No. 5 Indiana knew Northwestern posed more of a threat than the three non-conference opponents that came before it, and the Hoosiers definitely didn’t look past the Wildcats.
Yet, the beginning of league play was as rocky as any.
Indiana won in the end, 29-23, but victory required a great amount of effort to achieve.
Indiana’s first drive, and the first of the entire game, inexplicably started with two consecutive penalty flags for false starts.
“Kind of a weird start, we got Pearl Harbored on the first two offensive plays,” Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said.
Cignetti added that Northwestern must have submitted a slight penalty that Indiana’s offensive line was consistently committing in prior games this season to league officials, but that the league is supposed to then ensure that Indiana was aware of such submissions. Cignetti said that communication did not take place, and as a result, the Hoosiers were incredibly caught off guard.
Despite the setback, Indiana conducted a 15-play, 67-yard drive that lasted over seven minutes. At the goal line, the Hoosiers stalled, and turned the ball over on downs from mere feet away from the end zone. Then, on Northwestern’s first offensive snap of the game, the ball landed on the ground and Indiana blasted into the backfield for a safety.
Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover found a sense of rhythm to some degree, completing 19-of-29 pass attempts on the night for 201 yards and a touchdown. Again, with no turnovers to his name. After a safety and a field goal, it took until the final few minutes of the first half for either team to reach the end zone, and Indiana did it first.
Six of seven plays on that touchdown drive were pass attempts, all six successfully completed. Hoover dropped back a seventh time, too, and Indiana earned 15 yards through a penalty flag for pass interference on that play.
Hoover wasn’t perfect, though, and missed a handful of critical throws in the first half. Indiana’s offense struggled early, and Hoover helped pull the Hoosiers out of that rut, but misconnections jammed the offense’s motor and prevented Indiana from establishing a clear lead.
“We left 14 points out there, at least, on two plays,” Hoover said after the game. “It happens sometimes, it’s football. We’re still early, we’re still getting our rhythm and timing down and we’re going to clean those up.”
On the other side, Northwestern quarterback Aidan Chiles statistically outdueled Hoover. Chiles completed 22-of-29 pass attempts for 293 yards and two touchdowns, also with zero interceptions. Both quarterbacks scored rushing touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
Chiles is a true dual-threat quarterback, which Indiana was aware of entering the matchup. Contained at first, but unchained as the game progressed, Chiles led successful drives with his legs.
Northwestern started slow , truly unable to move the ball in the first half, but the Wildcats scored three touchdowns and a field goal on their final four possessions of the game. A quarterback scramble that became a 15-yard run on third down saved the first of those four drives, and Chiles delivered as a passer in the red zone to cut the deficit to one possession.
“I know a lot of sacks were missed just by not getting to the high shoulder of the quarterback… I feel like as the game went on, our technique kind of deteriorated,” Indiana defensive lineman Tobi Osunsanmi said after the game.
Indiana then settled for a field goal, this time unable to reach the end zone through the air, prompting Northwestern to engineer its second straight touchdown drive, which could’ve tied the game.
While down 15-13 due to the early safety, Northwestern’s 2-pt conversion attempt failed.
That stop was a momentous one, but the Hoosiers weren’t out of the woods just yet. A stop and a score for Northwestern could’ve been enough to flip Indiana’s season on its head.
Then, after Turbo Richard exited the action in the first half with an apparent injury, Lee Beebe Jr. gained 57 yards on five consecutive rushes, culminating in a 4-yard touchdown run to restore Indiana's two-possession lead.
“He’s got as much heart as anybody that’s been in this program the last three years,” Cignetti said about Beebe Jr. “He’s a guy that was doing really well and then got hurt last year, so he lost the season, and boy we really needed him and he carried the load.”
Northwestern wasn’t finished, even if Indiana led by nine points with just over three minutes to spare, and the Wildcats returned to the red zone in short order. There, Chiles flashed his dual-threat abilities in yet another critical moment.
Similar to before, the Hoosiers found themselves in danger of a stop and a score granting Northwestern a late lead. Much of that danger dissipated when Beebe Jr. ripped a 70-yard run to the 5–yard line on the drive’s very first play from scrimmage.
Remarkably, six plays took place after that point, with a pass interference penalty handing the Hoosiers a fresh set of downs as the Wildcat defense valiantly stood up to the home team.
That is, until, Indiana used heavy-set personnel as a diversion to allow Hoover to trot to the end zone untouched.
That touchdown left Northwestern without enough time to properly spur another rally, and after a rushed field goal, an unsuccessful onside kick essentially ended the game.
In the end, the Hoosiers gritted out a 29-23 win at home against a quality opponent. It certainly wasn’t pretty, but Indiana remains unbeaten nonetheless.
Next week, the Hoosiers hit the road for the first time this season, traveling to challenge Rutgers at 8 p.m. on Saturday night with a chance to advance to 5-0 for the third straight season under Cignetti.
