BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — First-year coach Curt Cignetti promised he would change the Indiana Hoosiers football program.
Virtually nobody expected it to happen so quickly.
Kurtis Rourke threw for a season-high 359 yards and three touchdowns Saturday, and the defense came up with stop after stop over the final 22 minutes as Indiana defeated Maryland 42-28 for its first 5-0 start since 1967.
“We haven’t been 5-0, evidently, for 57 years. That’s a pretty long time, isn’t it?” Cignetti said before leaving the field. “This is a step in the right direction, but we have to keep improving as a team.”
Clearly, these are not the same old Hoosiers (2-0 Big Ten).
Despite committing four turnovers — their first all season — Indiana allowed just one TD over the final 22 minutes and Rourke rebounded from two first-half interceptions to help the Hoosiers top the 30-point for the fifth straight game, their longest streak since 2000.
They’ve opened the season with five consecutive wins for just the third time in school history, and now they’re chasing even bigger goals.
“We aren’t finished,” Cignetti said. “We can play better than we played today.”
Rourke finished 22-for-33, connecting with Elijah Sarratt seven times for 128 yards and one score. Ty Son Lawton had 19 carries for 93 yards and one TD.
Maryland suffered its first loss to the Hoosiers since 2020 despite getting three TD passes from Billy Edwards Jr. and a season-best 75-yard TD run from Roman Hemby.
But the Terrapins (3-2, 0-2) never led on a soggy, windy day in Bloomington.
Edwards was 26-for-41 with 289 yards, while Hemby ran 19 times for 117 yards and had five catches for 48 yards.
“Give them credit, they’re a good team,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said. “We knew they would be the best team we’ve faced and we knew they had a good team and we had to match it. Now we have a bye week, so we have to sit in it for a couple of weeks.”
The Hoosiers took control late in the third quarter after Justice Ellison scored on a nifty 19-yard inside run to give Indiana a brief 21-14 lead. Hemby broke free on the next offensive snap to tie the score at 21.
Then Rourke broke the tie with the 13-yard TD pass to Sarratt in the final minute of the third, and the Hoosiers sealed the victory with Rourke’s 12-yard TD pass to Donaven McCulley and Lawton’s 14-yard scoring run that made it 42-21.
All Maryland could muster after that was a 12-yard TD pass from Edwards to Hemby.
