BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Records keep falling, victories keep coming, and second-ranked Indiana keeps cruising at unprecedented levels.
The Hoosiers scored the game’s final 24 points in Saturday’s 31-7 victory over Wisconsin Saturday afternoon at Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium.
IU had never opened 11-0 until Saturday. It leads the Big Ten with an 8-0 record with the regular-season finale at rival Purdue in two weeks.
“It’s our 11th win in a row, which is one more than last year,” head coach Curt Cignetti said. “It’s great to enter an off week, get the players and assistant coaches some rest. We need some rest. A lot of guys are banged up. We want to get healed up as much as possible.”
Cignetti is 15-0 on Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium. One reason for that, he said, are the sellout crowds that, a rarity before he arrived, are common now. He said it’s worth a 14-point advantage.
“Our fans are the best in America. I love our fans. We feed off their energy.”
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza continued to impress. His 30th touchdown pass of the season broke Kurtis Rourke’s program record of 29 set last year.
“It feels great,” he said, “but it’s the culmination of everything. The rushing success. The passing success.
“That’s not a player stat, it’s a team stat. Think about all the receivers we spread the ball to, guys like Charlie Becker, Elijah Sarratt, E.J. Williams Jr., Omar Cooper Jr., our tight ends. They’re all our ballers. I’m so proud of those guys.
“We still have a lot of season left. We have to keep on going.”
Mendoza finished 22-for-24 for 299 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions in another performance that puts him in the running for major national awards.
Those don’t matter, he said. Winning does.
“At this point,” he said, “the most important thing is winning the Purdue game, which is super important for everybody in the state of Indiana. That’s my No. 1 goal. Then win the next game after that, and then after that.
“If awards happen, great, but my goal is to win and go as far as we can, whether that’s the playoffs or the national championship. Whatever it is, my goal is to win games.”
Nine Hoosiers caught at least one pass led by Charlie Becker’s five catches for 108 yards and a touchdown. That follows his seven-catches-for-118-yard performance the previous week against Penn State.
Elijah Sarratt missed his second-straight game with an injury.
After a sluggish first half, IU’s defense hit high gear in the final 30 minutes with a fumble recovery (forced by defensive lineman Stephen Daley and recovered by defensive lineman Hosea Wheeler) and an interception by safety Devan Boykin. Wisconsin (3-7, 1-6) managed just 23 yards on five second-half possessions. It finished with 168 total yards.
“We started out very slow,” Fisher said. “We were very messy. It was just bad defense in the first half.
“In the second half, we lit a fire and got going. We did a better job of meeting physicality with physicality, a great job of tackling. We cleaned up a lot of little things that helped us.”
A banged up offensive line missing starter Drew Evans struggled at times. Mendoza was sacked five times after being sacked three times the previous week at Penn State. The Badgers also had seven tackles for loss.
IU, which entered the game averaging 232 rushing yards a game, had only 20 yards on 13 carries in the first half. It finished with 83 yards on 37 carries. Wisconsin come in allowing 115.
The bye week, Daley said, comes at a good time.
“Winning on Senior Day feels amazing,” said Daley, one of those seniors. “Being 11-0 is a great feeling, but it’s time to get healthy and focus on Purdue.”
Devan Boykin | Action
A sack by IU defensive lineman Dominique Ratcliff disrupted Wisconsin’s 48-yard, nearly-eight-minute opening drive that ended with a missed field goal.
IU took over. Mendoza threw six times, completed five passes for 59 yards, capped by a 31-yard TD pass to Becker for a 7-0 late-first-quarter lead.
Wisconsin tied it with a 45-yard scoring pass late in the first half. Mendoza’s 37-yard pass to tight end Riley Nowakowski set up Nico Radicic’s 37-yard field goal for a 10-7 halftime lead.
Mendoza opened the third quarter with a 48-yard strike to Becker on third and long to set up his 2-yard TD pass to tight end Holden Staes for a 17-7 score.
IU scored again after Dailey forced a fumble and Wheeler recovered it on the Wisconsin 21-yard line. Mendoza threw to Nowakowski, who broke two tackles for a 21-yard touchdown and a 24-7 Hoosier lead with 4:44 left in the third quarter.
Boykin’s second interception in three games set up IU in Badger territory in the fourth quarter. The result — a 29-yard pass to Cooper Jr. and then a five-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Jr. to complete the 31-7 victory.
Winning the second half 21-0 gives the Hoosiers a 232-55 advantage in the final two quarters this season. Becker credited Cignetti’s halftime approach. On Saturday, he didn’t rip into the players after a “lethargic” first half.
“He calms us down,” Becker said. “He tells us to rely on our work and our training and everything we’ve done.
“We rely on the defense. We know they will get stops so we can do our thing.”
Courtesy of Indiana University Athletics, used by permission
