Over-reaction Tuesday: One chapter left in Hoosiers' mighty run
The juggernaut that is Indiana has one game remaining to finish off what can only be called the most remarkable turnaround in college football history
In the first year of this, it seemed like the story of long-downtrodden football program having a rare moment in the sunshine.
But then it happened again.
And let’s just say nobody is calling Indiana a “basketball school” anymore. Turns out the Hoosiers can play a little pigskin, too, and do it well. Very, very well. As in we’re gonna kick your ass very well.
So it is that, as we approach the championship game of the College Football Playoff, it most definitely can said that Curt Cignetti’s crew is a certified juggernaut. It’s not just that Indiana is beating foes in impressive fashion. The Hoosiers are dominating their opponents and taking absolutely no prisoners in doing so.
First it was Alabama in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal on the wrong end of a 38-3 bludgeoning. Then Oregon, one of the few teams to gave the Hoosiers a game in the regular season, was down 35-7 at halftime as Indiana administered a 56-22 beatdown. It was the seventh time this season that the Hoosiers hung 50 or more on an overmatched foe.
And that’s the thing. Indiana is simply overwhelming its foes and there’s pretty much nothing they can do to keep up. The Hoosiers are now 15-0 and, with a victory over Miami in the CFP national championship game next Monday, can polish off an all-timer of a season (the last team to go 16-0 was Yale … way back in 1894).
Before we take a closer look at that title match, a few thoughts about what went down in last week’s semifinal games:
Hurricanes, Rebels give us a classic
A big part of Miami’s takedown of defending Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal involved ball control. As in, the Hurricanes owned it for great gobs of time throughout the game. It appeared to be more of the same at the Fiesta Bowl, with Miami dominating possession for the vast majority of the first half. And when Carson Beck tossed a long TD pass to Keelan Marion in the second quarter for a 17-10 lead, it seemed like the Canes might have the momentum for good. Enter Lucas Carneiro, the kicker who’s a true weapon for Ole Miss. By nailing a pair of 50-plus yard field goals and a chip shot in the third quarter, suddenly the Rebels were carrying a 19-17 lead into the fourth quarter. Then all hell broke loose in the final 15 minutes, with the teams trading the lead three times, capped by Beck’s three-yard TD run for a 31-27 lead with 18 seconds to play. But the magnificent Trinidad Chambliss wasn’t done, quickly driving the Rebels into position for one final heave into the end zone that just came up short. Instant classic stuff by these two teams, who produced one of the most spectacular semifinals in the history of the College Football Playoff.
Duck hunting has rarely looked so easy
It’s never a good sign when your quarterback throws a pick six on the first play of the game. But that’s exactly what happened in the Peach Bowl, when D’Angelo Ponds intercepted Oregon QB Dante Moore’s first pass of the game and returned it 25 yards for a touchdown. While Oregon did get that one back on a 75-yard drive that Moore capped with a touchdown pass, the Ducks soon enough found themselves overwhelmed by a relentless meat grinder. The Hoosiers ran off the game’s next 35 points — four of them TD passes by Heisman Trophy winning QB Fernando Mendoza and it was lights out for the Ducks. Remember, when these teams played way back in October in Eugene, it was 20-20 in the fourth quarter after Mendoza was victimized by a pick six. But he guided the Hoosiers to another 10 points in a 30-20 win. At the time, it was Indiana’s signature win of the season — for many, that was the day Indiana stamped itself as a national title contender — but since then they’ve morphed into a playoff monster. It led Oregon coach Dan Lanning to call the Hoosiers a team with absolutely no weakness. And there’s only one team still standing with an opportunity to prove him wrong (yeah, we’ll get to that).
Hoosier Nation flexing its massive size
Want to take a guess which university in the United States has the largest living alumni base? That would be the school located in Bloomington, Ind., which has 805,000 alumni world-wide, more than half of which still live in the state of Indiana (they’re spread across 165 countries on this planet). So yeah, Hoosier Nation is pretty darned massive. And rarely (if ever) have they had the chance to get this excited about football as they are right now. And man, do they travel. The Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day was a sea of Indiana red. Then came Friday’s Peach Bowl, when those Hoosier fans accounted for about 90 per cent of the fans at Mercedez-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. It’s wildly impressive. Now comes the national championship game on Miami’s home field (Hard Rock Stadium) which, by the chatter you hear, won’t exactly be a home game in terms of who is in the seats. Already, there are folks suggesting they wouldn’t be surprised if the fan split is 50-50 (each school gets 25,000 seats to sell and then it’s a free-for-all for the rest). There’s a phrase that’s more associated with basketball — Hoosier Hysteria — that pretty much says it all about what we’re seeing from a fully awake fan base.
Looking ahead to the championship game
It’s down to one game in the College Football Playoff and … it’s not exactly a matchup anybody envisioned at the beginning of the season. But these two teams are full value for their appearance in this title game, with one of them getting to play on its home field:
NO. 1 INDIANA (15-0) VS. NO. 10 MIAMI (13-2)
Where: Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Fla.
Time/TV: Monday, 7:30 p.m., TSN
The skinny: Let’s start here by taking you all the way back to the championship game of the 2002 season, when an uber-talented Hurricanes team brought a 34-game winning streak into the game in Glendale, Ariz., and was a heavy favourite to dominate an unbeaten Ohio State squad that had to escape several close calls that season to make the title game. We all know how that turned out, with the Buckeyes leading for large chunks of the game, which eventually ended up in double overtime, with Ohio State prevailing 31-24 in one of the great games in college football history. We use that as a backdrop for next Monday’s national title game in which the tables have clearly been turned, with Miami listed as an 8.5-point underdog against Curt Cignetti’s relentless Hoosiers. While you won’t find a single five-star recruit in the Indiana lineup, Cignetti has developed them into a team that gets it done on both sides of the line of scrimmage, has a Heisman Trophy winner under centre and surrounds him with a group of talented wide receivers and running backs. The Hoosiers want to run the ball first and everything else develops from there. For Miami, it’s all about the defensive line first and foremost, with Rueben Bain and Akheem Mesidor being a pair of passing rushing terrors. It’s up to them to disrupt Mendoza, a Miami native whose father once played on the same Hurricanes team as Cristobal. More mistake-free play from Miami QB Carson Beck will also be essential for any Hurricanes victory, with Mark Fletcher Jr. being a bell cow at running back and freshman sensation Malachi Toney being the scary threat on the outside. It’s a fascinating (if unexpected) matchup to conclude the season, one that will end up with Indiana finishing up a most historic season, or the Canes showing that “the U” is finally all the way back.