Undefeated and new look Indiana provides Maryland’s biggest challenge to date

Last season, Maryland beat Indiana so bad that the Hoosiers fired their offensive coordinator less than 24 hours later. 

A 44-17 Terrapins win sent Indiana into a 1-6 tailspin to end 2023, and the same fate met Tom Allen and the rest of his staff at the end of a 3-9 campaign.

How much things can change in just one year. 

Enter Curt Cignetti, a winner everywhere he’s gone with a legacy coaching pedigree, who’s rejuvenated Indiana in mere months and has the program at 4-0 as they await the Terrapins on Saturday.

“He comes from a football family,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said Tuesday, “and I can just tell you, man, they’re well coached”

Cignetti has stocked his staff with familiar faces from his previous stops at James Madison and Elon, including offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan. 

Scoring is no longer a problem. The Hoosiers offense has clicked to the tune of 50.5 points per game this season, second best in the Big Ten.

“When you watch this team, the thing that jumps out to me is they’re not going to give us this game,” Locksley said. “They’re going to make us beat them. And for us, that has been the challenge.”

Locksley was looser than normal on an overcast day — “Rain is weird for me, I’m a sun guy.” — perhaps reflecting how his team needs to approach the challenge of their first Big Ten road game, let alone against a program the Terrapins (3-1, 0-1) have gotten used to beating the last three seasons.

“We’re a team that kind of makes some mistakes, but we also have shown the propensity to score points if things are going well, they’ve also shown the ability to be explosive,” Locksley said. 

Tai Felton has provided explosiveness in spades. The Ashburn native continued his streaking start to 2024 with his fourth-straight 100-plus yard performance (157) to go along with a career-high 14 catches and a touchdown in a Week 4 win over Villanova.

“Tai Felton is one of my favorite players, man,” Locksley said, “and he’s my one of my favorite players because of seeing the way he has developed in our program. It’s a reflection that what we talk about being a growth mindset, a developmental program, Tai embodies.”

Locksley said that makes Felton a target, and he expects Indiana to find ways to take him out of the game flow. In response, Locksley is calling on Maryland’s additional contributors — naming receiver Octavian Smith, tight ends Preston Howard and Dylan Wade, and running back Colby McDonald — as players who need to more actively contribute.

“This game is going to come down to they’ll figure out who to take away from us,” Locksley said, “and our complimentary players on offense, somebody’s going to have to step up and play big for us in this game.”

Indiana (4-0, 1-0) hasn’t trailed yet this season and hasn’t turned the ball over, either — both schools have an identical plus-7 turnover margin — elements of a veteran team, Locksley says, that boasts a bunch of transfers from Cignetti’s time in Harrisonburg.

“They have eight starters that transferred in from JMU with them, and their best players on defense, the two linebackers were with them a year at JMU know the system. They have a corner that knows the system, they got two guys up front.”  Locksley said. “And so this isn’t a Indiana team that has a bunch of people that don’t know each other, and if you look at how they been able to play in the first few games that they’ve played, you can tell.”