BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — If you stood in Memorial Stadium, closed your eyes, and let the crowd reaction tell you what happened, you’d think you missed the greatest moment in the stadium’s 66-year history.
Fifth-ranked Indiana football, the defending national champions, faced a fourth-and-4 against No. 4 Ohio State from the Buckeye 27-yard line, trailing 19-15 with just over a minute remaining. IU’s 6-0 start, its 22-game winning streak, and 19-game home winning streak all on the line. Curt Cignetti called a timeout to discuss the situation with his offense and ensure they called right play.
Cignetti anticipated a zero blitz from Ohio State, which would create an opportunity for a home-run ball. He and Mike Shanahan called Nick Marsh’s number, and it nearly played out perfectly.
The Buckeyes did, in fact, send the house. Marsh put a double move on OSU cornerback Cam Calhoun, and streaked down the sideline on the left side of the field with a full five yards of separation. Josh Hoover had to throw the ball up right as Marsh cut back upfield, when he was still even with Calhoun but was about to blow by him. Hoover’s throw wasn’t perfect, but it was right there for Marsh.
The sellout crowd in Bloomington exploded into a deafening roar, thinking the Hoosiers just took the lead. But Marsh immediately put his hands on his head. He knew he’d stepped out of bounds.
The cheers died down into groans of stunned disbelief. Indiana was going to lose its biggest home game in program history.
“Shoot, it’s a game of inches, right?” Hoover said after the game. “Unfortunately, the last play, when it comes down to it like that, it does stink. But shoot, we ran 75 plays. And we had a lot of opportunities to score at other moments. So it’s never about one play.”
Indeed, IU (6-1, 3-1 Big Ten) had plenty of chances.
The Hoosiers put together a 66-yard drive in the middle of the second quarter, with an opportunity to create some real separation on the scoreboard. But on third down, Hoover didn’t see a wide-open Brock Schott in the end zone and threw an incomplete pass to Turbo Richard up the middle. And then Nico Radicic clanked a 32-yard field goal attempt off the left upright.
What could’ve become an IU lead by 11 or seven points turned into a three-point deficit. Ohio State (6-1, 4-0) turned the missed field goal into a touchdown on the other end, running six plays inside the Indiana 5-yard-line before Julian Sayin hit Bo Jackson for the score.
“That was a tough one not to win,” Cignetti said. “I thought our kids gave great effort and fight, and hung in there and put ourselves in position to win the close game. Had so many opportunities to get it done, not only at the end of the game, but throughout the game. Just too many missed opportunities on offense.”
The Hoosiers had other offensive miscues that led to their downfall, between Hoover not seeing or misfiring to open receivers, a costly Davion Chandler fumble at the beginning of the second half, and more. Cignetti even displayed some questionable game management with his handling of two fourth downs in Ohio State territory in the third quarter.
IU’s defense, on the whole, played well enough to win. Bryant Haines’ unit held Ohio State to 313 yards of offense, its lowest output of the season so far and its lowest since Oct. 11, 2025. Amare Ferrell made two crucial interceptions, his second career multi-interception game. The Hoosiers did a great job against Heisman Trophy favorite Jeremiah Smith, only to allow him to score the decisive touchdown when Ferrell and Jamari Sharpe lost the ball on a fourth-down heave down the field.
“We got great coverage on the guy,” Cignetti said. “The ball was underthrown into the wind, and (Sharpe and Ferrell) just misjudged the ball.”
Any takeaways from this game may depend on your outlook on life. There’s a clear glass-half-full viewpoint: Indiana had so many chances to win — potentially even in dramatic, memorable fashion — and ultimately beat itself. But those mistakes could be easier for Cignetti and his staff to address in practice than schematic and physical deficiencies.
But after a national championship season in which these sorts of mistakes rarely — if ever — happened, it’s reasonable to see what IU did against Ohio State and wonder whether or not this team has that same ceiling.
That type of big-picture question will be answered in due time. This loss certainly doesn’t eliminate Indiana from College Football Playoff contention, but the margin for error is now much smaller.
Football, at its core, is a game with a small margin for error. Marsh’s near-miss touchdown on Saturday is a glaring example. The minuscule difference between the Hoosiers picking up one of their all-time greatest home victories and suffering their first loss since Dec. 2024 was less than a yard.
“That’s what it is. It’s a game of inches,” Charlie Becker said. “We’ll get better.”
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