Curt Cignetti explains how Ohio State loss can help Indiana in College Football Playoff

As Indiana prepares for a College Football Playoff game against Notre Dame, the Hoosiers are taking some lessons from their lone loss of the season.

That loss came three and a half weeks ago at Ohio State. But coach Curt Cignetti said on the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday that his team isn’t changing much in its preparations for the playoff game despite learning from the loss to the Buckeyes.

“It’s business as usual. That kind of hype is for you guys and people that love to follow sports,” Cignetti said. “You prepare for this game like you prepared for Game 4 or Game 5. I mean the standard’s the standard and if there was a better way to do it we’d do it that way every time. So I like where we’re at.

“I like our mindset. I think we learned some good things coming out of Ohio State that, some situations we’ll handle a little better. And I’m confident. I’m confident in our team going into this game. We’ll be ready to go.”

The 38-15 loss to Ohio State was a humbling one for Indiana, but one that could ultimately pay dividends if the team can learn from it and shore up the problem areas.

Cignetti wasn’t overly thrilled with the results the first time around, learning experience or not.

“I’m not sure I’d call it great. I mean we gave them 14 points on the punt team,” the Indiana coach said. “We dropped a snap and we gave up a punt return for a touchdown. And it seemed like we were in that one corner of the end zone for two and a half years. Didn’t handle the crowd noise very well and had some communication breakdowns in pass protection and couldn’t play offense for a while there because we couldn’t protect the quarterback. We went to a silent count, which is the first time I’ve ever done that. And we’ll never do it again.”

That is enough to raise some eyebrows, particularly given that Indiana will be on the road in a hostile environment at Notre Dame. Whatever Cignetti has worked up will have to be good to keep the Fighting Irish pass rush at bay.

Cignetti explained why he won’t go to a silent count again.

“Because there’s always an indicator when the ball’s going to get snapped, and once they figure out who the indicator is they tee off and time those blitzes and their get-off,” Cignetti said. “Defensive guys are reacting to players, offensive guys are used to going on a cadence, a rhythm. So we didn’t need to do that. But that’s behind us now.”

So what lessons can Indiana take from the Ohio State loss?

“They’re a good football team. They played well,” Cignetti said. “We could have played better. I give them credit. We learned from it and when you don’t have the result, don’t have the success, right, and you fail, then you’ve got a choice. You can sulk and blame others or you can learn from it and come back stronger, and I believe we will.”