Coming off a 45-42 loss to Bowling Green, the IU football team travels to Columbia, Mo., Saturday to play No. 18 Mizzou.
The IDS talked to Aaron Reiss of The Maneater, Missouri’s student newspaper, about quarterback Maty Mauk and how Tevin Coleman and the IU offense match up to the Missouri defensive line.
Q What makes Maty Mauk such a difficult player to stop?
A He’s leading the country in touchdown passes. What’s interesting is he’s tied with two guys at 12 touchdown passes and he’s only attempted 77 passes this year, while the other two guys have thrown more than twice that. He’s just been incredibly efficient. Against UCF he only threw for 134 yards and threw four touchdowns.
They’ve been putting him in a really good position in terms of play calling. They’ve been taking a lot of shots when they’ve wanted to. He can throw deep, but he’s also really mobile, more mobile than James Franklin, who was the quarterback last year. He’s been effective when he gets outside the pocket.
It’s an entirely new group of receivers from last year, but they seem to just have really good chemistry really early. He’s really upped his completion percentage from last year. I think he’s one of the most efficient passers in the country.
Q Is his “high-risk, high-reward” sort of mentality a good or bad thing?
A I think so far it’s paid off. The first two weeks they didn’t play great defenses in South Dakota State and Toledo and then UCF a little bit better of a defense.
He threw one pick to their best player, Jacoby Glenn, but I wouldn’t say he’s necessarily high-risk. They go deep when it makes sense. I think last year he went deep a lot more, and he admits probably more than he should’ve.
He seems to look a lot more to intermediate routes now than he did last year. He throws a lot to Jimmy Hunt, who kind of works the slot and plays up the middle. He’s running out of the pocket less than he did last year, too.
Q What do you think of the matchup between a dominant Missouri D-line and Tevin Coleman?
A The players talked a lot about that this week. Gary Pinkel said, too, that Tevin Coleman was a really great player.
I think it’ll be a good test for them, but at the same time, I think Missouri’s defensive line will continue to produce at the same rate it has.
It hasn’t been like they’ve played big-game opponents. They’ve played really good running backs.
They played Zach Zenner at SDSU, who will probably be the top all-time rusher in all of division one. And then they played against Kareem Hunt, who played well, but they just didn’t have enough outside of him.
My understanding of it is that’s kind of the same deal with Indiana. I think Tevin Coleman is a very good player, I just don’t think Indiana’s there yet to compete with Missouri.
Q Missouri is 3-0 to start the season, while IU is 1-1 coming off a loss against a Mid-American Conference team. What is the attitude about this matchup on the Missouri campus?
A I think, from a student perspective, people aren’t looking that much into it.
Gary Pinkel and all the players are going to say this is just another game, we have to take it game by game, but I think people are really looking beyond Indiana.
You can really tell by the home attendance at games at Memorial Stadium this year. I think there were 61,000 (against SDSU) and then Central Florida there was 60,000.
It’s kind of one of these deals where it doesn’t really ramp up until we get to conference play here. So far, I don’t think students are getting super excited yet.
Q Who is Missouri’s biggest, or most impressive, defensive playmaker so far?
A Between Shane Ray and Markus Golden it’s really hard to pick one. It’s kind of like these guys alternate weeks between who is dominant.
Against Toledo, and really the first two weeks of the season, Markus Golden was really dominant. Then, this past weekend, Shane Ray had four tackles for a loss and made the defensive player of the week.
I think what’s intriguing about this matchup is definitely Indiana’s biggest strength on offense is going to be counterbalanced between Missouri’s biggest strength on the whole team, which is that defensive line.
