IU football predictions 2024: Game-by-game picks for Year 1 of Curt Cignetti. 9WINDIANA?

BLOOMINGTON – Curt Cignetti isn’t afraid of expectations in Year 1, and he’s not been shy in acknowledging the role his schedule plays in that.

Finally free from the Big Ten East, the Hoosiers have eight home games, an imminently manageable nonconference slate and some competitive coin-toss games. Cignetti will need several transfers to make an immediate impact, but optimism in Bloomington is understandable.

‘Brilliance happens there’ Cignetti and the 35-year-old recliner he can’t let go.

IU Insider roundtable: What’s a Curt Cignetti team look like? Time to find out.

Just how big can Indiana dream this fall? Let’s go game by game.

Indiana 37, Florida International 20: The offense clicks early but a combination of some dual-threat QB trouble and Week 1 mistakes keeps things from getting terribly out of hand. IU wins comfortably, though not without flaws.

Indiana 51, Western Illinois 7: The mistakes of the opener are ironed out. The offense remains explosive and versatile. Bryant Haines’ disruptive defense shows up with a big sack-plus-TFL number, ending what’s effectively a successful two-game preseason for the Hoosiers.

Indiana 34, UCLA 28: Indiana doesn’t have it all its own way out west, but the tale of two very different early seasons tells. UCLA has just one warm-up, at Hawaii, before taking a week off. The extra game gives Curt Cignetti’s team some necessary polish in a one-score win to open Big Ten play.

Indiana 35, Charlotte 10: Scott Dolson’s plan to pave the nonconference road goes off without a hitch. Kurtis Rourke isn’t risked for too long, as Charlotte outscores IU 10-7 after halftime but Cignetti and company effectively shut the game down up four scores at the break, to rest for Maryland.

Indiana 31, Maryland 20: Things start to get interesting. Riding an ideal warmup through their first four games, the Hoosiers lean into the experience and talent of their quarterback to win a second Big Ten game in as many tries. Maryland arrives having faced tougher tests, but that’s not necessarily a plus by now. Rourke’s poise and experience deliver a 5-0 start.

Northwestern 28, Indiana 20: For the first time, IU struggles offensively. The wind off Lake Michigan makes passing the ball difficult. Northwestern plays some stingy defense and gets timely contributions from the kind of dual-threat quarterback Indiana struggles to contain without consistent defensive depth. Bowl eligibility waits another week.

Indiana 31, Nebraska 30: Maybe the toughest game on the schedule to call in the preseason. Nebraska, like IU, enjoys a relatively friendly ride through the first half. So much of the Huskers’ ceiling, though, hinges on Dylan Raiola. Belief in the highly rated true freshman in Lincoln is strong, but on the road against an Indiana team still riding a wave of positive momentum, experience tells. Rourke wins one of the best quarterback battles of the Big Ten season.

Indiana 35, Washington 23: The Big Ten’s two most experienced quarterbacks lock horns here, in a game that might wind up the best illustration of the season of the benefits of a kind schedule. Indiana is already 6-1, ranked, feeling justified in its belief in Cignetti. Jedd Fisch, meanwhile, has had to navigate similar roster and staff turnover against a far less forgiving schedule. IU is wedged into a stretch that will include visits from Northwestern, Michigan and USC, and trips to Rutgers, Iowa and Penn State. The Hoosiers have the wind in their sails, and they keep rolling.

Michigan State 31, Indiana 27: The schedule nearly giveth once again. Indiana arrives on the banks of the Red Cedar River rolling, while the Spartans have lost four straight (Ohio State, at Oregon, Iowa, at Michigan). A competitive affair breaks the home team’s way, as the Spartans know November will be much more kind to them. They pick themselves up off the mat with a tight win to retain the Old Brass Spittoon.

Michigan 41, Indiana 20: It’s a long season, and everybody’s momentum runs thin at some point. Michigan’s had time to adjust to its coaching change, and it still retains superior talent on both sides of the line of scrimmage. Rourke gets beat up a bit but still manages to throw two more touchdown passes. Michigan wins comfortably.

Ohio State 45, Indiana 17: This game takes on a familiar tenor to IU-OSU games past. The Hoosiers hang on to keep the game competitive through roughly 2 ½ quarters, but quality eventually tells. Ohio State capitalizes on key second-half turnovers to deal Cignetti his biggest loss of the season, as the Buckeyes gear up for Michigan the next week.

Indiana 35, Purdue 31: One more entertaining quarterback battle, this time between Rourke and Hudson Card. The weather means both sides start slowly before the game matures into a last-score-wins affair. Rourke throws his third touchdown pass of the day — a game winner to Donaven McCulley — inside the final two minutes, and an interception seals IU’s first Bucket game win in five years.

Indiana 28, Kentucky 20 (Music City Bowl): One of the few nonconference rivalry matchups that truly makes sense in a bowl game comes together in Nashville. IU and Kentucky slug it out on a cold day in late December, with both offenses struggling to move the ball. UK closes the third quarter with a 20-14 lead before a pair of Rourke touchdown passes in the fourth end a 33-year bowl win drought in Bloomington.

Final record: 9-4. 9WINDIANA is finally realized.

Please, let me explain!

Here’s my methodology:

Yes, this is very much out on the limb. Please understand a beat writer who’s covered well more than a decade of IU football knows the score when predicting a program that’s won three Big Ten games in the past three seasons will win five this year alone. But in the interest of showing my work …

This projection relies on one core assumption — Kurtis Rourke stays healthy. If he misses significant time through injury, Indiana’s path becomes a lot less even. Not that Tayven Jackson can’t win these games, just that Rourke, because of what he’s proven at the college level over six years, provides a measure of security when making these picks. Of course, Indiana hasn’t had a starting quarterback last an entire season since 2018, so it’s by no means a guarantee, but we can’t assume injuries, so this projection is based on Rourke playing all 13.

Given that, I broke the schedule down on the following factors:

∎ Strength of quarterback play, and therefore offensive capacity, weighed heavily in my analysis. Thus, this places a lot of faith, as previously discussed, in Rourke, but to be fair, that’s earned.

∎ So is respect for Cignetti’s track record, both broadly and specifically. It’s difficult to argue with 13 winning seasons in 13 years. It’s also difficult to argue with his established ability to get the most out of transfer quarterbacks, to build competitive offenses quickly and to win close games.

∎ The last factor is scheduling. Indiana’s, as we’ve discussed all offseason, is pretty straightforward. It gets even more favorable when you dig past the surface.

For example, the Hoosiers get Washington off the Huskies’ bye, but also in the midst of a stretch that goes: Washington State, Northwestern, at Rutgers, Michigan, at Iowa, at Indiana, USC, at Penn State. Michigan State hosts IU this year at the tail end of a brutal run — at Boston College, Ohio State, at Oregon, Iowa, at Michigan, then the Hoosiers.

Not every opponent is like this. Nebraska, for example, has a fairly clean runway into its visit for homecoming. But scheduling considerations, allowing for the fact that this is all on paper, help Indiana in some key swing games.

∎ Which led me to break the schedule up thusly:

FIU, Western Illinois, UCLA, Charlotte and Purdue are (again, on paper) games where IU appears to have an advantage in the quarterback matchup, the coaching matchup, homefield advantage or some collection of the three.

Maryland is a tough peg, but Rourke is far more experienced than anyone the Terps can pick behind center and that game is in Bloomington.

Ohio State and Michigan are, for the purpose of this exercise, assumed losses.

That leaves four coin toss games: Northwestern, Nebraska, Washington and Michigan State. IU has a better track record at quarterback and head coach than Northwestern (not better, empirically, but better resume), but it’s hard to know how that stadium plays in the fall. Nebraska and Washington are both tough games to call, but there’s roughly equal reason to believe IU can win and lose at Michigan State as well.

In the end, I settled on IU winning the first five here, gave the Hoosiers Maryland based on what we know today and then just split the difference home vs. road on the other four. The bowl game, who knows? Bowl games are their own animal, but as my colleague Mike Niziolek pointed out, in this scenario IU would probably be in a good spot with opt-outs based on the course of the season. And the law of large numbers says the Hoosiers win one eventually.

Nine wins. That would match the highest single-season total in program history. So, this is a pretty big leap. But that’s where I landed. I’ll own it as and when I’m wrong.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU football predictions for Curt Cignetti Year 1 puts Hoosiers in bowl