A little more than two months ago, Curt Cignetti was thrusting the national championship trophy into the air as confetti rained down on the Hoosiers.
It was the reward for an improbable perfect season that was one of the top sports stories of all time.
And one unlikely to be duplicated.
“You can't really improve on 16 and oh, right? 16 and oh, you know, I mean, because there were 16 games you won, every one of them, OK?” Cignetti said Thursday. “What you can improve on is your day to day consistency.”
That began Thursday in the Mellencamp Pavilion, where Cignetti got his first look at what will be the 2026 Indiana Hoosiers.
Gone are star players you’ll see this fall in the NFL such as Fernando Mendoza, D’Angelo Ponds, Omar Cooper and Pat Coogan.
Gone, too, are almost all of the James Madison transfers that came to IU with Cignetti. They changed the culture and laid the foundation for success.
That will make the challenge of teaching players how to play Cignetti’s way more difficult with fewer players familiar with the system around.
“We probably have more work to do with this group than my than the first two teams, simply because there's so many that we don't have a one- to three-year relationship with,” Cignetti said.
The Hoosiers do return a solid core of players from last season, but they will have their third quarterback in three years – Josh Hoover. The 6-foot-2 senior threw for 3,472 yards and twenty-nine touchdowns last season for Texas Christian. But he also threw 13 interceptions.
Another newcomer expected to be a big contributor is wide receiver Nick Marsh from Michigan State.
But he got off on the wrong foot Thursday.
“I didn't love those gold shoes he came out in today,” Cignetti said. “He learned what getting your ass ripped is all about. I don't know if that happened to very often Michigan State.”
It was just day one of the spring session, but also a teaching moment on learning how to play Cignetti’s way.
“The important part in terms of putting it between the white lines, and understanding the standard, the expectation level, the accountability, doing the things that we preach that lead to winning football games,” he said.
The spring session wraps up on Thursday, April 23, with the annual intrasquad spring game at Memorial Stadium.
