Some Nebraska fans were far more caught up with the Huskers blowing a 17-6 lead to Indiana than with how close Matt Rhule’s club came to upsetting the defending national champion. Still, Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti seemed to grasp the importance of the situation after the game, even telling the assembled media at his press conference that the come-from-behind win hadn’t hit him yet.
“I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in, well it’s starting to, that we won because it took everything the players and coaches had in that one to find a way to overcome,” Cignetti said.
“Give Nebraska a lot of credit. Really good football team. I thought we did a nice job of regrouping at halftime. And defense gave up three points in the second half and the offense made just enough plays. It’s a great win on the road, it was hard-fought. A win like that has a lot of value.”
Cignetti’s “just enough points” comment underlined that while the Huskers’ offense struggled in the second half, it wasn’t as though the Hoosiers dominated the game after halftime. Indiana scored two touchdowns on long passes to wide receiver Nick Marsh. Both plays exposed a Nebraska defense that seemed to blow its coverage, letting Marsh run wide open on a 75-yard score and a 44-yard TD.
Those plays turned a 17-6 lead into a 20-17 loss, but Nebraska still held Indiana to 328 total yards, 198 of which came on four plays.
The Blackshirts limited Indiana to 65 rushing yards on 22 attempts, including 12 rushing yards in the first half. The Hoosiers entered the game ranked No. 9 nationally, averaging 252.6 yards per game.
In his postgame press conference, Cignetti said Nebraska clearly tried to stop the run,, which likely helped IU hit so many long passes.
“Early on, it was obvious they were committed to stopping the run and a certain RPO. And we really never quite got the run game going. I thought we’d run the ball better than we did, but we’ll deal with that tomorrow in our evaluation of why.”
“Probably they decided that they had to stop the run, number one, and do the best they could versus the pass. So at the end of the day, we won the one-on-one matchups in the pass game and made one more play than they did.”
Cignetti will now focus on preparing for a Top 5 showdown with Ohio State. The Hoosiers entered Lincoln as the No. 7 team in the country and jumped two spots to No. 5. Ohio State moved up one spot in the AP Top 25 after a laugher against Maryland.
Nebraska, meanwhile, gets ready to play Oregon, which is fresh off a 17-15 loss to UCLA that knocked it out of the Top 25.
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