IU Football Coach Talks Indiana State, Areas to Improve

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.–The 22nd ranked Indiana Hoosier football team (2-0) plays the Indiana State Sycamores (2-0) Friday night in Bloomington on Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium.

In his Monday press conference, Hoosier Head Football Coach Curt Cignetti said Indiana State has had two quarterbacks play the bulk of the time and they are talented.

“Well, they’re doing a nice job on offense scoring 40 points a game. They’re fairly balanced, playing a couple running backs. They’re doing a nice job throwing the ball. The starter is completing about 77 percent of his passes. Defensively they’re doing a nice job as well. I’m sure they’re going to come in excited to play. I want to see us play a clean game,” said Cignetti.

In Indiana’s 56-9 win over Kennesaw State, Cignetti said, while enjoyed most of what he saw from his team, he didn’t like the missed assignments and poor alignments that allowed Kennesaw State to get some big plays at times.

“So, we’ve got to do a better job of that. I do think the last two teams we’ve played in terms of getting aligned are some of the bigger challenges we’ll face this year because of their tempo, particularly this last team who had a lot of — they could go extremely fast and then they had some oddball formations you had to adjust to,” said Cignetti.

He also discussed the way the play calls are coming in defensively and believes in the process.

“Yeah, the calls are getting in quick enough, and the communication from Aiden (Fisher) is getting done quick enough. Now, one time maybe he set the strength to the right and maybe he could have set it to the left, but the guys in the back end got to get lined up faster, and that’s the safety position primarily,” said Cignetti.

Kickoff between Indiana State and Indiana is at 6:30 pm Friday night.

It was also announced on Monday that Indiana’s upcoming game September 20th against 9th ranked Illinois is at 7:30 pm in Bloomington.