UCLA Football Preview: Curt Cignetti Is Trying to Turn Around Indiana Football
After a successful five years at James Madison, Cignetti took the head coaching gig in Bloomington.
After having this past weekend off, UCLA football will play their home and Big Ten opener this Saturday afternoon. The good news is that, after an absolutely brutal week temperature-wise, the forecast for this coming Saturday is for a downright balmy, by comparison, high of 81 degrees. So, there doesn’t appear to be much of a chance of this weekend’s game rivaling the Bowling Green game from a few years ago.
When the Bruins take the field this weekend, it will be against the Indiana Hoosiers and it will be the first meeting ever between the schools on the gridiron.
Of course, Bruin fans may be more familiar with Indiana basketball than Hoosier football. I don’t think I want to remind any of you of a certain famous Indiana basketball alum who took over Coach Wooden’s program for way too long. Though if he should show up at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, we should all boo him.
Let’s focus on football….
Like the Bruins, the Hoosiers have a new head football coach. In fact, new coach Curt Cignetti is the Hoosiers’ seventh football coach since 2000. By comparison, UCLA has only had six permanent head coaches during that same timeframe.
Cignetti would have been an inspired choice to replace Chip Kelly if Kelly had been fired at the end of last season. In fact, I think I had him on my short list of potential replacements. That’s because Cignetti had led James Madison to a 52-9 mark over five seasons, where he won no fewer than seven games in a season.
Not only did Cignetti coach former Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers and Russell Wilson when Cignetti was at NC State, but he was an original member of Nick Saban’s coaching staff at Alabama, where he was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. He was instrumental in recruiting Alabama’s 2008 recruiting class which featured six first-round NFL draft picks. So, Cignetti understands recruiting. Thankfully, he hasn’t been at Indiana long enough to have had much of an impact on recruiting. Indiana’s 2024 recruiting class was still ranked just 65th in the nation, but of course, that blows away Chip Kelly’s final UCLA recruiting class which was ranked 90th in the country.
Though Cignetti has always coached on the offensive side of the ball, he still brought Mike Shanahan, his offensive coordinator at James Madison, with him. And, no, I’m not talking about the former head coach of the Raiders and Broncos. This Mike Shanahan played wide receiver at Pitt and has coached with Cignetti at each of his head coaching stops. Based on a James Madison depth chart from last season, it looks like Cignetti and Shanahan will run an offense that features one running back with three receivers and a tight end, but we’ll look into that more during our offensive preview.
Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines has been a member of Cignetti’s staff since 2014 with the exception of the 2016 season when he coached at UC Davis. Haines joined Cignetti as his defensive line coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and, after UC Davis, he re-joined him at Elon as the linebackers coach. When Cignetti moved on to James Madison, he became the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach and was promoted to the DC in 2022. Last season at JMU, Haines was a semifinalist for the Broyles Award which honors the nation’s top assistant coach. It looks like Haines will run a 4-2-5 defense if that JMU depth chart from last season is a good indicator.
Let’s look at the Indiana special teams….
Special Teams
Redshirt freshman Nicolas Radicic will handle the field goal and PAT duties for the Hoosiers. Last season as a true freshman, Radicic appeared in just one game against Indiana State and made two extra points and a field goal. So far this year, he kicked a 35-yard field goal against Florida International along with four extra points, and last week, he made all eleven extra points as the Hoosiers defeated Western Illinois, 77-3.
The kickoff duties could be split between redshirt senior transfer Derek McCormick and Alejandro Quintero. McCormick seems to be the team’s primarily kickoff specialist after being the only guy kicking off against FIU and he was the first one kicking off against Western Illinois, but Quintero took the final seven kickoffs last week. McCormick is averaging 63.27 yards per kickoff with nine of his eleven kickoffs going for touchbacks while Quintero averaged 59.28 yards per kickoff with just one touchback. So, it’s likely to depend on whether Cignetti and staff want to force a touchback and give the Bruins the ball on the 25, or if they think they are more likely to pin UCLA deeper by having Quintero not put the ball into the end zone on kickoffs.
Last week, senior punter James Evans got the week off because the Hoosiers didn’t punt once against Western Illinois. He didn’t work too hard in the first game of the season either. He only punted three times against FIU, averaging 43.0 yards per punt with a long of 49 yards. Hopefully, he makes up for not getting any work last week by having to punt a lot this weekend after the Bruin defense stops Indiana’s offense.
Super senior Myles Price has returned three of Indiana’s four punt returns this season, but Price’s days as the starting punt returner may be numbered. He has just 6 punt return yards on those punts. So, he’s averaging just 2 yards per return. Meanwhile, Ke'Shawn Williams returned one punt last weekend and he gained 14 yards on that return. So, we could see Williams replacing Price based on the fact that he outperformed Price but it’s hard to compare results from a game against a clearly inferior team like Western Illinois. We will likely have to wait until we see who lines up to return punts to know who will be doing it.
Grad transfer Solomon Vanhorse is a running back who followed Cignetti to Indiana from James Madison. So far, he’s the only guy to return a kickoff this season for the Hoosiers, having returned one kickoff for 25 yards against FIU and one for 32 yards against Western Illinois. Who else will be deep for the Hoosiers? We don’t know because Indiana’s game notes do not include a depth chart.
Go Bruins!!!
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wow, i actually learned more from your Bruin's site than any where else! can't wait to see what happens Saturday.