Well folks, this is it. The final game of the season for Purdue football. It’s a relief but also frustrating. Purdue has only won two games and I just don’t see how they get to three wins with just IU
remaining in front of them. The folks at Crimson Quarry were kind enough to come by and answer some questions about this matchup. Make sure to stop by and say hi over there. They’re nice I promise.
What has it been like as an IU fan to go from a team that couldn’t make a bowl game to suddenly on the cusp of back to back CFP appearances?
It’s a bit of a mixed bag, honestly. The Tom Allen era proved that winning wasn’t an unreasonable expectation for Indiana in the 21st century and Indiana took the first steps to giving him and the program updated resources to compete. When he squandered those resources in 2021, everyone hesitated a bit before he truly fell out of favor sometime after 2022.
When Indiana first hired Curt Cignetti, I expected the program to reach 8-9 wins annually and think it’s definitely in for those seasons in the future. Then we saw the roster come together and looked at that 2024 schedule draw and thought there was a chance at a really interesting season and, well, here we are.
It’s strange, for sure, to see Indiana all the way up at the top of the rankings in a way that feels sustainable rather than a weird one-off like 2020 was. The program completely skipped the scrappy up-and-comer stage where it upsets a top-10 team on its way to greatness and met one, Oregon, on equal footing in the latter’s home stadium before just outplaying the Ducks for four quarters. There was nothing weird or fluky about that win, Indiana was just the better team. I think that’s a good microcosm of what it’s felt like to watch this rise.
Similarly, as the site manager of an IU website, what changes have you noticed in the fan base?
Indiana fans are pretty starved for a winner in the revenue sports. They flocked to Assembly Hall in record numbers for the basketball program that gets to the postseason, most men’s soccer games have good crowds and there’s a solid student section at swim meets.
This program has broken many hearts many more times, so it took a bit for the buy-in to show real results. There’s a real market for Indiana football now. The fans were there before, but nobody wanted to use their precious Saturdays on Earth to drive a few hours and sit on cold metal bleachers while their team invented new and creative ways to lose football games. The football program is actually what I longed to cover as a student at Indiana because I felt there were compelling stories to tell there that went untold because, well, things were bleak. There’s been a portion of the fanbase that’s been more into the football program than most for a while, so this stretch has been extremely cathartic for them. Now the stadium’s full every week because there’s a product worth being there for. There’s more attention being paid to minute details. Our buddy Taylor Lehman started an stats-based Indiana football substack that became one of the fastest-growing sports newsletters on the platform. Not football or even college football, sports, for Indiana football stats.
IU famously has at least two billionaires donating money to athletics (one of which has a degree from Purdue no less) so my question is, is there any sort of lend lease agreement we can work out so Purdue can have a billionaire?
See if you’d asked this a year or so ago I’d give you some cheeky answer about how we could negotiate trading a donor or two in exchange for PJ Thompson but it appears Indiana’s men’s hoops program has re-discovered the 3-point line and the riches that lay beyond so I’ll come up with a different one here.
Hm. For an even exchange, let’s say you get at least one billionaire and we get… the moon. I’m not a Purdue grad but it’s a pride point (if a joking one) that the first man to talk on the moon marched baritone as I did. Or a few thousand cases of Triple XXX root beer. That could work. I’m willing to haggle here.
Onto the field, what do you think it has been about Coach Cignetti that has turned this program around in such an unbelievably fast direction?
This is what has gotten lost in any discussion about Indiana because everything devolves into strength of schedule or conference pride nonsense. It’s a novel concept these days to actually talk about what makes these teams/programs good or bad. Cignetti has had a few things going for him through two seasons in Bloomington:
- He was able to import almost his entire staff from JMU. All of those guys are young, smart up-and-coming coaches with new ideas who’ve cut their teeth under Cignetti as assistants with some even playing for him. They all love working for the guy and have made sacrifices to continue doing so. And all those guys stayed with the exception of QBs coach Tino Sunseri.
- His final JMU roster was full of power conference-caliber players like LB Aiden Fisher, WR Elijah Sarratt, CB D’Angelo Ponds and others. They all came in knowing the system and set the tone early for holdovers from the Allen era and portal additions. Allen had enough of an eye for talent that the cupboard wasn’t fully bare and Cignetti sold most of the guys on staying.
- What goes unsaid most of the time is that Indiana has full booster alignment behind Cignetti, which just does not happen a lot of the time. You always read about big time SEC boosters having issues with [insert name of coach here] and that just hasn’t happened in Bloomington. It’s not a “well he’s winning” thing either, it was immediate buy-in the moment he arrived. He got the resources he needed and now can get just about anything he’d want because he’s delivered.
- If Cignetti has a calling card as a head coach it’s his ability to manage personnel. His current staff developed under him, but he identified others like OL coach Bob Bostad and DBs coach Ola Adams who’ve done great work. From there, he and his staff are great at spotting talent and maybe better at developing it. There’s not many, if any, better talent evaluators around the sport. A look at Indiana’s blue chip ratio compared to the teams it’s ranked with, and those it’s blown out, tells that story pretty well.
- Last, but not least, Cignetti has prioritized play along both lines. Indiana employs a great OL coach and has two great ones working with defensive linemen, which shows on Saturdays. Fernando Mendoza has the time to throw and the other quarterback usually doesn’t.
Have the changes in the football program changed expectations for the men’s basketball program? What I mean by that is, fans have seen the lightning fast turnaround, so do they now expect that in men’s basketball?
This is a good question because you can’t really separate the two. One of the reasons the football program got so much immediate support is that donors have been pouring money into the men’s basketball program for a quarter century and haven’t seen any return on their investment. There’s a lot of people with a lot of money who care deeply about Indiana athletics and football gave them somewhere to put those funds in exchange for a winner.
In regard to a turnaround? I think football will actually help fans be a bit more patient with men’s basketball in the sense that there’s something to fall back on if Darian DeVries’ rebuilding project takes a bit more time or goes off the rails (no pun intended).
Last year this game was an absolute drubbing, a thumping, a beatdown, what are the main differences between last year’s IU team and this year’s IU team?
That’s another thing, this team is actually pretty different from last year’s.
What made the 2024 offense prolific was that Indiana had a really accurate quarterback in Kurtis Rourke who was more than capable of getting the ball to any of five guys who could reliably turn a short pass into a huge gain. Big Ten defenses were literally not built to handle covering five receivers who can do that, so Indiana shredded them to bits.
This season, Indiana’s had two go-to receivers in Omar Cooper and Elijah Sarratt, with Charlie Becker stepping up in the latter’s absence and looking like a star in the process. Instead of five really good guys Indiana has two elite options with a few more capable of moving the chains here and there. The running game is a bit different but sticks to two backs with a third coming in as needed, usually in late-game mop up duty. While Rourke had elite processing, Mendoza is as perfect of a fit for this system as there is. He’s got an NFL arm, some real mobility, a quick release and has read the field exceptionally well all season. Behind a great 1-2 punch at halfback with Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black, Indiana has a lot of ways to beat teams. Maryland sold out to take Mendoza out of the game and it a) mostly didn’t work b) led to three hundred and sixty seven rushing yards, 7.1 per carry. As for the defense, the line has beefed up a bit on the edges and guys like Aiden Fisher and D’Angelo Ponds are a year older. Its coordinator, Bryant Haines, will/should be a candidate for openings as a head coach this offseason.
Finally, give me a prediction for Friday.
I’ve gone long on these and I’ll do it again here so apologies in advance.
What I think is most important is that this isn’t the same Purdue team that got, well, 66-0’d last year. Literally, in the sense that the roster and staff is new, but also that this is a team that appears to have an idea of what it’d like to do under ideal circumstances and a staff that seems more well-positioned to get them there. I don’t need to tell you that this team has been competitive in multiple games but just can’t finish, you’ve watched.
I think Odom is gonna have them ready to play. Purdue’s dialed up enough funky looks to make things happen before and this is it, so you may as well empty out the bag and see what happens. They won’t be held scoreless, I think the Boilers find their way to the red zone.
But it is still No. 2 Indiana. I know it’s very coach-speaky for Cignetti to say he isn’t looking past Purdue at all even with the postseason stakes but there’s a lot of coaches who definitely just say that. Cignetti is not that one of them and has probably watched as much Purdue film as Purdue has. On top of this, Indiana’s getting healthier and looks to have Sarratt back.
I think Indiana wins, somewhere in the realm of 38-7/41-10. I’m not big on score predictions but that’s what I’ve got.
