The Indiana Hoosiers’ football season thus far can be described easily and succinctly with one word: disappointing.
As just about every media outlet covering the team has documented, this Indiana squad began the year riding a wave of fan interest and support generated almost exclusively by the Kevin Wilson Hype Machine (Win Today!).
Storylines surrounding the team focused on a fresh start for the Hoosiers, with a brand new coaching staff and without too many integral holdovers from an underwhelming 2010 campaign. Many fans – and some media members – considered a bowl game a feasible and reasonable expectation.
Then the losses started piling up.
Defeats at the hands of Ball State, Virginia and North Texas lowlighted a shocking 1-3 non-conference record that even the most pessimistic of fans felt should have been 2-2 at worst. That subpar four-game stretch against an anemic non-conference slate likely cleared up some unresolved issues for observers expecting great things from the Hoosiers this season.
Inconsistent execution, unforced errors and mental mistakes reared their heads early and often in all three losses – something that in hindsight should have been a lot less surprising after considering the sheer volume of young players seeing their first action.
Even after such a discouraging non-conference stretch, the team won back some fans by playing some decent football and hanging tough (at least at the beginning) in two conference home losses to Penn State and Illinois.
Young players and an inexperienced staff are still working their way through growing pains, but after being embarrassed in their early schedule, Indiana looked like something resembling a B1G team over the past couple of games.
Unfortunately, squads that look like actual B1G teams have been handled by the #4 Wisconsin Badgers this year. That’s right folks, these are the same Badgers who manhandled then-8th ranked Nebraska less than two weeks ago and hung 83 points on the Hoosiers last season.
Saying nothing against any of the opponents that Indiana has played up to this point, Wisconsin is simply on a different level. Penn State and Illinois, for instance, were both solid opponents, and definitely better than any teams the Hoosiers had faced up to that point.
The Badgers are considerably more than solid – judging from their play this year, they’re the best team in the conference and stand a chance of going undefeated and playing in the National Title game at the end of the year.
They have a Heisman candidate at quarterback in Russell Wilson, two dynamic running backs in Montee Ball and James White, a mammoth offensive line that is bigger and heavier on average than that of the Green Bay Packers and a stingy defense that ranks 3rd in the country in points allowed on a per-game basis.
Oh, and they had a week off just to prepare for this game. Adding that to the fact that Dusty Kiel, who started both B1G games this season, will likely miss 2-3 weeks with a sprained ankle, it’s not a surprise that Wisky opened as 38 point favorites only to see the line climb to 40 points in only two days.
Cockeyed optimists may have been able to talk themselves into IU’s chances in the last two games (Have you seen PSU’s quarterbacks? Rob Bolden is obviously blackmailing Joe Paterno; Ron Zook is their coach. Ron Zook. Seriously… RON ZOOK!) but if someone is picking Indiana in this game, they’re either taking the points or insane. Long story short, for the first time this season, literally no one thinks Indiana has any chance whatsoever in this game.
No one, that is, except the Hoosiers themselves, who had some fighting words regarding this weekend’s contest.
“(Wisconsin is) physical and they’re not afraid to show it, and that’s what we need to do,” said Stephen Houston. “We have physical players who can get the job done too and our mindset is to go in with reckless abandon and beat Wisconsin. I believe we can get the ground game started early and come out and punch them in the mouth.”
It’s easy – some would say very easy – to take Houston’s words with a boulder-sized grain of salt. After all, will be only the second road contest of the year for Indiana and they made the North Texas Mean Green look like a national powerhouse on their first venture away from home.
Senior tight end Max Dedmond acknowledges the struggles the Hoosiers had during their first road game and said that the team needs to take the lessons they learned that week and apply them when they take the field in Madison.
“We need to come out strong early on,” he said. “We can’t wait around like we have. We need to be on our keys, play hard, play together and take it to them early.”
For those curious as to the origin of such a gung-ho, can-do attitude, they need look no further than the always-quotable Kevin Wilson.
“It’s a tough place to play, but fans can’t make tackles or plays on the field,” said Kevin Wilson. “I’ve always liked playing places where the fans get crazy anyway. We’re going to give it a great shot and see if we’re up to the physical fight that it’s going to be.”
Despite Kiel’s injury and the fact that Ed Wright-Baker is still recovering from one of his own, Wilson made clear that Indiana’s offensive approach would not change to protect a thin quarterback position against the Badger defense.
“We’ve just got to go out and play,” he said with some exasperation in his voice. “We’ve got absolutely no chance if we’re scared out there and don’t believe that we can win this game… there can be no holding back or worrying about next week, we’ve got to go out there and be confident in each other, what we’re doing and what we’ve practiced.”
Let’s be clear, when I say that no one believes that the Hoosiers have a chance against Wisconsin this week, I include myself in that mix.
The Badgers are obscenely talented, are playing in one of the toughest home environments in the country and have been toying with teams equal to or better than Indiana all year.
Still though, this team faces a unique opportunity to take the fact that nobody believes in them and do something with it. The Hoosiers will be comically outgunned in this one, but Wilson is dead-on when he says he wants to see if his team will be up to the enormous challenge that Wisconsin provides.
The coaching staff obviously isn’t publically looking for a moral victory this week; they want to leave Madison with a W.
I’ll be easier to please.
I’m not looking for a win in this one, just signs that this team isn’t going to quit on the season. If they stand toe-to-toe with the best team in the conference for any period of time, that should be enough to satiate the fan base. If they give more – which the coaches seem to believe they can – IU football could exceed expectations for a change.
“It’s going to be 65-70 guys going in as a team, going in together,” said co-defensive coordinator Doug Mallory. “Hopefully we respond well.”
Well said.
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