‘Tyrant’ Curt Cignetti ‘pleased’ with culture-building Week 2 win over Kennesaw State

If you took a look up and down Indiana’s sideline in the second half of Saturday’s blowout victory over Kennesaw State, you might have expected to see the kind of carefree looseness that so often comes when a game is no longer in doubt.

Helmets unbuckled. Shoulder pads off. Players laughing with one another. Starters sneaking in early celebrations. The kind of images that often accompany a September rout against an overmatched opponent.

But Indiana’s sideline offered no such scene. Helmets stayed on. Chatter was limited to instructions and encouragement. Players leaned forward, eyes fixed on the field as though the game hung in the balance. Coaches barked reminders. The intensity that had opened the game never wavered, even with a four-score cushion deep into the fourth quarter.

That wasn’t coincidence. That was Curt Cignetti.

“I’m probably most pleased with the way we dominated the second half,” Cignetti said after the game. “When we built the big lead, I like the way our guys kept playing one play at a time like it was nothing-nothing. I didn’t see guys laughing on the sideline. That’s what we ask them to do. Time to be satisfied is in the locker room.”

MORE: Coach Q&A: Curt Cignetti talks Week 2 win over Kennesaw State

The scoreboard was emphatic, a 56-9 demolition that featured 35 unanswered Hoosier points after Kennesaw State’s last scoring drive early in the third quarter. But what mattered more than the margin was the manner in which Indiana finished.

The Hoosiers suffocated the Owls, piling on touchdown after touchdown while never yielding so much as a field goal over the final 27 minutes of the Week 2 contest. That performance, relentless and uncompromising, stood in sharp contrast to the week prior, when Indiana closed sluggishly in a 27-14 win over Old Dominion.

Against Old Dominion, Indiana had faltered late, outscored 7-3 in the final 25 minutes. The Hoosiers added only a third-quarter field goal while giving away a fourth-quarter touchdown. They won, but the way they won left a sour taste.

It wasn’t the kind of finish Cignetti demands. It wasn’t the kind of habits he wants ingrained. And so, in the days leading up to Kennesaw State, and even during the halftime intermission, he made his expectations crystal clear: the second half would be the measure of who his team was becoming.

“He’s telling us to stay focused. In this game, he made it an emphasis to really finish the fourth quarter,” defensive end Kellan Wyatt said. “We felt like coming out in the second half, the very first thing was to not come out half-stepping or loafing. He made it an emphasis to go out there and play harder than we did in the first half.”

Indiana responded. After a first half that ended with a comfortable 21-6 lead but left Cignetti dissatisfied — Kennesaw State had pieced together back-to-back scoring drives and outgained the Hoosiers in the second quarter — the Hoosiers stormed into the third quarter as if the game were tied.

Touchdowns stacked up. Defensive stops mounted. Every possession became another nail in the coffin, and the Hoosiers never let their foot off Kennesaw State’s throat. By the time the fourth quarter ticked away, Indiana had not only secured a blowout, but more importantly, had secured a lesson in what Cignetti demands.

For veterans of the program, those who have been around Cignetti long enough, the demand no longer needs to be spelled out.

“As soon as we got in there [halftime locker room], Coach Cignetti told us we have to come out and still play hard. Any game, it doesn’t matter if we’re up 50 or down 50,” wide receiver Elijah Sarratt said. “He doesn’t even have to say it all the time. We know, as a group, that we have to keep going until the clocks hits zero in the fourth quarter.”

That is the culture Cignetti is intent on hardwiring into his program. His players know it, his veterans repeat it and his insistence never wavers. He is, by his own admission, unforgiving in upholding it.

“I was a little bit of a tyrant on the sideline in the fourth quarter,” Cignetti said. “But my job is to make the team the best it can be, so that’s the way it is.”

Even in a game well out of reach, he patrolled, demanded, corrected. To outsiders, it may have looked excessive. To Cignetti, it was simply necessary. Habits aren’t built only in tense moments. Habits are built in every moment, especially when it’s easiest to relax.

The urgency is magnified by the makeup of this year’s roster. Indiana welcomed 24 new transfers this offseason, a mix of players from varying backgrounds.

Some, like center Pat Coogan from Notre Dame, arrived steeped in the culture of winning programs. Others came from middling or even losing programs, where the standard of preparation and finish wasn’t the same. For those players, Cignetti’s expectations can be jarring. And for the coach, that means his role as enforcer is even more critical.

“You’ve got to really coach this team every day right now and reinforce the standards and the expectations in everything you do,” Cignetti said. “Like the walkthrough yesterday, I wasn’t real pleased with. But it was all new guys, and you just can’t assume they know because they don’t. They don’t know.”

So he doesn’t assume. He reminds, he demands, he prods — even when the game is already over on the scoreboard.

“On the field, I’m never relieved because you’ve got to keep the pedal to the metal. You’re trying to really teach habits,” Cignetti said. “If you’re playing to the circumstances of the game, you’re getting worse … Those are habits, and you’re trying to create those habits. At the end of the game, I was pleased.”

That final phrase — “I was pleased” — might not sound like much, but in Cignetti’s vocabulary, it carries the weight of gold. He is famously “never satisfied,” a coach who demands without pause, who preaches process over outcome. That he would admit satisfaction, even briefly, speaks volumes.

For Cignetti, it’s a byproduct of his standards and his expectations becoming the norm.

“Our kids, we have enough guys here that have been here that understand what we want and that were not happy with the way they played last week,” Cignetti said. “They responded really well in the fourth quarter.”

SEE ALSO: Elijah ‘Waffle House’ Sarratt’s Week 2 performance may be a sign of greater things to come

The fourth quarter against Kennesaw State wasn’t just garbage time. It was proof that Indiana could learn from its Week 1 shortcomings. Proof that the Hoosiers could enforce a kill-shot when opportunity presented itself. Proof that Cignetti’s voice, sharp as it may sound in the moment, is being heard.

“It’s the culture,” Wyatt said. “When you have a head coach that leads the way he does — everybody respects him — it makes you want to listen and go harder.”

Indiana’s second half wasn’t about Kennesaw State. It wasn’t about padding the score or appeasing the crowd. It was about establishing something larger, something lasting. It was about teaching a team to finish the same way it starts. About instilling a habit that doesn’t bend to circumstance, that doesn’t play to the scoreboard, that doesn’t relax until the work is complete.

And so, on Saturday, the tyrant on the sideline smiled. Not because the Hoosiers won. But because of how they won.

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