People in attendance laughed a little and went on with their days.
But all joking aside, the IU football team has gone into halftime three games in a row trailing an opponent, and three games in a row IU has shut out that opponent in the third quarter.
Three games in a row, IU has pulled away in the second half for a highly-contested victory. That was on display in Memorial Stadium on Saturday, when IU defeated Western Kentucky 38-35 despite trailing 28-17 at the half.
But junior receiver Ricky Jones said the halftime candy assortments have been around for years. It isn’t candy or some speech that has made the difference for IU. Wilson and Jones both say it is the leadership and the way players are more invested that has resulted in three close victories in a row.
“I think it’s just a buy-in,” Jones said. “Everybody’s believing, believing in what Coach Wilson’s program is.”
Jones said past teams might have had a few players that were around before Wilson and didn’t completely buy in. Those guys are gone now, and Wilson said he sees more veterans that understand what coaches want.
“Couple kids told me that they think, ‘You know, we’ve had a bunch of good kids, but this is the best senior leadership because they’ve kind of been with us all the time and they totally get it,’” Wilson said.
After the game, Wilson was asked question after question about what the team is doing to play so much better in the second half. He said he wished he had some earth-shattering or magical answer, but he just preaches one play at a time.
He believes this is a strong team — mentally and physically — and that it gains momentum as the game goes on.
“I think the way last year ended, they knew it could have went other directions,” Wilson said. “Even though we only won one game down the stretch. The way those kids battled, they came with a feeling, ‘Hey, we are kind of close.’”
Those teams of yesteryear lost many of close games, and Wilson said they caught a lot of bad breaks. But he said guys understand that good breaks will come, and they just have to keep playing hard and focus on Wilson’s motto — the next play.
Jones said players are calmer than before. There is less hype and fewer nerves.
So whether it be falling behind 32-21 at the half to Southern Illinois, 14-13 to Florida International or 28-17 to Western Kentucky, IU has held on and made the momentum-shifting plays. There were the two fumble recoveries against Southern Illinois, the fumble recovery and interception against Florida International and now the two interceptions by freshman safety Jonathan Crawford on Saturday.
Jones said the defense is making plays and the offense is flowing off it.
In last week’s game and the first half of the game this week, the IU offense often drove past midfield and looked good before flaming out and punting or turning it over on downs.
The offense was putting up good numbers, like junior running back Jordan Howard’s 203 yards and senior quarterback Nate Sudfeld’s 355 passing yards, but it was not ending in points. Wilson found a silver lining in the worries about that.
“We are complaining about how bad the offense is doing,” Wilson said. “I think we got the leading receiver, leading rusher, second quarterback in the conference. It’s nice our standards are getting too good. We are high in stats and everybody complains.
“That’s a sign of a program growing.”
