BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football has come a long way in a short amount of time under coach Curt Cignetti.
It wasn’t too long ago that Cignetti was dealing with a roster in “crisis.” He joked after taking the job that IU athletic director Scott Dolson forgot to tell him that nearly the team’s entire defense was in the transfer portal.
Those days are long gone.
While Cignetti likes to say he’s never satisfied, he’s been remarkably upbeat about the team’s overall talent level throughout his second spring camp in Bloomington. The Hoosiers wrapped up spring practice on Thursday night at Memorial Stadium with a live scrimmage that was open to the public.
“What I'll say about this team is we have a lot of the pieces that we need,” Cignetti said after the spring game.
Indiana’s offense beat the defense, 31-23, in an abbreviated exhibition that lasted two quarters. The Hoosiers used a modified scoring system with the defense getting points for stops and turnovers.
The game featured a mixture of new faces (Cal transfer Fernando Mendoza at quarterback and true freshman receiver LeBron Bond) and old (running back Kaelon Black and linebacker Rolijah Hardy) making key contributions.
Cignetti wasn’t ready to offer any meaningful takeaways from the scrimmage itself – he prefers to watch film before making those kinds of assessments — but his first impression was a positive one and he’s hopeful that steady progression carries over into fall camp.
“When we come back in the fall, it's on, it's real, and we need our good players to play good every single day, every single rep, every single drill,” Cignetti said. “Spring ball is over. We'll get out what we put in. We've got a chance to be as good as we want to be, and we've just got to keep improving.”
Indiana relied the underclassmen in the scrimmage with many of the program’s 14 freshmen mid-year enrollees having an outsized role as the coaching staff held back veterans like Aiden Fisher and wide receiver Elijah Sarratt to avoid injuries.
There were even some non-scholarship players in the mix at certain positions, but Cignetti isn’t exiting spring camp feeling his roster has any obvious weaknesses.
“Spring sometimes you don't tackle until this day here, and you're managing guys, sort of making sure the key ones don't get dinged up or injured in spring ball, but in the fall you've got to cut them loose,” Cignetti said. “There's some progressions probably where we might look a little stronger right now, but I don't think there's a particular area we're extremely deficient.”
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana football spring game: Curt Cignetti upbeat about talent level
#Indiana #football #coach #Curt #Cignetti #excited #team039s #talent #level #leaving #spring #game
