Indiana looks inward after mistakes crop up in loss to Nebraska

Nebraska didn’t beat Indiana on Saturday night, the Hoosiers beat themselves.

That’s the view of quarterback Connor Bazelak, who said Indiana miscues, penalties and poor execution are what held the Hoosiers to 14 points from their offense, not the Nebraska defense

“We beat ourselves tonight,” Bazelak said. “We’ve got to kind of blame ourselves. We just beat ourselves, they didn’t beat us on offense. … We had some drops on the outside. I missed a couple of deep throws, not giving the guy a chance. Penalties, just kind of stuff like that. A the end of the first half, they couldn’t stop us. So we just couldn’t do that in the second half and it wasn’t because of them, it was us.”

Bazelak, who finished the game 22-of-44 passing with one interception and a touchdown, was playing without his top two receivers. That, he said, was something of an impediment for the offense, but their replacements played well enough for the Hoosiers to win.

To some measure, Indiana coach Tom Allen agreed with his quarterback, pointing out that the Hoosiers went just 2-for-15 on third downs, had 11 penalties for 92 yards and managed to score only two offensive touchdowns, both in the last three minutes of the first half.

“A lot of things are self-inflicted — the penalties, drops, just, at times, the execution,” he said. “Give credit to our opponent, they obviously work hard, play hard and did some things, we had to adjust to schematically. But at the same time, we’ve got to make plays.”

Nebraska, Allen said, did a few things differently than the Huskers showed on film against Oklahoma, the only game Nebraska had played under coach Mickey Joseph. But he said the Nebraska win didn’t just come because of a change in scheme.

“They had two weeks to get ready for us,” he said. “They’ve got talented coaches that will do the job… They’ve got good football players. They didn’t put it together like they should have earlier, but that’s a team that has a chance to be a winning football team… I said that earlier, film doesn’t lie. And when they execute things the right way, they’ve got good talent for that.”

Indiana safety Bryant Fitzgerald said Nebraska flat out beat Indiana on the two long Casey Thompson touchdown passes  — to Oliver Martin in the first quarter and the 71-yard fourth-quarter bomb to Trey Palmer that put the Huskers in front for good.

“It was just the overall route concept, good pitch and catch by them you know,’ he said. “Their guys are on scholarship, too. Hats off to those guys. They executed, we didn’t. That came back and hurt us.”

The same thing held true in the second quarter when Nebraska’s Chris Kolarevic blocked an Indiana punt — “that’s inexcusable,” Allen said — and Malcolm Hartzog ran it back 30 yards for a Nebraska touchdown.

“I’m pretty sure they brought more pressure on that one,” said Fitzgerald, who’s on the punt team. “We didn’t execute our punt and they capitalized on it and were able to scoop and score.”