BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana junior wide receiver Elijah Sarratt, a scratch recruit out of Virginia’s high school class, has made an impression on Michigan State sophomore cornerback and former four-star recruit Ja Jyaire Hill took a token taunt and left him wandering the empty field.
Indiana junior defensive end Mikail Kamara, a sporadic player out of Virginia’s high school ranks, sandwiched between Michigan senior right guard Giovanni El-Hadi and sophomore right tackle Evan Link, right into the face of quarterback Davis Warren. Both Wolverines linemen ended their reserve careers with four stars next to their names, and both will have to deal with Kamara. Eight stars and no stars. No one wins.
Indiana, the losing-most major college football program, defeated Michigan, the winningest-leading program, 20-15 on Saturday at Memorial Stadium in front of 53,082 born-again November basketball fans. It was the first time in Indiana history that it had 10 wins. That’s 11 wins in 73 games all-time against Michigan. That makes it hard to imagine first-year coach Curt Cignetti and his Indians not being among the teams selected for the first 12-team College Football Playoff.
I swear to you, as sure as Bob Knight could throw out a chair, these guys are acting like they have to be responsible for something on Saturday.
“I’m glad we won,” Sinetti said. “I wasn’t happy with the way we played.”
He said this while praising his defense and his team for being “brave,” which he did after being asked about the little emotion he showed during a live interview after CBS — while the Indiana students happily stood in the stands and didn’t rush to the court because apparently beating the defending national champion was exactly what they were doing now.
In those few seconds on the field, Sinetti experienced it all, sharing a few smiles with family and friends, nearly 20 of them in fact, as he walked through the massive IU weight room toward the press conference. Crammed into this place with friends…these are all hints of a great moment.
Signetti and his No. 8 Indians (7-0 Big Ten) wouldn’t say it, after they took a 17-3 first-half lead over the disappointing Wolverines (5-5, 3-4) , they wouldn’t say that. Indiana should have crushed this Michigan team that looked like the Fast Lane Bowl because Indiana had crushed everyone, but that wasn’t the case.
Covers 7-8 Indiana football games. Today’s chase scene is the sum total of all of these scenes. As bad as the photo is, it doesn’t tell the story. pic.twitter.com/HqmoweWGmm
— Joe Rexrode (@joerexrode) November 9, 2024
Good job, Hoosiers. The Big Ten Tournament is underway. After a well-timed week off, the next game of the season is at No. 2 Ohio State. So the fact is CompetitorAustin Mock gives the Hoosiers a 92 percent winning record to make the playoffs, and their regular-season finale against poor rival Purdue shouldn’t cause any public sighs. Especially after this version of Michigan beat Indiana in the second half.
But people outside of our show don’t have to be involved. We can rub our eyes, shake our heads, and laugh almost uncomfortably as we, as a college football nation, ask these Hoosiers in November whether Good enough to win a national championship.
We wonder how Michigan maintains such a strong relationship with Indiana. We applaud the Wolverines for what they did, and boy, what if coach Sheron Moore hadn’t wasted 31 seconds before the timeout or spent most of the second half trying to avoid turnovers. ? Back in the press box after Saturday’s press conference, people were watching the Alabama-LSU game and talking about how it might affect Indiana University’s playoff draw. Discuss it as if it were a normal thing.
Are we in an upside-down state? How far is Hawkins, Indiana, where the supernatural scenes of Stranger Things were filmed, from Bloomington?
We might be surprised. We can also be obsessed. Because the 2024 Indiana football game reminds us that there’s more to the game than just math and science. If so, the Indians wouldn’t have dominated the first half and been searching for answers after a shaky second half. They’ll be shipped to most Michigan teams like most Indiana teams have been for decades.
The 247Sports Team Talent Composite, which evaluates rosters based on recruiting rankings, tells us Michigan State lost a lot from last year’s Jim Harbaugh-led Nettie but still finished fifth in the Big Ten and ranked first nationally. No. 16. Indiana ranks 16th in the Big Ten and 57th nationally. There is a talent gap between these teams.
Looking at the starting lineup, Michigan’s offense averaged 3.45 stars — despite having zero-star quarterback and former walk-on Warren — while its defense averaged 3.73 stars. The Pacers’ offense averaged 2.81 stars and their defense averaged 2.0 stars. So, yes, Michigan’s defense had nearly every player on the field better than a star against Indiana’s offense — even without its best player, injured cornerback and five-star Will Johnson — We want to know how the Wolverines do this.
Eight of Indiana’s 22 starting players, including Zarate and Kamara, played for Cignetti at James Madison Stadium on Saturday. The players moved up from the 5-a-side league to the Power 4 league and have consistently achieved results. But a host of James Madison players and former Mid-American Conference quarterbacks, Threatening a hostile takeover of a Big Ten company?
Sure, recruiting rankings mean something and have a lot to do with a program’s success, but they don’t say much about how players will grow, work, and fit into the program. These reviews say nothing about how people will get along. Or how to coach and develop them. They couldn’t have predicted the choices they would make on a Thursday night in their dorm room, when happy hour beckons but a young man starts squatting or reading.
It’s not just science and math, it’s art. A project in Indiana known for its terrible replica of “Dogs Playing Poker” is fielding calls from Guggenheim Museum staff.
Yes, Saturday may have given us a glimpse of the struggles this team can have against the best teams in the sport, but they still didn’t have a great game. The loss of left guard Drew Evans (another sporadic player who turned into a quality player) to an Achilles injury in practice last week was among Michigan’s four sacks and frequent second-half pressures. It cannot be ignored. The math shows Indiana’s depth is fragile.
However, Saturday’s game should be good for Indiana. For one thing, no one is going to scream disrespect on behalf of the Hoosiers when the rankings come out on Tuesday. More likely, they’ll question why housing prices are so high in Indiana. There’s no doubt Cignetti will love it and use it.
He simply sees his players facing unnecessary pressure and reacts. Defenses do this over and over again. Special teams played well, and Ke’Shawn Williams’ 22-yard punt return to the Michigan 39 created breathing room for Nicolas Radicic’s field goal. Rourke hit a clutch shot that got IU close enough and then sprinted past the option keeper to set up the winning run.
“We knew at the end of the day we were going to have a close game and we had to look at what we were capable of,” Lock said.
“When you’re a good team and you stay confident and stay calm in those moments, you know, no moment is too big,” Williams said.
Enjoy 24 hours. Watch movies. Make improvements. The Indians sounded like any other winning team involved in any other championship chase on Saturday. Williams admitted, however, that he looked around at the crowd in the final seconds and thought: “This is crazy.”
Yes. Indeed.
“I can’t say enough about these guys,” Signetti said. “I’m not going to throw away a lot of bouquets; you know that. But these guys have accomplished quite a bit.
No, he doesn’t throw away bouquets. He molded clay that wasn’t supposed to be good into something very good. Leonardo da Signetti said he will have a day off on Sunday. And then it’s back to the masterpiece.
(Photo of Zach Horton and Ilya Zarate: James Black/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
