“Close, ain’t it.”
That’s one way IU Coach Kevin Wilson summed up the 27-22 loss to No. 10 Nebraska, and it’s been a mantra through IU’s losses this season.
The Hoosiers held a high-powered offense that averaged 37 points and more than 470 yards per game to 27 and 360, but the little things kept the Hoosiers from giving the Cornhuskers their first loss of their football season.
“Pretty even game, but some mistakes beat us,” Wilson said. “Three weeks in a row we’re playing three good teams, and one week we eliminate mistakes and get a victory, and the other two weeks we had some that haunted us.”
The mistakes this week came through two interceptions, mistakes in pass coverage and play selection and more.
IU junior quarterback Richard Lagow’s first interception, Wilson said, came by way of a miscue by a receiver that brought Nebraska cornerback Chris Jones into the area and set him up for the pick-six.
The second came the play after Lagow was unable to hit a wide-open receiver in senior Ricky Jones near midfield in the last minute of the contest. He threw it too high, and although the defender trailing Jones was unable to pull it down for an interception, when Lagow missed a receiver again on the next play Nebraska safety Aaron Williams was there.
Outside of the two interceptions, Lagow was effective, as was junior quarterback Zander Diamont, who provided a change of pace, threw for 49 yards and ran for 31 more in his first action of the season.
But it wasn’t enough. Junior running back Devine Redding broke one run for 33 yards and a score, but he and the rest of the IU running backs couldn’t find much else. In total, the Hoosiers rushed for just 88 yards.
“We’re close to playing good football. We’re competing, but we’re not playing good football yet,” Wilson said. “We’ve got to keep working to play good football.”
Defensively, coordinator Tom Allen’s group tallied two interceptions of their own. As stated, the Hoosiers tamed a surging Cornhusker offense. The defense only allowed 20 points, but still, even the group that’s been the reason for much of IU’s success this year faltered.
Numerous times, the Hoosier pass rush gave Cornhusker quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. trouble. They flushed him out of the pocket, made him make throws on the run and even forced an intentional grounding penalty.
But junior linebacker Marcus Oliver was the only one who was able to bring Armstrong down. One critical play in which the Hoosiers forced Armstrong out of the pocket but didn’t bring him down ended with receiver Stanley Morgan Jr. in the end zone.
Junior Tony Fields and sophomore Jonathan Crawford, both safeties, and another Hoosier all converged on the spot where the ball would fall into Morgan’s hands. Fields thought he might be able to come away with the pick, but instead, bad angles led to Fields and Crawford to accidentally take each other out and Morgan raced the rest of the way for a 72-yard score.
“We have an expectation on this defense to come up with those plays, so every day in practice we work on catching deflections and getting takeaways,” Fields said. “Today we didn’t execute like we wanted to.”
The game as a whole was one in which Fields agreed the defense played pretty well. But, he would add that playing pretty well isn’t the team’s expectation. They understand the level of talent on the team and have to execute better to come up with wins, Fields said.
Coming close and making small mistakes is no longer acceptable.
“Every game they’re getting smaller and smaller, and it’s very frustrating,” Fields said. “But, we have to keep our heads up and realize that we’re playing great defense. It’s only 98 percent of the time. For us, like we talk about every day, we have new expectations and that’s not good enough because we know the kind of defense and team that we can be.”
