The No. 6 Indiana Hoosiers head into Saturday night looking to keep their unbeaten start intact, but Rutgers has already shown enough to make this a tricky spot in Week 5.
Indiana has opened the season with three blowout wins, then survived a tighter one last weekend by slipping past Northwestern 29-23. Rutgers, meanwhile, picked up its first win of the year in emphatic fashion, rolling past Howard 42-0 as a 42.5-point favorite. A week earlier, the Scarlet Knights pushed USC before falling 42-35 as 21.5-point underdogs.
Rutgers has taken the last three meetings with Indiana, though this Hoosiers team is clearly operating on a different level than the one from those earlier matchups.
The biggest reason Indiana has surged has been Josh Hoover. He barely needed to do much in the first two games, but he was sharp from the start, completing 19 of 27 passes for 376 yards and eight touchdowns through Indiana’s first two outings.
He followed that with 18 completions on 24 attempts for 273 yards and two scores against Western Kentucky, then went 19 of 29 for 201 yards and one touchdown, while also adding a rushing touchdown, against Northwestern. Through his first four games, Hoover has not thrown an interception in 80 attempts.
After three seasons as TCU’s starter, Hoover has settled in quickly at Indiana. Saturday will be a new test, though, because this will be his first road game of the season.
That matters here because Indiana has not covered the spread in any of its four games so far. Some of that has come from the size of the numbers, but the challenge is the same again this week.
Rutgers enters with momentum after the blowout win over Howard and a competitive showing against USC, and Indiana has not been tested away from home yet. With the Scarlet Knights at home, the pick is Rutgers to cover as an underdog.
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The Scarlet Knights have spent recent weeks trying to reinforce their culture and show more consistency, and Indiana offers a blunt test of whether that work is translating. Rutgers knows it is meeting a program that now expects to win, which only sharpens the stakes for a team still looking to prove it belongs in that conversation. The challenge is obvious, but so is the opportunity to leave with a better sense of where the program stands. [Read more 🡒]
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Penn State brings a familiar Big Ten test, while American comes in with its own set of key contributors and a series history that gives Rutgers another angle to manage. For a Scarlet Knights group trying to build momentum at home, the chance to respond in front of a Homecoming crowd makes this a weekend with more than just ordinary midseason value. [Read more 🡒]
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For a program that has not been a regular NCAA Tournament presence, the selling points have had to be more than promises, and the staff appears to be leaning on development as much as on opportunity. Athletic director Keli Zinn and general manager Rob Sullivan have become part of that pitch, with Rutgers showing progress in both high school recruiting and the transfer portal since Sullivan arrived. There is still a long way to go before any of it translates into wins, but the pipeline is suddenly looking a lot sturdier. [Read more 🡒]