For a team that has found much more success than the 2015 and 2016 bowl-eligible teams, the 2019 Hoosiers fell in the bowl game all the same, at the hands of their own mistakes.
Indiana will need to shed its mistake-ridden tendencies in order to move in the direction head coach Tom Allen is trying to take the program.
Indiana’s leadership council set the course for the 2019 season. It wanted to not only qualify for a bowl but win the bowl game too, the first in 28 years for the Indiana football program.
Indiana afforded itself the chance Thursday in Jacksonville after vaulting its way to its first eight-win season since 1993 and to its first Florida bowl game in program history, but the Gator Bowl ended in the same fashion as the Pinstripe Bowl and the Redbox Bowl – the Hoosiers falling short with a chance to win.
As head coach Tom Allen continues his efforts to transform Indiana into a bowl-game regular and talks of bowl victories continue to precede each season, the Hoosiers will need to separate themselves from the trio of bowl results from 2015 to 2019-20.
“We're building a program that expects to be in these games every year,” Allen said Thursday. “Haven't been in the past. Tennessee has won more Gator Bowls than we've won bowl games as a program. That's a fact. We've only won three bowl games in our program's history.”
Indiana was minutes away – five to be exact – from adding its fourth bowl victory in program history against Tennessee, but it couldn’t finish. Such has been the story in bowl games, and most competitive games where Indiana has punched above its weight class.
The 2019 season, however, is not to be confused with seasons of the past. The Hoosiers not only battled top opponents in the conference but also defeated the teams they were expected to defeat, and sometimes did so with ease. Winning eight games at Indiana hasn’t happened since the Bill Mallory Era for real reasons, and Allen and his staff made it happen with a roster that was likely a year away from its expected maximization.
There has been legitimate growth that was not seen from previous seasons.
But Thursday’s bowl result casts the 2019 season beneath the same shadow as 2015 and 2016, and it funneled down to the fact that Indiana couldn’t finish after compounding mistakes against itself, which has been the string sewn through the last half-decade of Indiana football.
Not sending the hands team out after the first of two Tennessee fourth-quarter touchdowns and surrendering an onside kick recovery was chief among the mistakes made in Jacksonville. Recording a total of 69 yards of offense in the first half and leaning so heavily on the defense that it collapsed in the final five minutes was another. Missing an extra point that would be the difference in the game baffled Allen, he said.
“We're building for the future, and that makes this one hurt all the more,” Allen said.
It hurt because the game was within grasp, even more so than when Griffin Oakes missed – or made – an overtime field goal in New York City in 2015 or when Richard Lagow let off a Hail Mary that fell to the turf in California in 2016. Indiana had chances to ice the game against Tennessee, beginning with a Tennessee shanked punt that didn’t cross midfield but only resulted in a field goal for the Hoosiers early in the fourth quarter to push the lead to 22-9 instead of the potential 26-9.
They couldn’t put the Volunteers away, even though they knew they were the better team, redshirt senior linebacker Reakwon Jones said.
“This locker room is full of winners, and I believe that with everything in me,” Jones said. “Everybody in there believed we were going to win, and when we come up short, it hurts. It’s good that it hurts because it means everybody left everything they had out there.”
It’s not necessarily an effort problem or even a talent problem. It has to do with identity, and that’s what Allen is attempting to change when he mentions that he doesn’t care about the past while pleading with fans to get to the Northwestern game after the win at Nebraska, or when he gets into the homes of four-star recruits, sets up a pipeline to Florida and pulls prospects out of SEC country.
There is clearly a foundation set for the future of the program, which includes a seven-year contract, two of the best recruiting classes in program history and a genuine belief from inside the locker room. But until Indiana puts its mistake-ridden tendencies behind itself and clinches a bowl win, moving forward with a new identity will be next to impossible.
“Next year, when we get to a bowl game, we’re going to make sure to finish off the right way,” freshman cornerback Tiawan Mullen said. “We had a chance to close out this bowl game, but next year, for sure, we’re going to close it out.”
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