Indiana football beats Charlotte 52-14: Three things we learned

Another weekend, another convincing Indiana football win over an opponent.

The Hoosiers stand at 4-0 after beating Charlotte 52-14 on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t necessarily always pretty, but things ended up going pretty well at the end of the day.

Curt Cignetti is the first head coach in program history to open his first season with four consecutive wins. The schedule hasn’t been daunting (sorry, sorry) but wins are wins and all a good team can do in that situation is show a bad team who’s boss and Indiana has certainly done so.

Let’s get into this one.

Kurtis Rourke

Indiana just isn’t in this spot without Rourke. The transfer from Ohio has stepped up in a big way this season and has provided a calming presence in the backfield.

Bad things can happen. The first two downs can go awry and the offense could be facing a third and long. But time and again Rourke has stepped up in those moments to keep things going and the Hoosiers typically get to at least the red zone thanks to his efforts.

It’s fair to call him among the top quarterbacks in the Big Ten, he’s proven as much through four games. The Indiana offense needs that reliability and few have proven more reliable than Rourke.

When things got tight and the defense had some issues in the first half, Rourke responded with two chunk passes and used his legs more than once to keep the drive going and make it to the endzone.

His day was done by the end of the third quarter, which should tell you enough about how it went.

The Defense

Indiana’s defense was on a bit of alert heading into this one. Coming off of a massive victory in the Rose Bowl and going against a decently talented Charlotte group raised some worries for a potential letdown.

That was true… in the first half.

The 49ers were able to attack the Hoosiers’ defensive front And generate enough push in the running game to drive down the field and open up passing opportunities that were promptly recognized and exploited. Charlotte was really, really giving them first for a while.

The offense was able to keep the game under control, but the defense continued to look lost for much of the first half.

Then a few key plays to end the second quarter and give the ball back to the offense built the Hoosiers’ lead further. Two bites at the apple with a score to open the second half pushed Charlotte to the edge.

The defense looked different in the second, mostly free of the miscues that plagued it in the first. It’s worth keeping an eye on, but you’d much rather a unit respond to adversity in game than fold and let a so-so situation become worse.

The Environment

Yeah the crowd was Not Great… again.

But to be quite fair the weather was horrific. It wasn’t just hot. Bloomington got hit with a thunderstorm pouring buckets of rain, the first in what felt like weeks, all over the town. The result was some truly horrific humidity.

And, well, Indiana won a blowout. Again. Most are gonna try to get a head start on traffic.

My advice? Again, don’t dwell on it. The crowd will come. We’ve seen it before, it’ll happen again.

And like, there’s football to talk about. Please just talk about the actual football.