Indiana vs Wake Forest Game Thread (9/24 - 3:30 PM - BTN)

[Josh]

He's not a better option.  Lagow was horrendous today but at least he's can pass, Diamont can't.

And complete it to which team? I call for a change. That was horrendous.

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[JSHoosier]

16 minutes ago, Josh said:

And complete it to which team? I call for a change. That was horrendous.

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It's also just his 3rd start at this level, I'm at least willing to see if/how he bounces back.  I'm not even that high on Lagow, I thought posters on this board were over hyping him; I would've preferred Chad Kelley.

I think the team has more upside with Lagow, but much of that is 2 years of evidence showing us Diamont in utterly incapable of keeping the defense honest.

This was a real s**t show but it's one game vs 2 years.

[Josh]

I understand this. But we just had 5 interceptions that could have been 7. Heads need to roll.

Legow needs to feel the bench. Zander time.

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[Crimson and Cream]

Lagow can throw the ball. Zander cannot. This offense needs a passing QB. Have Rick spend the week prepping for Sparty and watching this week's game film to correct mistakes. He can sling it, and we need that. He just needs to make better decisions. 

[akhosrof]

Don't understand the five interceptions could have been seven at all. If you want to play the what if game take away 250 yards of passing because Lagow made throws most QBs can only dream of. On the INTs: You had two balls which should have been caught. You can say they were thrown two hard but both times the receiver got both hands on the ball. Both plays were quick slants where the QB has to put the ball where only the receiver can catch it. The Westbrook INT was more difficult a catch than the Timeon INT. IMO Timeon should have caught the slant for a TD, 14-0 Hoosiers. That was a drop...

The INT on the duck to midfield, that was a tipped ball, Lagow was trying to hit Paige down the seam. That ball was not intended for Jones at midfield.

We can fault Lagow for throwing the ball too hard, but he made some hella good throws. Those types of throws are the building blocks of CKW's offense. If our QB cannot do that, you will see an offense like the one against PSU last year: Anemic.

The facts about Lagow: we knew all of this about him going in. He didn't have touch on short passes, he has a waste high hitch in his throwing motion on longer throws which leads to batted balls and jumped routes, he still doesn't have much movement in his lower body to square up on throws. Terrible for accuracy, but it shows how damn strong his raw arm strength is!

Brett Favre also had a hitch in his throwing motion which lead to INTs. Similar to Favre, Lagow is a gun slinger. I would rather have a gun slinger who can gets yards in a blink of an eye than the anemic offense we are used to when Zander takes the field.

Bottom line: we've been spoiled the past few years by Suds. Suds is an NFL QB, college head coaches would kill for three years of someone of his talents. That is not the norm, we got extremely lucky we had Seth Litrell on staff to recruit Suds.

Lagow is a very talented QB who will get better as the year goes on. Everyone needs to chill out. He is going to fill up a stat sheet with yards, TDs, and yes, INTs.

The more pressing matter is the run game. If we don't get it fixed there will be a higher chance of these sort of games. Put any college QB in his third game in there and tell him he has to throw 60 times. The results will be a lot worse than Lagow.

Look at the positives, we moved the ball very well and got multiple receivers involved. Westbrook is a stud, Ricky Jones showed he's still a legit playmaker, and Mitchell Paige is going to get a lot of receptions. Need to get the run game back on track!

[biteoftheapple]

You cannot take the poster of these comments too seriously, he is a hater.

[Class of '66 Old Fart]

One small ray of sunshine  -  we are 2-1.  How do you think the Neuter Dome fans are feeling at 1-3 with 2 of their losses coming in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus.

[Josh]

The only thing I'm a hater of is turnovers. They drive me crazy

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[JSHoosier]

4 hours ago, akhosrof said:

Don't understand the five interceptions could have been seven at all. If you want to play the what if game take away 250 yards of passing because Lagow made throws most QBs can only dream of. On the INTs: You had two balls which should have been caught. You can say they were thrown two hard but both times the receiver got both hands on the ball. Both plays were quick slants where the QB has to put the ball where only the receiver can catch it. The Westbrook INT was more difficult a catch than the Timeon INT. IMO Timeon should have caught the slant for a TD, 14-0 Hoosiers. That was a drop...

The INT on the duck to midfield, that was a tipped ball, Lagow was trying to hit Paige down the seam. That ball was not intended for Jones at midfield.

We can fault Lagow for throwing the ball too hard, but he made some hella good throws. Those types of throws are the building blocks of CKW's offense. If our QB cannot do that, you will see an offense like the one against PSU last year: Anemic.

The facts about Lagow: we knew all of this about him going in. He didn't have touch on short passes, he has a waste high hitch in his throwing motion on longer throws which leads to batted balls and jumped routes, he still doesn't have much movement in his lower body to square up on throws. Terrible for accuracy, but it shows how damn strong his raw arm strength is!

Brett Favre also had a hitch in his throwing motion which lead to INTs. Similar to Favre, Lagow is a gun slinger. I would rather have a gun slinger who can gets yards in a blink of an eye than the anemic offense we are used to when Zander takes the field.

Bottom line: we've been spoiled the past few years by Suds. Suds is an NFL QB, college head coaches would kill for three years of someone of his talents. That is not the norm, we got extremely lucky we had Seth Litrell on staff to recruit Suds.

Lagow is a very talented QB who will get better as the year goes on. Everyone needs to chill out. He is going to fill up a stat sheet with yards, TDs, and yes, INTs.

The more pressing matter is the run game. If we don't get it fixed there will be a higher chance of these sort of games. Put any college QB in his third game in there and tell him he has to throw 60 times. The results will be a lot worse than Lagow.

Look at the positives, we moved the ball very well and got multiple receivers involved. Westbrook is a stud, Ricky Jones showed he's still a legit playmaker, and Mitchell Paige is going to get a lot of receptions. Need to get the run game back on track!

Everyone talks about arm strength, frankly I'll take an accurate QB with a weaker arm over one with a big arm and struggles with accuracy every time. 

Which still excludes Diamont.

EDIT:  I can really suck at typing sometimes.

[OliviaPope40]

I say we keep using Lagow no sense in changing QB's. 

[JSHoosier]

14 hours ago, Josh said:

I understand this. But we just had 5 interceptions that could have been 7. Heads need to roll.

Legow needs to feel the bench. Zander time.

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Trust me, if we had a better option I'd be more willing to make a change.  I'm not that high on Lagow, and to me arm strength means zilch if it's not on target.  Diamont is being drastically overrated IMO, he can run a little bit but he can't throw at all; that would be intentionally handicapping the offense, and the opposing D would load the box on every play.  QBs have to be able to pass, they do not have to be able to run; the last we saw of Diamont he was a long way from even being serviceable as a passer, the best thing for him is a redshirt year where he works extensively on throwing.

 

[KingPG21]

2 hours ago, Josh said:

The only thing I'm a hater of is turnovers. They drive me crazy

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I mean, with Diamont they'd have just as many 3 and outs as first downs. And the defense isn't good enough to make up for a quarterback who can't throw the ball

[akhosrof]

Trust me, if we had a better option I'd be more willing to make a change.  I'm not that high on Lagow, and to me arm strength means zilch if it's not on target.  Diamont is being drastically overrated IMO, he can run a little bit but he can't throw at all; that would be intentionally handicapping the offense, and the opposing D would load the box on every play.  QBs have to be able to pass, they do not have to be able to run; the last we saw of Diamont he was a long way from even being serviceable as a passer, the best thing for him is a redshirt year where he works extensively on throwing.

 

I think we've been all spoiled by Sudfeld the past three years. Welcome to life of having an average B1G QB. Having "a better option" is something 10/14 B1G teams would like. Even teams with four star recruits. The top B1G teams can get by with an average QB. For the lower tier teams like us, we need high level play from the position.

This was Lagow's third game. There's no denying Lagow's talent. He has shown flashes of being a capable top tier B1G QB. He can make throws not many QBs can make. And that just doesn't require arm strength, but accuracy and timing too. Suds wasn't the most accurate QB but he was smart and consistent. Lagow just needs to learn from his mistakes and get better as the season goes on.

Honestly, I could see Lagow as the type of guy who tears it up and gets us a win against a team like Michigan State, then throws multiple INTs against a team like Rutgers. He's a gun slinger. We might just have to live and die by that if the run game can't get going. Let's see what the kid can do.

[GnarlyNormEllenberger]

Late to the party again, but here's a few additional thoughts...

- When I heard just before kickoff that BOTH Feeney and Camiel were out, I was afraid we would struggle running the ball. They are our two best lineman and missing them was a big factor in the game. Wake Forest's D-Line actually played us pretty tough last year in Winston-Salem. This year, our O-Line got very little push, which severely hurt our running game. And this put way too much pressure on...

- Lagow. I think we relied on him too much because our running game stalled. You could tell he felt the pressure and forced a number of throws that simply weren't there. Way too many throws into double-coverage. To his credit, he made a number of nice throws and connected on several passes that were extremely impressive. But you cannot throw 5 interceptions and win a game. You just can't. Even if you throw for 500 yards.

- So then who should be our QB? Lagow. Why? Because he moves the ball down the field. And that's something that Diamont had never shown he can do on a consistent basis. If Lagow has another game with five picks, then maybe we can look at other alternatives because you absolutely cannot do that again. But for now, the Lagow offense still looks much smoother than the Diamont offense. If you need to sit Lagow for a bit, I'd rather throw Cameron out there.

- Our defense didn't play well. If you didn't see the game, Wake Forest ran a "dink and dunk" offense that nickel and dimed their way down the field. They were absolutely nothing special and you can tell why they struggle on that side of the ball. Sure, we held them to 352 yards of total offense, but they controlled tempo. They ran the QB option hand-off over and over again and we never seemed to disrupt them in the backfield. We gave up a critical touchdown late in the first half that really gave them momentum going into halftime. We had zero takeaways and what few big plays the defense made were generally rendered inept due to penalties that broke our backs.

- Penalties... Indiana 9 for 84 yards. That's exactly what a bad offense (Wake Forest) needed to score just enough points to win the game.

- Total Yards... Indiana 611, Wake Forest 352. We nearly doubled them up in yards, but lost the game. Why? Turnovers. Indiana 5, Wake Forest 0. Remember when we went to Oregon in 2004 with Gerry DiNardo and somehow came out with a victory? The box score looked a lot like that.

- Odds and Ends... most yards thrown by an IU QB in a single game... probably the most interceptions thrown by an IU QB in a single game... Ricky Jones finally broke out of his slump with a monster game of 208 yards... Westbrook continued to be solid with 129 yards and 2 TDs... we've had two kicks blocked in three games which shows we have some major work to do in regards to blocking on special teams... saw the Tyler Natee package for the first time, we'll see where that goes... still struggling to score points when we break into scoring territory and it burned us in this one.

CONCLUSION: It's college football, folks. This happens. Who would have thought Wisconsin would defeat Michigan State 30-6 in East Lansing? Or that Duke would win at Notre Dame? Or that Les Miles would be fired four games into the season? For us, our game was winnable, so losing it was a missed opportunity. You already have people who have given up on the team, which is disappointing to say the least. But there are still a number of winnable games left on the schedule, so a bowl game is still within reach. But the Hoosiers lost room for error this past weekend. They need to play much more inspired football or else we may be be looking at a 2-4 record going up to Evanston on October 22nd.

[Dalton26]

 

https://twitter.com/ZachOsterman/status/780495287706091520

 

[ThompsonHoosier]

I hope they both are able to play. If we are to pull the upset against MSU we need a healthy O-line. We will also need to play smarter on defense and not throw 5 picks on offense. Maybe we'll get to see Camion Patrick soon; keep hearing how great he is.

[Josh]

I was walking downtown St Petersburg this morning when I ran into former governor of Florida Charlie Crist. We struck up a conversation.

It's Saturday, so of course I'm wearing my IU hat. He mentioned that he played quarterback at Wake Forest in his youth and asked if I watched the IU Wake Forest game last week. He said he was shocked that Wake won.

I'm not sure how to take that. Is our football reputation that good across the country?

#footballschool

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[HoosierAloha]

IU getting love on College Gameday!

[lucel15]

IU getting love on College Gameday!

What they say

[HoosierAloha]

Just now, lucel15 said:

What they say

Talked about IU pushing O$U down to the wire at home.  How MSU has a good defense and IU has a good offense.  Took IU in the upset over MSU.