, each by 14 points, and a close home loss to Minnesota. It’s unfortunate that the odds are against this potent offense, averaging 42 points a game in Big Ten play alone, making a bowl game. But Indiana football is back and pointed in the right direction.

HOOSIER STATE BASKETBALL


Talk of Super Bowl runs and bowl games are nice, but this is Indiana sports we’re talking about and that means we talk basketball. The Hoosier hoops team is on a rebuilding year after a strong 2013 run where they won the Big Ten title outright, earned a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and made the Sweet 16 before losing to Syracuse. Head coach Tom Crean has to replace top five picks Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo and has a talented young group to work with.

Noah Vonley, a 6’10” center with the wingspan of a 7’4″ player is a freshman that can hit the boards and alter a game defensively. Yogi Ferrell is a sophomore point guard that got his feet wet on last year’s team and now bears full responsibility for running the show. Crean will also need another freshman, 6’7″ guard Troy Williams to step up with a big year.

IU had a narrow escape this week in beating Long Island 73-72, and on November 21, the Hoosiers will have to play Washington. The big non-conference tests though, will come with a December 3 trip to Syracuse and a chance for some revenge and a December 21 date with Notre Dame. Unfortunately, the traditional Indiana-Kentucky game is off the docket.

In no sport, do the good people of Indiana have a better chance of celebrating a  championship than the NBA. The Pacers have followed the league’s traditional model of getting a little closer each year. In 2012, they reached the second round and lost to the Miami Heat in six games. In 2013, the Pacers didn’t meet the Heat until the conference finals and this time it was a seven-game series. Now they’re off to an 8-0 start, with Paul George playing like a star and Roy Hibbert scoring, rebounding and blocking shots.

Indiana was my preseason choice to win the NBA title, especially given the 14-1 odds they were getting. We’re not even a month into the season and those odds have dropped to 5-1, narrowly behind Miami, the 5-2 favorite.

There’s still a long way to go for the Pacers, and they haven’t yet played the Heat. The first meetings between the teams will be December 10 and December 18. But in a good year for Indiana sports, the Pacers, followed closely by the Colts, have a real shot at getting into the throne room.