The Hoosiers huddled together in a hallway on the lower floor of Memorial Stadium on Wednesday morning. The team’s warm-up in the Mellencamp Pavilion had just ended, and before the players took to the weight room, they had one more thing to take care of.
Several began to shove each other and the mass of yelling players began jumping up and down. When the group had reached a satisfying decibel, rising senior wide receiver Mitchell Paige led the group into the weight room. Paige jumped over a bench and sprinted to his stationed rack with the rest of the team charging in behind him.
This is a new tradition. One that the team started under new strength and conditioning coach Keith Caton.
“That’s probably the most exciting part,” junior offensive tackle Dimitric Camiel said about the weight room entrance. “Everybody’s coming off the field, we’re bumping around and jumping, we’re hyped. Then we come in the weight room and it’s time to go to work, so you don’t want to just walk in, you want to come in and attack it.”
The entrance to the weight room is part of a new explosiveness Caton said he is trying to instill in the program and its players. But it’s more than just getting the players pumped for the season.
Caton walks between the rows of players as they stretch, encouraging each player as he passes them. He runs the warm-up sprints with the players, and each time he notices a player struggling with his lifting mechanics, Caton is there for a quick-fix and a pat on the back.
Then he moves on to the next one.
“We’re just trying to work habits, make sure they’re doing all those little things right,” Caton said. “Everything we do is trying to be fast, explosive, aggressive — all those things that are going to make great football players.”
The new coach takes over for former IU strength and conditioning Coach Mark Hill, inheriting a program that recorded the best total offense in the Big Ten with 504.3 yards per game. The Hoosiers also finished with the conference’s worst total defense, allowing 509.5 yards per game.
It’s the explosiveness, Caton said, that is going to continue the offensive production while also fixing the defensive woes that have plagued the program in recent history.
The most noticeable change sophomore linebacker Tegray Scales said he wants to see is the team finishing more games next season, as the Hoosiers took four top-25 teams into a competitive fourth quarter and lost.
Those four games don’t even include the blown 25-point lead to Rutgers on Homecoming Weekend and the loss to Duke in the Pinstripe Bowl.
“We need to work on finishing,” Scales said. “So that’s a big key with Coach Caton, working on the small things so we can finish up big games. He is what (IU Coach Kevin Wilson) said he is. He knows what he’s doing. He takes care of us.”
As the Hoosiers enter the offseason, they make their goal for 2016 an obvious one.
Gathered in a huddle around Caton with their fists in the air after their workout, the players chant, “No excuses.”
Then, to break the huddle, they drop their fists and cry one last thing.
“Big Ten champs.”
