In his second season as Indiana football coach, Curt Cignetti has led the program to new heights, and with those heights come new challenges as the Hoosiers head to their first Big Ten Championship — against top-ranked Ohio State.
IU is ranked No. 2 and, like Ohio State, finished the regular season undefeated. The game is at 8 p.m. Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
The Buckeyes are the only Big Ten team to beat IU with Cignetti as coach. They did it last season in Columbus.
"Playing a great football team, lot of great players across the board, dominant really, haven't been challenged this year, other than the Texas game (a season-opening 14-7 victory)," Cignetti said Monday. "They've got three 18-point wins in their closest games, but in all of those games, they were in complete control.”
Cignetti took exception to center Pat Coogan's characterization of the Hoosiers' roster as "misfits" while trying to fire up the Hoosiers before last Friday's rout of Purdue.
"I don't view our team as a bunch of misfits at all," Cignetti said. "We've got a lot of good football players that have proven themselves collegiately. They have high character, high intelligence, work hard, and there's a lot of people in the country that would love to have a lot of our guys, I promise you that."
Cignetti also lightly jabbed at Coogan, who transfered from Notre Dame before this season.
"I do give Pat credit for finding an angle to kind of get everybody juiced," Cignetti said. "Pat's probably got a little Notre Dame in him still, so maybe from his perspective, we are misfits. That's a joke."
Ohio State is favored to win its second straight national title. The Buckeyes are 5.5-point favorites to defeat IU for the Big Ten title.
