BLOOMINGTON — At long last, Indiana football is set to take the field.
It’s officially game week for the Hoosiers, for the first time in 2025. They open the season against Old Dominion on Saturday, with a 2:30 p.m. ET kickoff at Memorial Stadium televised on FS1.
IU head coach Curt Cignetti met with local media on Monday for his weekly in-season press conference, to talk about his team entering the season, the upcoming opponent, and more. Here’s a few key points he discussed.
Game week is back
Indiana worked hard throughout fall camp, spanning around three and a half weeks. After all that time competing against each other, the Hoosiers are excited to play against a different opponent on Saturday. Cignetti said his team enters the season healthy, and that the few players who were in and out of fall camp look good to go.
Cignetti feels good about his group coming out of preseason.
“I like where we’re at coming out of camp in terms of how we practice, how we compete, and the identity is sort of established throughout the season once you start playing the games. At the end of the year we’ll be able to write the book, close the book on this football team,” Cignetti said Monday. “We’ve got a lot of nice pieces. We’ve got a lot of new guys that will be playing their first football for us. So anxious to see how we respond and react, but it’s my job to get us to play the way we’re supposed to play, my job and the assistants, play in, play out until the game is over from the first play to the last play.”
IU is a 23-point favorite against ODU, but Cignetti has emphasized how dangerous this game could be.
He knows the Sun Belt well, from his time at James Madison. He readily noted Old Dominion playing South Carolina very tight last season, along with its upset win over Virginia Tech in 2022.
The Hoosiers may have the talent to overpower a group of five team like the Monarchs, but Cignetti knows what could happen if his team doesn’t show up ready to play.
“They’re all excited to play, and now we’ve got to put the proper preparation in and understand that while they’re excited to play, the game is going to be hard,” Cignetti said. “I expect a very tough challenge from Old Dominion, and we’re going to have to play really well from the first play to the last play. We’ll learn a lot about our team in Game 1 like we did last season.”
Mendoza’s leadership
One of Kurtis Rourke’s most visible attributes last season playing quarterback at IU was his level-headedness. He didn’t get too high when things were going well, and he didn’t get too low when anything went awry.
Fernando Mendoza isn’t Rourke, and he’ll leave his own fingerprints on the 2025 Hoosiers the same way Rourke did last year. It’s too early for Cignetti to know how Mendoza will handle big moments on the field this season, because they have not yet experienced a game day together. And Cignetti is more focused on Mendoza’s performance as a quarterback than as a leader. But he knows those things go hand-in-hand — he saw it with Rourke last year.
“(Mendoza has) played a lot of football, so I have a lot of confidence in him,” Cignetti said Monday. “I think what you saw last season, as Kurtis started to produce at a high level in the games, then his leadership and his status with his teammates — I’ve never made it a point to try to make the new quarterback the leader of the team. Our focus has always been on developing him, making him the best he can be, because you lead through your actions. There’s nothing like positive performance to establish yourself as a leader.”
Safety uncertainty
With safety Louis Moore still in an uncertain position regarding eligibility for this season, Indiana might have to be prepared to play without him.
A court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in Moore’s lawsuit against the NCAA, which could provide some clarity in either direction. Moore previously received a temporary restraining order to maintain eligibility until further ruling.
Cignetti was asked about how the team is handling Moore’s situation from a football availability standpoint going into the first game of the season. He gave a succinct answer.
“We’re handling it the best way we see fit.”
Should Moore be ruled ineligible, or if he becomes unavailable for any reason ahead of the Old Dominion game, Bryson Bonds would become the favorite to start at safety next to Amare Ferrell. True freshman Byron Baldwin Jr. should be in the mix as well.
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