‘Do the Work’ – Hoosiers Ready for New Season, Opportunity
By Pete DiPrimio | IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Now it begins, Year Three of the Curt Cignetti Era, a chance to follow up on Indiana’s unprecedented 16-0 national championship season.
These No. 6/6 Hoosiers are built to win, built to repeat if everything works out as it did a year ago.
Can the players tell, now that preparations are over and Saturday’s season opener against North Texas at Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium is almost here, how good IU is?
“You get ideas of what we have,” fifth-year defensive lineman Tyrique Tucker says, “but ultimately the work speaks for itself. When you play your opponent, that’s when you get to see.
“All the restrictions are off. You get to go full speed and make plays and tackles. None of that happens without the work.”
This week’s work included practicing with a heat index of more than 100. Saturday’s temperatures are expected to reach into the 90s.
“It’s about running hard, practicing hard,” Tucker says. “It’s getting acclimated to the heat. Heat plays a part, so you do more film study, but the heat will be a factor. We have to be prepared for that.”
Being the defending national champion isn’t a distraction, Tucker adds.
“I don't think it hits any different. The recipe is the recipe. We have to handle everything we have to handle, do what we have to do, and prepare the right way. Ultimately, the next opponent is our best opponent.”
North Texas coach Neal Brown has seen plenty of teams during his professional lifetime, including head coaching stops at Troy and West Virginia. He says he’s never seen anything like the job Curt Cignetti and his staff have done with the Hoosiers.
“It’s the most impressive coaching job in any of the major college sports or any professional sport, at least in my lifetime,” he says from a press conference setting.
For the record, Brown was born in 1980, played collegiately at Kentucky and the University of Massachusetts from 1998-2002, and began his coaching career in 2003 at UMass.
“What sticks out when you watch the film is that they’re extremely well coached in all phases,” he says. “They don’t beat themselves. That’s the No. 1 sign of a well-coached team.
“This will be a great challenge. A great opportunity. They play the game the right way.”
It’s based on a winning culture fueled by Cignetti’s “fast, physical, relentless” slogan. Veteran players set examples with the newcomers, of which there are 44 this season counting freshmen and transfers.
Tucker, who has developed into an All-American, is a prime example.
“It’s how you carry yourself every day and the work you put in,” he says. “It really speaks for itself.
“If they are trying to see what they need to do, they can just look at you. It's being a prime example for them and show them the way they can achieve what they want to achieve in this program if they put the work in, handle what they have to handle, and take care of everything off the field and on the field.”
One of those newcomers is quarterback Josh Hoover, a highly touted transfer from TCU. He follows quarterbacks Kurtis Rourke and Fernando Mendoza, who also transferred into the program and had the best years of their careers. Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy and became the NFL’s No. 1 draft pick last spring.
Standout offensive lineman Carter Smith expects similar success.
“He's really stepped into his leadership role, and that's something that (quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri) preaches,” Smith says. “If you're going to be the leader of the offense at the quarterback position, you really have to run your guys and run offense the way that you want.
“He's been very vocal. He's shown a lot of great flashes throughout fall camp against our defense.”
That defense, by the way, figures to be one of the nation’s best.
Season openers inherently bring uncertainty because of new players and, sometimes, new coaches and approaches, but this NIL/transfer era takes it to a new level. North Texas pushes that boundary with 70 new players and 50 transfers, plus a new coaching staff led by a head coach who spent last season as an offensive assistant to Texas’s offensive-minded Steve Sarkasian.
“I won't lie to you, it is different,” fifth-year linebacker Isaiah Jones says. “You don't have a game to watch from this season. That's the landscape of college football. That's what every team is dealing with. Every school is going to have new players, new teams, they might run new plays they (didn't) run last year.”
North Texas went 12-2 last season. Head coach Eric Morris left for Oklahoma State. Brown replaced him.
“They had a good team last year,” Jones says, “but that team is all gone now, so it's trying to find tendencies from the new coordinators they have coming in and how they are going to play to their players’ strengths.”
Familiarity does come from Mean Green quarterback Tayven Jackson, who spent two seasons at IU, one under Cignetti and his staff. That doesn’t lessen the uncertainty factor.
“It depends on what kind of offense a quarterback is in,” Jones says, “but (Tayven Jackson) is an outstanding player. He is athletic. He has a strong arm.
“We're preparing like we would any other quarterback, but it is just a guy we have gone against a few times in practice.”
It’s been nearly two years since Jackson was a Hoosier, Tucker adds. Everyone has changed.
“That’s a long time. He’s a different player. I’m a different player. We have to be prepared for wherever he’s at now. We’ll try to get after him as best as possible.
“I can’t expect to see the same things from him from two years ago, and he can’t expect to see the same things from me.”