LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Sometimes, I wonder if we’re all being punked. Curt Cignetti’s Indiana team will win another football game by some ridiculous score, and a voice from the sky will tell us:
“I CAN’T DO IT ANYMORE. THIS HAS ALL BEEN AN ELABORATE PRANK. ALL OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL HAS BEEN IN ON IT. WE JUST WANTED TO SEE HOW LONG PEOPLE WOULD BELIEVE THAT INDIANA IS A NATIONAL FOOTBALL POWER. LOOK UP AND SMILE. THE LIGHT FIXTURES ARE ALL CAMERAS. YOUR WATCH IS A HIDDEN MICROPH ...”
Probably not. No need to pinch yourself. The Indiana juggernaut is all too real. On Saturday, it rolled through UCLA like a combine in a cornfield. Or, for those of you reading in California, like a mudslide through Malibu.
Final score: No. 2 Indiana 56, UCLA 6.
It was, by Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s standards, a catastrophe. He should be benched. Or knighted. The player known in Bloomington as HeisMendoza completed only 68% of his passes. Threw for just three touchdowns. And even threw a (gasp) interception.
Oh, he tried to make up for it. Completed his last nine passes. Ran 5 times for 45 yards and a touchdown. Even let his brother, Alberto, take over at quarterback and run for another score.
It’s OK, kid. You’re fine.
Other offensive stars. E.J. Williams Jr. had 5 catches for 109 yards and two touchdowns. He’s the team’s No. 3 receiver, and he’s torching Big Ten defenses.
Indiana outgained UCLA 475-201. The defense was the headliner. It picked off UCLA sophomore Nico Iamaleava twice, running the first one back 25 yards for an interception just 57 seconds into the game. They barely gave Fox Big Noon Kickoff time to sign off.
The running game was a bully -- 263 yards and nearly six yards per carry.
What else am I supposed to say?
One of the things that impressed me the most about Cignetti was that when he sensed his team was getting a little too comfortable after its upset of No. 3 Oregon a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t the players who got the first wake-up call.
It was his coaching staff. He acknowledged after the game, he wasn’t popular with anybody in the complex on that Thursday. But he let his coaches know, the players feed off their energy. So before he let the players hear it, he let his own coaches hear it.
This is a guy who doesn’t even want any conversation on his sideline that’s not about the game. Do that stuff on your own time. When you’re in the complex, working on football, you work on football.
Says a lot about how the mentality can change overnight. And about how that kind of “deep work,” (see: professor Cal Newport and his many books and podcasts) can be effective even in a football setting.
So, I’m sure, after 56-6, Cignetti will really let his guys have it this week.
Unless this has all been some kind of cosmic football prank, and some Ed Harris-type guy in a headset lets us all in on it soon. But I don’t think it has been.
I’m convinced of this much after Cignetti’s team improved to 8-0 and he moved to 18-2 in his second season leading the Hoosiers.
Indiana football is very much for real.
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