Following a subpar performance resulting in its first loss last week in Columbus, quarterback Kurtis Rourke and Indiana got back on course with a nine-touchdown outburst in a 66-0 blanking of Purdue on a snowy Saturday night in Bloomington.
Although he continuously claimed that his team had nothing to prove, Indiana football’s headman Curt Cignetti knew that his team needed to get back in sync and finish the regular season with a dominant offensive performance. They did just that, bringing the Old Oaken Bucket back to Bloomington for the first time since 2019 while simultaneously handing the Boilermakers its largest margin of defeat to the Hoosiers in its 133-year history.
“We wanted to play from the first play to the last play in a rivalry game that Indiana had not won in four or five years,” Cignetti said postgame. “I thought we had to play well tonight, and I think we did.”
After punting on its first drive, Indiana teed off on the Boilermaker defense, piling on a school record 66 points on its rival from the north.
Rourke has had his fair share of struggles in the past two games. The six quarters leading up to Saturday’s battle for the Old Oaken Bucket weren’t too kind to the Indiana offense. The Hoosiers scored 18 points, finding the end zone twice in that timeframe, leading some to believe that the early season magic had fizzled out.
The Indiana signal caller struggled mightily last week against Ohio State, completing a season-worst eight passes for only 68 yards in the defeat to the Buckeyes.
“I think one of the things that we wanted to accomplish this week is that we can bounce back as a team,” Rourke said. “We can get back to the level of playing that were the last couple of weeks prior to last week."
Rourke responded in a big way on Saturday night, completing 23-of-31 passes for 349 yards while tying the school record for most touchdown passes in a single game with six. A third of the touchdown passes were to his most-trusted receiver, Elijah Sarratt, twice, including an improvised 84-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.
“Elijah was being very intuitive and noticed I was running,” the Indiana quarterback recalled. “I just threw on the brakes, and the rest is history.”
Indiana’s offense totaled 582 yards, surpassing the 500 yard benchmark for the first time since the Western Illinois game in September. Additionally, it was the highest offensive output from the Hoosiers in a conference game this season.
“It was really awesome to get back on schedule,” Rourke said. “It’s been something that we’ve been preaching and practicing really hard, and we wanted to get back to the offense that we’re used to.”
The defense followed the offensive dominance with a commanding effort on Saturday. Spearheaded by Jailin Walker’s career day, Indiana stymied the Purdue offense, allowing only one more yard than Indiana had points throughout the game. Walker, who had a get-back game of his own, saw the performance as an opportunity to flush away the Ohio State loss.
“I called this the redemption week from Ohio State,” Walker said. “We showed what we can do and we’re back on track.”
Saturday’s drubbing of an in-state foe was more than a victory for Cignetti, it was a statement that his program has mental toughness not to let the past affect the present. A bounce-back performance that perfectly encapsulates the consistent standard of performance Cignetti has instilled into his team in his first year in Bloomington.
“I think our assistant coaches and players do a nice job, a good job coaching them, and we preach about playing one play at a time, first play to last, like it's 0-0 regards to the competitive circumstances, never too high, never too low, physical, relentless, smart, disciplined, poised,” Cignetti said. “Our guys buy into that, and we've been fairly consistent this year.”
Though Indiana dominated Purdue in all facets of the game to get back between the navigational beacons, its frontman still believes that his team remains unsatisfied and is still hungry for more.
“They are not done yet -- they want more. They are going to get more.”
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