BLOOMINGTON, IN – The best player on America’s defending national champs, the quintessential All-American kid, had ignored his head coach’s words.
Check that.
Had not read them. Could not. Never saw ’em.
Eschews social media.
So Charlie Becker, as enduring on the field in this still-incredulous gilded age of Indiana Hoosiers football as his coach, Curt Cignetti, is on the headset and behind a microphone, had no clue Cignetti had gotten in his obligatory shot at the College Football Playoff rankings days ago.
After the defending champs, winners now in 25 of their past 26 games after this two-touchdown dispatching of still Charmin-soft USC, proved beyond reproach that
they’re an inevitable playoff team.
Cignetti had sent that message Thursday, Nov. 12, when he posted to his official X account that, "Bad losses don’t count anymore? Are first downs still 10 yards?”
Coach Cig added cry-laughing and clown emojis to augment his words.
On this cloud-free, sunshine-drenched Midwest-postcard afternoon, Becker merely cemented the triumph with a 42-yard scoring catch, his second of the day but the only one that counted after a penalty negated the first.
It was the final salvo in a tight game that Indiana transformed from a 13-all deadlock into a two-touchdown, 27-13 win.
“I think that kind of sums up what our team is,” said Becker, after his three-catch, 75-yard, one-touchdown performance. “We’re just a ton of gritty guys who are willing to do whatever it takes for each other.
“We’re going to go out there and lay our lives out for each other, and we trust each other because of the process that has taken us here.”
Indiana can talk process because it has substance. In an all-too-familiar chorus for USC, the Trojans must talk about being close.
How they had opportunities, and boy, did they. How they’ve been tantalizingly close in these five years under Lincoln Riley.
And how, again, the Trojans are footnotes in the remainder of this college football season.
Sure, they might get a chance to ruin UCLA’s bid for a perfect regular season in two weeks.
Killer. Is that what an eight-figure coach gets you these days?
Meanwhile, Indiana has substance despite starting-quarterback change and almost too many injuries to track.
This day belonged to signal-caller Grant Wilson, the Hoosier hero from the D.C. suburbs in his seventh year of college football.
He found out Monday, Nov. 9, he would start this game.
Classic Cig.
“You’re going with the 1s,” Wilson said of Cignetti’s message that preceded Wilson’s 305-yard, two-touchdown passing effort in his first collegiate start in two years, his virgin voyage as a Power Four conference starter.
Meanwhile, Cignetti has found comfort in this team’s resolve. Sure, the Hoosiers have 27, ruminate on this, because TWENTY-SEVEN, wins by 10 or more points since the onset of the 2024 season.
That’s a decade’s work for previous Indiana regimes. Maybe a couple of them.
But these Hoosiers own wins just this season that required an opponent to be quelled five times in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve had a lot of blowout-wins around here in 2024 and ’25,” Cignetti said. “Probably three times more blowout-wins than close games.
“But we’ve had a lot of close games this year. We always find a way.”
The path to finding a way on this day included all the elements Cignetti has burnished to define Indiana football: opportunistic offense, capable of delivering punishment instead of absorbing it; a ferocious, ball-hawking defense; largely mistake-free special teams.
USC was harangued into going 2-for-11 on third downs and failed on its only fourth-down attempt.
The Trojans were just 3-for-5 scoring in the red zone, with only the game-tying, last-minute touchdown off a turnover before halftime resulting in an end-zone visit.
Both teams were whistled for eight penalties, but it was the Trojans who repeatedly lost their cool with 15-yard violations, underscoring that program’s ongoing lack of composure.
Then there’s USC quarterback Jayden Maiava, who simply has been starting games at the command position now for three years. Dots all the 2027 NFL Draft boards.
Threw three picks. Threw away his team’s chances to tie this game in the back half of the fourth quarter.
At Indiana’s goal line. In a goal-to-go situation.
Because Hoosiers linebacker Isaiah Jones flat-out baited Maiava into, at best, an ill-advised throw and, in reality, a mistake that would have been more understandable from Wilson.
“I wouldn’t say I baited him,” Jones told USA TODAY Sports, “but if that (tailback) goes out, most offenses are going to run some type of in (cutting) concept. The running back went out and he swung his eyes over there.
“I knew that’s where he wanted to go.”
Because of Jones. Because of Wilson. Because the Trojans had 104 yards on their first two possessions and just 304 over the final 50 minutes of the game. Because Indiana wins the games USC always seems to lose, the close ones.
Indiana is positioned to join that elite fraternity of teams to make each of these three 12-team CFP iterations.
Perhaps surprisingly, there was no victory lap from Cignetti.
“I haven’t seen a single score (around college football) and it really doesn’t matter who’s where,” Cignetti said. “Because it’s all going to play out on the field. There’s a lot of football left.
“And, so, I’m just proud of the team and the way we responded against a tough opponent.”
For a change, an Indiana player said it better.
“This team’s continually disrespected, been like that for the last two years,” the linebacker Jones said. “We don’t look into that stuff.
“We know that we’re gonna go out every single Saturday, and (if) you keep winning, they can’t keep moving you back in the rankings. For us, it’s about taking care of business on Saturday, and the best response is to go out and do what we did tonight.”
The new Indiana standard.
The opposite of everything that defines Riley’s USC football.
Can you hear them now?
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Curt Cignetti has built what Lincoln Riley can’t at USC: a team that knows how to win
