Indiana
Todd’s Take: Luck? Indiana Football Preparedness Continues To Be Overlooked
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Over the past weekend, I was off the grid. My son graduated from college and had to be moved out of his apartment. We wanted to make sure each moment was reserved for family time to celebrate his achievement, with the rest carved out for the grunt work of moving.
I didn’t look at a computer screen for four days. I highly recommend it.
While I was away from the Indiana athletic beat, there was news. Indiana University presented its findings on the Brad Bomba sexual abuse case. Rod Clark will be joining Indiana’s men’s basketball staff from Tennessee. Highly touted recruits Davion Adkins and Caleb Gaskins were given offers by Indiana men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries.
All are important items, but what filtered through to me was something comparatively unimportant.
ESPN wrote an offseason college football story on which teams benefited the most from luck during the 2024 season.
Take a wild guess as to which team was deemed to be among the luckiest in 2024? Those plucky, playoff contenders out-of-nowhere Indiana Hoosiers were deemed to be “lucky” in multiple categories.
It’s an interesting story and not a terrible premise. I’ve seen worse from scribes who are trying to fill space during their offseason.
In the piece, written by Bill Connelly, luck is determined by favorable turnover margin, prowess in close games and injuries/starting lineup stability.
At a surface level, those are not bad categories to determine “luck,” Turnovers turn games around. The ability to win close games in football is vital. To accomplish both of the above, you need stability.
Again, all fine in a vacuum, but numbers alone can’t determine whether a team is lucky or not. Context is required, and that’s where the premise for the story runs out of steam.
Indiana ranked as the second-luckiest team in turnover margin in ESPN’s ranking system. The Hoosiers were assigned an expected turnover margin of plus-4.5, but they had an actual turnover margin of plus-15.
Expected turnover margin is partly determined by percentage of fumbles lost and passes defended that resulted in interceptions.
It’s a fascinating stat to ponder, but meaningless without taking into account the players involved.
Quarterback Kurtis Rourke gets little credit for his passing efficiency. He threw only five interceptions in 320 pass attempts. There’s nothing lucky about that. It’s a testament to his accuracy.
Indiana ball carriers only fumbled 10 times in 2024, losing five of those drops. That’s not luck, that’s player skill and coaching emphasis on avoiding turnovers. From the beginning, Indiana coaches had players work with a slippery ball in practice to get players to emphasize ball security.
On the defensive side, Indiana’s impressive pass rush forced quarterbacks into quick decisions, many of them ill-advised ones. Indiana had 15 interceptions in 2024 and recovered nine fumbles out of 16 forced. At some point, that level of opportunism isn’t luck, it’s preparedness and skill.
What I think is telling about Indiana’s turnover ranking is who is ranked ahead of them – James Madison. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Curt Cignetti’s current and former teams are ranked 1-2 in this category.
Indiana’s injury and continuity luck was also ranked second nationally. The Hoosiers only trailed Penn State in this category. ESPN created a ratio of players who started the majority of games versus players who started just one or two games.
Not a fan of this methodology. It doesn’t take into account players who played hurt – Rourke and linebacker Jailin Walker were two notable examples for Indiana – nor does it take into account starters who happened to be on the field first to fulfill a specific formation.
Luck certainly plays a role in injuries, but so does preparedness. Indiana uses multiple running backs and had some rotation in the defensive line, lessening the likelihood of injuries. Practices are also managed properly to avoid injuries. Luck plays a role, but so does preparedness.
Indiana was notably not ranked highly in close games luck for a very obvious reason – the Hoosiers hardly played any close games. Only one of Indiana’s games was decided by a touchdown or less, a 20-15 victory for the Hoosiers over Michigan.
The average score of an Indiana game was 41-16 in favor of the Hoosiers. Nothing lucky about that.
Because Indiana rated so highly in two of the three luck factors, the Hoosiers were determined to be a team that could be due a market correction in 2025.
Perhaps a more difficult schedule will create a little bit of a correction, but as far as “luck” is concerned, I don’t think that’s going to change for the Hoosiers.
One word used constantly in this column is why: preparedness.
Many observers who haven’t been as close to Indiana’s program just haven’t figured out that the secret sauce in the success Cignetti’s teams have had is being prepared. Having a plan from day one to make things happen.
That preparedness is felt from the players Indiana seeks, to the way the offseason is handled, to practices and game plans. Cignetti prides himself on being prepared himself and having his teams reflect that level of planning.
It’s really that simple. Cignetti and his staff are not out-prepared by any team. When you can achieve that standard, things like luck become far less important. I’ve never quite believed that good or bad luck are by design, but Cignetti has probably come closest to convincing me it can be true.
National observers aren’t there yet as far as their perception of Cignetti and Indiana football are concerned. They still see Indiana as a bad football brand where everything came together at once for a magical season. When you’re seen as a one-off, you get pieces published that try to explain away success with luck.
I don’t think it was luck. I do think Cignetti and the Hoosiers have to have another playoff-quality season to prove it to those outside Indiana’s sphere of influence.
Indiana just might do it.
Jeremy Busby is a writer and activist incarcerated in Texas.
A few days before my best friend’s execution date in 2006, prison administrators granted me one last chance to see him in a legal visit. We discussed his concerns about the humaneness of the lethal injection that would kill him. I will never forget his terrified look.
The day of his execution, I paced my cell hoping for the best. Without access to a telephone, my only method to monitor if or how my friend had died was through radio reports from members of the media who were allowed to witness his final breath.
News reports have historically allowed us as a society to monitor our government when it exercises its greatest power: ending a person’s life. But the state of Indiana has decided to inhibit that public access by banning members of the media from attending executions — unless the condemned person chooses to give a reporter a spot that could instead have gone to their relatives or friends. An appellate court upheld the ban this week.
Prison officials in Indiana claim the media ban is mainly about respecting the dignity of the condemned person. But the idea that there could ever be dignity in state-sanctioned killing of a perfectly healthy human is ludicrous within itself. That would be the case even if executioners eschewed cruel and unusual methods. But they don’t, even when the media is watching.
Angel Nieves Diaz continued moving for half an hour after receiving an injection of a drug that was supposed to paralyze him during a Florida execution. It took Arizona officials two hours to kill Joseph R. Wood. He had to be injected with 14 doses beyond the dose that was supposed to cause his death.
It took officials two hours to kill Joseph R. Wood.
Byron Black yelled, “It’s hurting so bad,” five minutes into a botched execution in Tennessee. John Marion Grant began convulsing and vomiting during his execution in Oklahoma. Prison officials had to enter the death chamber multiple times to wipe away and remove the vomit. The entire time, Grant was still breathing. Just last month, Tony Carruthers lay on a Tennessee gurney for more than hour moaning and bleeding as executioners struggled to find a vein. The execution was eventually called off by government officials.
Byron Black yelled, “It’s hurting so bad.”
These are only a few of the botched executions that lack “dignity.” This week, a federal appellate court upheld a decision blocking Alabama from using nitrogen gas to kill Jeffery Lee. Suffocating and asphyxiating on one’s own vomit seemed like a bridge too far.
As a result of the barbarity of these events, it’s not far-fetched to wonder if Indiana officials have an ulterior motive. Perhaps the media ban has nothing to do with preserving the dignity of the condemned and is instead about obstructing government accountability and public oversight.
Executions in this country were once highly public affairs. Often held in town squares, any member of the public could attend. In the 1830s, government officials began to enact laws that made executions private events.
Tony Carruthers laid on a gurney moaning and bleeding as executioners struggled to find a vein.
This was not because 19th century executioners were moved to protect the dignity of the condemned (who were disproportionately Black). It was an effort to halt a growing capital punishment abolitionist movement. A significant number of Americans found the public spectacle disgusting.
The same is occurring today. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, support for capital punishment in America has decreased from 80 percent in 1994 to 52 percent in 2026. This division necessitates transparency — otherwise, the only nongovernment actors able to tell the public the truth are dead.
The “dignity” playbook is a well-worn one that I know well as an incarcerated journalist. As a result of restrictions placed on media access to prisons, prisons have become unjustifiably cruel, less humane and more difficult to monitor. Restricting press freedom erodes human rights and constitutional safeguards and blinds the public to the kinds of cruelty and abuse depicted in HBO’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution.”
Perhaps the media ban has nothing to do with preserving the dignity of the condemned and is instead about obstructing government accountability and public oversight.
The film was made possible not because officials granted access to outside journalists, but because incarcerated people risked (and endured) severe punishment to document their reality with contraband phones.
It’s not the first time surreptitious reporting methods revealed the real motives behind media restrictions. In 1906, a reporter in Minnesota ignored a ban on media executions and sneaked in to watch a condemned man spend 14 minutes gasping for air before he strangled to death because the rope used to hang him was too long – he hit the floor when dropped and needed to be raised back up.
As appellate judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi wrote in a dissenting opinion in the Indiana case, “A government exercises its greatest power when it ends a person’s life. As I see it, such severe and irreversible punishment on behalf of ‘the people’ must be observable to comply with the Constitution.”
Lifting the media ban is the only dignified thing Indiana can do, not only for the condemned but also for the people being asked to fund irreversible punishments.
INDIANAPOLIS (WNDU) – Residents in four Indiana counties are being asked to report damage from June 11 storms to help state officials assess the impact and plan recovery efforts.
Residents of Lake, Porter, Huntington and Elkhart counties can contact Indiana 211 by calling 866-211-9966 or visiting the Indiana 211 website to report damage.
The Indiana Department of Homeland Security will use the reports to determine damage estimates and develop the next course of action in the disaster recovery process.
Officials say only residents of Lake, Porter, Huntington and Elkhart counties should use Indiana 211 for June 11 damage reports. Residents in other counties should contact their local emergency manager.
All agriculture damages should be reported to the local USDA Farm Service Agency. You can use the USDA locator tool to find the appropriate contact.
Stay up to date on local news with WNDU on-air and online. Be sure to download the 16 News Now App and follow our YouTube page as we continue to bring you the latest news coverage.
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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The IHSAA baseball state tournament has reached the semi-state round, with the games taking place on Saturday.
Here are the matchups in the semi-state round in each class:
Class 4A
North (Griffith, at Gary Steel Yard)
Game 1 (10:30 a.m. CT): Zionsville vs. Lake Central
Game 2 (12:30 p.m. CT): No. 7 Penn vs. Fort Wayne Snider
The winners will play at 7 p.m. CT. Lake Central is the last team of the group to win the state title, doing so in 2024.
South (Castle; at Braun Stadium, University of Evansville)
Game 1 (10 a.m. CT): No. 3 Evansville North vs. No. 1 Center Grove
Game 2 (1 p.m. CT): No. 10 Bloomington South vs. North Central
The winners will play at 7 p.m. CT. Evansville North made it to state last season, losing to Valparaiso. Center Grove made it to state in 2023, losing to Penn.
Class 3A
North (LaPorte, at Schreiber Field)
Game 1 (10:30 a.m. CT): NorthWood vs. Norwell
Game 2 (12:30 p.m. CT): No. 1 Andrean vs. No. 5 DeKalb
The winners will play at 7 p.m. CT. Andrean won the 3A state title last season, and has won nine state championships.
South (Jasper, at Ruxer Field)
Game 1 (11 a.m. ET): Providence vs. No. 2 Guerin Catholic
Game 2 (2 p.m. ET): No. 4 Gibson Southern vs. No. 8 Cathedral
The winners will play at 8 p.m. ET. Providence is the last team of the group to make the state championship, winning the 2A state title in 2024.
Class 2A
North (Oak Hill)
Game 1 (11 a.m. ET): Lafayette Central Catholic vs. Bluffton
Game 2 (2 p.m. ET): No. 2 Eastbrook vs. Lakeland
The winners will play at 8 p.m. ET. Lafayette Central Catholic made the 1A state championship in 2024, losing to Barr-Reeve.
South (Lawrence Central)
Game 1 (11 a.m. ET): No. 9 University vs. No. 1 Evansville Mater Dei
Game 2 (2 p.m. ET): Heritage Christian vs. Sullivan
The winners will play at 8 p.m. Evansville Mater Dei made it to state last year, losing to Boone Grove.
Class 1A
North (Lafayette Jefferson, at Loeb Stadium)
Game 1 (11 a.m. ET): Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian vs. North Miami
Game 2 (2 p.m. ET): No. 10 Rossville vs. No. 1 Kouts
The winners will play at 7:30 p.m. ET. Kouts made it to state last year, losing to Lutheran.
South (Mitchell)
Game 1 (11 a.m. ET): Hauser vs. North Daviess
Game 2 (1 p.m. ET): Greenwood Christian vs. No. 4 Northeast Dubois
The winners will play at 7 p.m. ET. Hauser is the last team of the group to make it to state, back in 2005, when it lost to Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian.
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