BLOOMINGTON — If Indiana football’s first win of the season over Old Dominion fell short of expectations with the 13-point margin, the team silenced those alarms on Saturday.
IU maintained control of its week two game against Kennesaw State the entire day, and eventually opened the floodgates en route to a 56-9 victory at Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium. While final scores sometimes don’t reflect how a game really went, this was the sort of blowout head coach Curt Cignetti got Indiana fans accustomed to in 2024.
This wasn’t a perfect performance by the 23rd-ranked Hoosiers, but it represented clear progress from the season-opener.
“Good day. I think we made the improvement we needed to make, but it’s far from perfect,” Cignetti said after the game. “We’ll see areas of improvement tomorrow when we watch the tape. But we took a step forward, with the step we needed to take.”
Indiana (2-0) trailed Old Dominion last week after just one play from scrimmage. But the Hoosiers defense got off to a much stronger start against Kennesaw State (0-2), with four straight three-and-outs. The Owls strung together three consecutive drives ending in field goals in the second quarter and early third quarter, and appeared on the verge of another scoring drive after that.
But cornerback Jamari Sharpe, after getting beat by a KSU receiver, made a play that seemed to spark Indiana from a good performance to a dominant one. He stuck with the play and forced a fumble at IU’s 25-yard-line, which led to an Omar Cooper Jr. touchdown one play later. The Hoosiers allowed only one first down the rest of the game.
That sequence backs up Cignetti and his players saying they could’ve played better on Saturday, while acknowledging that this went much better than the Old Dominion game.
“We have a lot of stuff that we need to clean up,” linebacker Aiden Fisher said. “But (we) just took advantage of more opportunities when we had them. I think that was really what ended up with the result that we got.”
Defensively, IU feasted up front. The Hoosiers racked up 14 tackles for loss; they posted double-digit TFLs only once in 2024. Fisher and Kellan Wyatt each had 2.5 to lead the way, and 10 total players at least assisted on a TFL.
On the other side, IU dominated with 593 yards of total offense, which would’ve been the team’s second-best mark last season. It didn’t translate to constant trips down the field into the end zone, as Indiana punted on two of its first four possessions. The Hoosiers also turned it over on downs, when Cignetti sent Nico Radicic and the kicking team out for a 41-yard field goal on fourth and seven, but put the offense back on the field for fourth and 12 after a delay of game penalty made the kick longer. He called that sequence “a bad football decision.”
That was IU’s last drive of the game that didn’t result in either a touchdown, halftime, or the end of the game. Quarterback Fernando Mendoza led his offense on a scoring spree, with 35 points in the second half. The Cal transfer threw four touchdowns, three coming after halftime. Elijah Sarratt caught three of Mendoza’s four touchdowns.
The third quarter, when Indiana scored 21 points, displayed Indiana’s full offensive potential.
“That was great to see because last time we really waxed somebody was Purdue. That was a long time ago. So it was good to get back kind of to that,” Cignetti said. “I needed to see that from this team because there’s a lot of new guys on this team.”
The Hoosiers still have a long way to go in 2025. Kennesaw State is far from the biggest challenge they’ll see; the real tests will begin when No. 11 Illinois comes to Bloomington on Sept. 20. Against a stronger opponent like that, the little things Indiana needs to clean up could be the difference between winning and losing.
But until then, all the Hoosiers can do is improve. And Saturday’s performance looked much more like the team Cignetti led to a historic 2024 season — and, more importantly, like a team that could back up that success and make more noise in the Big Ten this year.
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