It’s hard to imagine Indiana’s Curt Cignetti as a young coach cutting his teeth, but everyone has to start somewhere. For Pittsburgh-born Cignetti, it meant a graduate assistant role at Pitt from 1983-84.
Previous grad assistants would occasionally pop into Pitt’s offices for a visit. One such assistant Cignetti recalls meeting a few times went right into coaching the offensive line at Iowa after spending one year with the Panthers in 1980.
On Saturday the two, Cignetti and now-Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, will meet for the first time as opposing head coaches.
“Got a lot of respect for Coach Ferentz, everything he’s accomplished throughout his career as a head coach and as an assistant, too,” Cignetti said during his media availability on Monday. “Got to know him during the Big Ten meetings. Congratulate him on the big win a couple weeks ago to make him the winningest coach in the Big Ten.”
Everyone who’s paid even the smallest amount of attention to Big Ten football should know about Ferentz and his whole deal by now. The man has literally won more conference games than any other coach this league has ever seen.
The Hawkeyes are going to play the kind of disciplined, physical football that gets the job done and wins ball games. Iowa picks up yards on the ground and keeps the opponent away from the end zone, doing both of those things better than the majority of the sport for the duration of Ferentz’s tenure as coach.
Cignetti is well aware of that.
“One thing I’m going to say about Iowa, and you guys all know this that have been in the Big Ten a while, is, I mean, they’ve been running basically the same defense for a long time,” Cignetti said. “Now, there’s tweaks. And they’ve always played great defense and they’ve got great special teams. They’ve always been able to run the ball really well. And this quarterback [Mark Gronowski] has been a guy that finds a way to get it done. But the thing about Iowa in general, they will not beat themselves. You will have to beat them. They’re not going to beat themselves and they play really well at home.”
Indiana is going to need to get off to a strong start to avoid letting Iowa take control of the game and slow down the pace, preventing the Hoosiers’ offense from getting into a rhythm. That offense, which emphasizes spreading the ball around the field through the air, isn’t typical in the Big Ten, but venerated Hawkeyes defensive coordinator Phil Parker has been around football long enough to have an answer for just about anything.
This is going to be a tough matchup, especially on the road in Iowa City. Cignetti went as far as calling it a greater challenge than Indiana’s previous matchup against then-No. 9 Illinois.
“It’s a tough place to play, Kinnick Stadium,” Cignetti said. “They sell out almost every Saturday. It’s loud. So we’re going to have to play well. This will be a challenge, a more difficult challenge than the last one, for sure. And the sooner our guys realize that, the better.”
