Rutgers walks into Saturday night with the kind of Big Ten assignment that can expose every flaw, and Greg Schiano knows exactly who’s coming to Piscataway.
Curt Cignetti and the reigning national champions arrive with a 20-game winning streak, and Schiano didn’t hide his respect for what Indiana has become under him.
“Certainly a great opportunity in front of us, the defending national champs coming to town,” Schiano said. “My hat’s off to Coach (Curt) Cignetti and their entire program for what they’ve been doing to these last few years.
Really a testament to how fine of coaches they are. It’s been fun to watch from a distance.”
What Cignetti has done is hard to miss. Indiana had spent years near the bottom of the Big Ten, but he has turned the program into a national champion and a team that sits in the contender conversation every year.
Schiano pointed to the pieces behind that turnaround.
“I think he does a great job evaluating, he does a great recruiting, and then he does a great job in development and coaching,” Schiano said. “I believe in a lot of the same principles.
Run the football, take care of the football, physical, violent teams, play sound defense. But to believe it and do it, those are two different things.
I think he’s done a great job everywhere he’s been. I’ve watched him in his career.
Every place he’s been, he’s won. He has a formula he believes in and he executes that formula.”
Indiana’s financial edge helps Cignetti build at a high level, but Schiano’s point was clear: money alone doesn’t change a program. The culture in Bloomington has shifted, and the results have followed.
Rutgers has been trying to manufacture that same kind of identity under Schiano, though the season has already included some painful reminders of how far the Scarlet Knights still have to go. Schiano has said Rutgers is going to beat a team nobody expects, and it nearly happened against USC two weeks ago before slipping away. Last week’s 29-23 game against Northwestern at least gave Rutgers something to build on.
Still, the early losses to UMass and Boston College are sitting right there, and they make this matchup look even steeper.
Schiano didn’t try to dress it up.
“There’s no weakness in this team,” Schiano said. “That’s why they’ve won 20 straight.”
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