BLOOMINGTON — Curt Cignetti, at times, is a madman on the sidelines. And he doesn’t shy away from it — he’s acknowledged those tendencies on multiple occasions.
Indiana’s head coach will pace around furiously and continue coaching his players hard when his team is winning by 40 points in the fourth quarter. He’s become a meme for his many displeased facial expressions captured during games, even when the Hoosiers are playing well.
But when IU entered halftime on Saturday against Wisconsin ahead by just three points, Cignetti took a different approach. He didn’t light into his team in the locker room, like some may have expected.
“What’s always worked for me in these situations, and worked today again, is instead of going in there and kind of rip-snorting at halftime, just telling everybody to take a deep breath, relax, have fun, go out there and play one play at a time,” Cignetti said after the game. “I thought we played a good second half, and we had a lot of great individual performances.”
Cignetti’s calm message at halftime paid dividends. The Hoosiers opened the third quarter with a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, and fully controlled the second half en route to a 31-7 victory. Indiana (11-0, 8-0 Big Ten) secured its best start in program history with the win.
The first half was closer than most imagined, for the No. 2 team in the country going up against a Wisconsin team with only one Big Ten win. The Badgers (3-7, 1-6) tested IU’s defense right away. Their opening drive took up more than half of the first quarter, but ended fruitless after a missed field goal.
But that 13-play drive showed how Wisconsin was going to play: a heavy reliance on the run game, working the clock, and trying to capitalize on any opportunities or miscues Indiana’s defense presented. The Badgers made that happen in the second quarter, scoring a touchdown thanks to an IU defensive breakdown.
The Hoosiers tacked on a field goal near the end of the quarter, but they were far from dominant in the first half. The opening two quarters played out the way the Badgers would’ve scripted them if they could’ve. IU outgained UW 159-145 in the half, and Cignetti’s group equaled its fewest first-half points all season.
But the second-year head coach struck the right tone in the locker room.
“It’s really good as a player, knowing that we still have our coach who believes in us and is calm and not getting on us for all of our mistakes,” wide receiver Charlie Becker said. “But getting us back on Earth and getting us ready to go out there and perform.”
Becker, starting in place of Elijah Sarratt for the second week in a row, made the big play that helped get Indiana rolling in the second half. IU opened the third quarter with two runs, one for no gain and one for two yards. But then, on third-and-8, quarterback Fernando Mendoza hit Becker the sophomore downfield for a 48-yard gain. Six plays later, the Hoosiers scored a touchdown to make it 17-7.
IU’s defense went into shutdown mode from there, holding Wisconsin to 23 yards in the second half. Indiana played much looser after halftime, flying around the field on both sides of the ball and making the big plays fans have become accustom to this season. The defense took heed of Cignetti’s message, as well.
“We knew coming out of halftime what we had to do to kind of just take over the game, and also have fun in our last home game,” defensive end Stephen Daley said. “Just knowing we’re going to be OK. There’s no stress. … Just play our brand of ball and everything will work out for us.”
The Hoosiers showed some things in the first half that they’ll have to clean up against tougher postseason competition. They had trouble running the ball all game, their pass protection struggled in the first two quarters, and the defense had trouble getting off the field in Wisconsin’s two long drives.
But Cignetti understood what his team needed to hear going into the second half, and that changed the game for IU on Saturday.
“Coach Cignetti is a fantastic coach. He understands his players and his team. And he knows that we were lethargic, and we weren’t playing our Indiana brand of football, especially offensively,” Mendoza said. “So he took us in at halftime, told us to take a deep breath, to have fun, play football. And then in the second half, I think that we saw that we could have fun and play football well.”
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