EUGENE, Ore. — Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti gave his team the confidence they needed to pull off a 30-20 win over No. 2 Oregon without even having to take his shirt off.
That’s how Oregon coach Dan Lanning hyped up Ducks fans who spent all morning on the set of ESPN’s CollegeGameDay outside of Autzen Stadium on Saturday while Cignetti put the theatrics he relied on to fire up IU’s fanbase last year on the shelf for 2025.
Cignetti worked behind the scenes in the days leading up the game building up a winning mindset in the locker room that No. 7 Indiana (6-0; 3-0 Big Ten) needed to topple a juggernaut.
“The most important thing to me was our mindset going into this game, that we believed, expected, prepared to make it happen and could handle the ups and downs of the game without flinching,” Cignetti said.
Cignetti referred back to his days on the sidelines at James Madison and Elon in shaping that message throughout the week.
He knew the coaching staff needed to come up with a solid game plan to attack a well-coached Oregon team (5-1; 2-1) that came into the game with top 10 offense and defense, but it wasn’t the only necessary ingredient to pulling off an unprecedented win against a perennial powerhouse.
“I’ve had three or four wins of this magnitude at my prior places,” Cignetti said. “You go play (Appalachian) State, first year in the Sun Belt, and they just beat (Texas) A&M early in the year, and we’re down 28-3 in the second quarter. We talk about being resilient and having an indomitable will that can’t be subdued or defeated.
“Same thing at Elon, second year. You go play JMU, No. 1 in the country. They’ve outscored the first three opponents 180-6 and you ask the same thing of your guys. We were able to overcome big-time adversity in the first half, at the end of the game and win with 30 seconds to go.”
The key point Cignetti went back to every time he addressed the team was about facing down adversity like they did in the final moments against Iowa. This was going to be a four-quarter game against an opponent who had one of the most talented rosters in the country.
Cignetti might as well have been looking into a crystal ball — IU quarterback Fernando Mendoza threw a pick-six early in the fourth quarter on a critical third down while trying to put together a drive to take a two-possession lead. It was exactly the kind of moment the coach described and the Hoosiers’ response was the defining moment of the game.
But whatever momentum Oregon gained evaporated as Mendoza marched the Hoosiers right down the field on a 12-play, 75-yard drive. The raucous crowd of 59,625 fans turned silent when Mendoza hit Elijah Sarratt for an 8-yard touchdown to go up 27-20 with 6:23 left in the game.
“In these big games, it’s not always pretty, it’s going to be a dogfight and we need to have the mentality we are always going to win and belief we are always going to win, and belief in each other, and belief in our coaches, and belief in our staff that we’re going to come out on top,” Mendoza said. “He (Cignetti) nailed that down, he got us right throughout the week, which elevated our mindset to have the success we had today.”
Indiana’s defense sealed Oregon’s fate with a pair of interceptions in the final minutes for the program’s second ever win over a top-five opponent that Cignetti and his players won’t allow themselves to celebrate beyond Saturday night.
“It’s a great win against the No. 2 ranked team in the country that had an 18-game home winning streak,” Cignetti said. “It puts us in (good) position, if we can continue to be successful, means we have to show up for work on Monday as a team, humble and hungry ready to go against Michigan State.”
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 The Herald-Times: How Indiana football built up the ‘indomitable will’ to take down Oregon
Reporting by Michael Niziolek, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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