Cignetti Discusses Upcoming Game vs Penn State, Injury Situation
BLOOMINGTON, Ind.–The 9-0 and #2 Indiana Hoosier football team gets ready to face the 3-5 Penn State Nittany Lions this Saturday in Happy Valley at Beaver Stadium. Hoosier Head Football Coach Curt Cignetti said Monday that it’s important to remember that Penn State still has a lot of good football players at all positions.
“Well, it’s all on tape, so you prepare for what you see on tape. So UCLA was a particular situation where there were new coordinators on both sides of the ball and had really kind of done a 180. You see Penn State really landed on the line on tape; impressed with that football team. But the coordinators are still in place, so schematically there’s not a big change,” said Cignetti.
Penn State fired their former head coach James Franklin earlier this year. Terry Smith has since taken over as the interim coach and has gone 0-2 so far.
“Terry (Smith) has done a really good job of sort of rejuvenating these guys, and it’ll be his first opportunity to play a game at home. Tough place to play, 100,000 plus people. They’re a really good football team. They’ve had some tough times, and we’ve got to have a great day today and a great week to stack days just like always. Be prepared, have the right mindset, play really, really well, first play to last play. Been a change up there, obviously. James Franklin, fifth in the country last year, was about 105-40 after 11 years, did a tremendous job, has always represented himself with class. A lot of respect for him and Penn State. Always have had a lot of respect for Penn State, too,” said Cignetti.
On the injury front, Cignetti says they’ll know more as the week progresses.
“We didn’t really come out of that (Maryland) game with anything that we would call significant, just the bumps and bruises that can occur during the course of a 12-game season. Aiden Fisher we thought made really good progress toward the end of last week. Wasn’t quite ready to go. Very optimistic on him. Elijah (Sarratt) , we’ll know more day-to-day. He’s been dealing with something the last two weeks but has been able to play. Had a little tweak of something else early in the game, and we got him out for precautionary reasons. Drew Evans will not be available this week,” said Cignetti.
Evans, an offensive lineman, did not play in the team’s 55-10 win over Maryland. Cignetti says injuries are part of the game and sometimes they are out of your control.
“I’m always thinking about the health of our football team, which why we practice the way we practice, and if you happen to notice at the end of the games when we’re running the clock and snapping the ball with two seconds, we’re reducing the number of plays in the game, which we’ve done quite a bit in some of the games where we’ve gotten out ahead,” said Cignetti.
Kickoff on Saturday is at noon. Indiana’s following home game against Wisconsin is also a noon kickoff on November 15.
Cignetti Discusses Upcoming Game vs Penn State, Injury Situation was originally published on wibc.com
