Indiana fought many of the same trials it faces at points of every season during its road win against Maryland on Saturday night, but the Hoosiers adjusted and found ways around those disadvantages.
Those moments, where previous Indiana teams crumbled, proved the opposite for he 2019 team, showing a gradual progression toward a "breakthrough" that was expected to be sudden once promised by head coach Tom Allen in 2017.
Since 2007, when Indiana earned its fifth win in week six before eventually advancing to a bowl game, the Hoosiers had won five games in six seasons, and during those six seasons, Indiana didn’t reach that fifth win until at least week 10.
On Saturday, after a road win at College Park, 34-28, Indiana secured its fifth win in week eight, as it pushed its record to 5-2, earning its fifth win in October for the first time since 2007.
“We’re one win away with five games to play,” Redshirt quarterback Peyton Ramsey said after the game Saturday. “That’s really exciting for us.”
If there was a game that showed Indiana was breaking through under Tom Allen – harking back to the earliest of days in his tenure – Saturday’s game against Maryland was the game.
There were the plays that seemed familiar with the Indiana Football program – the 60-yard touchdown run by Maryland running back Javon Leake, the 52-yard catch by tight end Tyler Mabry and the missed touchdown when Peyton Ramsey had tight end Matt Bjorson open in the endzone.
The resistance that pops up in nearly every conference road game and every close game that Indiana has played in recent seasons reared its head again. Redshirt freshman quarterback Mike Penix left with an injury, and the limitations that exist with a Peyton Ramsey-led offense appeared. The Hoosiers committed 11 penalties, including one that swung Maryland’s final drive from nearly dead to well and alive.
The defense, which was crucial in the success Indiana had found in games like Rutgers, Eastern Illinois and Michigan State, was porous to start, and the run game was slow, as Stevie Scott recorded just 12 yards on the ground in the first half. Whop Philyor – who had 24 catches in the last two games – was limited to two Saturday, and other situations, like not scoring a touchdown after getting the ball on the 16-yard line and also allowing a 21-yard catch on third-and-17, appealed to the brand that Indiana Football has been for so long.
But against a Maryland team that, yes, is now 3-4 and will likely miss a bowl game, Indiana found ways to overcome the disadvantages it tends to create for itself, starting with the score to end the first half, when senior wide receiver Nick Westbrook made a diving play in the endzone to give Indiana the lead, 24-21.
“I hugged him and said, ‘You may have just won us the game,’” Allen said after the game Saturday. “I’ve been in enough of these games. I watched the game from two years ago, when we were here, and the opposite happened. They got the momentum going into halftime.”
Allen said he knew the game at Maryland would be a four-quarter, one-score game, and, typically, those games don’t favor Indiana. Not against Bowling Green in 2014, not against Duke, Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa or Rutgers in 2015, not against Wake Forest, Nebraska, Penn State or Utah in 2016, and – in the Tom Allen Era – not against Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue (twice), Penn State, Minnesota or Maryland. Before this win, Indiana was 3-7 in one-possession games under Tom Allen.
But the Hoosiers didn’t cave to the resistance of the game script at Maryland.
The defensive coaching staff simplified the scheme going into the second half, Allen said, taking out looks and committing to around three consistent ones that it knew it could execute. Then, late in the second half, it added in a new coverage, which resulted in the Reese Taylor interception to end the game. Juwan Burgess also forced and recovered a fumble in the fourth quarter, after taking the starting safety spot from Devon Matthews. It was the first game Indiana had recorded multiple takeaways.
Stevie Scott added another 100-yard game on the shoulders of a banged up offensive line that had several doubters questioning whether the Hoosiers would be able to run the ball effectively a month ago, and, behind that same offensive line, Indiana gained 520 total yards. Ramsey added more than 200 yards to that total with plays he’s been known to make, and then some.
When the game seemed to be slipping away from Indiana, at multiple points during the contest, the Hoosiers responded, during a road Big Ten game. None of that is what has come to be known about the IU Football program, until it did it at College Park for its fifth win on a journey that is sure to result in the third bowl berth of the decade.
“It’s about learning how to win,” Allen said. “We’ve been through all these tough losses and everything we’ve been through, and you have to learn how to win. I think we took a step in that direction tonight.”
During those last seven seasons when the Hoosiers were able to earn a fifth win, they advanced to bowl games just three times, as the time between wins five and six has sometimes proven to be more barren than between wins four and five.
Even in 2007, Indiana didn’t get its sixth win until a month after its fifth. It waited three weeks in 2016, and in 2015, pushed toward its final two games after six straight losses, Indiana pulled out its sixth win against Purdue in West Lafayette.
Indiana has a chance to make its 2019 season the endpoint of a segment that reaches deep into the Bill Mallory days of the late-1980s, when the goal for Indiana wasn’t getting the sixth win – it was stacking up wins as high as they could go.
"It’s recruiting. It’s depth. It’s an ability to finish in those situations," Allen said about what separates the 2019 team from teams in the past. "We’ve got more good players than we have in the past. We had some injuries. Even tonight, when guys couldn’t play. In the past, it got to a point where we were short-handed, and it showed. It’s hard to pinpoint one thing. I think it just comes down to core confidence and belief. That’s why I’m so thrilled with how the game finished because it needed to be like that for us to take the next step and keep growing."
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