Curt Cignetti Sends Another Blunt Message to Indiana Fans After Setting Expectations Straight: “Don’t Fear Losing”

Indiana has reached an unusual point under Curt Cignetti. A six-point win is now enough to make some fans wonder whether something is wrong, even though the Hoosiers are still undefeated. After going 16-0 last season and winning the national championship, Indiana is no longer being judged by the standards that followed Cignetti into Bloomington. Now, every close game comes with questions about whether the team is slipping.

Cignetti, as usual, is not interested in feeding that anxiety. After Indiana’s 29-23 win over Northwestern, the head coach believes that close games are part of football, and playing scared is not the way to win them.

“Part of learning how to win is don’t fear losing,”he said via Kirkwood and Dunn. “You gotta let it all hang out. You can’t play not to lose. You got to play aggressive, make it happen.”

That was hardly the first time Cignetti has pushed back against anxious reactions from the Indiana fan base.

The Hoosiers had already dealt with one such moment after a 38-0 win over Western Kentucky. Despite the shutout, some fans were unhappy with how Indiana started the game. Cignetti was not interested in hearing the complaints.

“What are we, 29-2?” he said. “When we came, I saw the pictures, 10,000 people in the stands. Don’t b—h about a 38-0 win.”

The record was actually even better at that point, but Cignetti’s message was clear. After everything Indiana had accomplished, he did not want one imperfect stretch of football to overshadow the result.

Cignetti knows close games are coming

Northwestern provided another test of that patience. Indiana entered the September 25 matchup as the heavy favorite, but the Wildcats refused to go away. The Hoosiers led 15-7 entering the fourth quarter before Northwestern made the game uncomfortable. Indiana eventually pulled away enough to secure a 29-23 win, but it was far from the type of result some fans have come to expect after last year’s historic run.

For Cignetti, however, winning a close game is not a sign that everything is falling apart.

He pointed back to last season, when Indiana navigated several tense moments on its way to an undefeated championship campaign. The lesson from those games was not that a championship team will dominate every opponent from start to finish. It was that players have to remain composed when things stop going according to plan.

“I think it’s natural when games get close for fans to be nervous,” he said. “I think that’s natural. Now if you’re looking at kind of social media stuff, I mean that’s hard to decipher because there might be two to four really loud voices out there.”

Even an elite team will have games where it is forced to fight until the final whistle. And Cignetti knows this year’s team is not last year’s team.

The Hoosiers have new players, younger contributors, and an identity that is still developing. They also have to deal with the physical demands that came with playing 16 games during last year’s championship run and the absences that followed during the spring.

Cignetti is therefore not promising that everything will work itself out.

“I’m not gonna say we’re gonna be all right because I’d never say that,” he said. “My total focus is Rutgers. I respect Rutgers. I think it’s gonna be a heck of a challenge. They’re improving every week, and we’re gonna have to play really darn well.”

The Hoosiers entered Saturday night’s road game at Rutgers at 4-0 and ranked No. 5/6, while the Scarlet Knights were 1-3 after a 58-7 win over Howard. On paper, Indiana is again expected to control the game.

But if the Northwestern game showed anything, Cignetti does not want his team playing with the fear of what might happen if it does not dominate. For a program that has spent the past year learning how to win, he is now trying to teach everyone around it how to handle the games that do not go exactly as planned.

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