Josh Hoover didn’t need a perfect afternoon to give Indiana the kind of moment every championship contender eventually needs. In a messy, wind-blown fight in Lincoln, he delivered the answer when Nebraska looked ready to break the game open.
Indiana escaped with a 20-17 win, and Hoover’s stat line was rough enough to back up how difficult the day was. He finished 12 of 22 through the air, easily his worst showing since arriving at Indiana.
A steady wind at Memorial Stadium kept knocking throws off course, sending some sails wide of open receivers down the sideline and leaving others short by as much as 10 yards. If not for those misses in the first half, Indiana may never have been forced into the kind of late-game scramble that Hoover eventually settled.
Nebraska did plenty to put itself in position to pull the upset. The Huskers controlled the ball and ran 83 plays to Indiana’s 44, but all that activity didn’t translate into enough points. Not until Anthony Colandrea broke free for a 39-yard touchdown run to put Nebraska ahead 17-6 with 12 minutes left did the stadium really feel like it might be slipping away from the Hoosiers.
That was the moment Indiana had to answer, and Hoover wasted no time. On the first play of the next possession, he hit Nick Marsh on an RPO for a 75-yard touchdown. One snap, one strike, and the noise in the building flipped from celebration to tension.
Curt Cignetti had pointed to Indiana’s defense and run game during the offseason after Sonny Dykes’ criticism about turnovers, saying he had something at Indiana he never had at TCU. The run game never showed up here, but the defense did enough to force Nebraska to punt after the long touchdown.
Indiana’s next scoring drive took a little longer, but the result was the same. On fourth-and-2, the Hoosiers went back to a play-action look that echoed the RPO from the previous touchdown.
Nebraska bit hard again. Hoover found both Nick Marsh and Charlie Becker wide open, then chose Marsh once more for a 44-yard touchdown that gave Indiana its first lead of the game.
Neither scoring throw was especially difficult. Both were straightforward reads and clean throws.
But after a day full of accuracy problems, Hoover’s ability to reset and hit the right plays in the biggest spots mattered. That kind of quick recovery is what quarterbacks need when the game tightens, and Indiana may lean on it again.
Ohio State.
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