Curt Cignetti spoke to the media following IU football’s 27-13 win against USC on Saturday at Memorial Stadium.
Watch his postgame comments below:
A full transcript of Cignetti’s postgame comments is available below, via ASAP Sports:
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, hard-fought game. Give USC a lot of credit. It was back-and-forth game. We made the plays come crunch time, and it’s a good team win. Proud of our team.
Q. Can you take us through the decision to start Grant tonight?
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, I kind of made that decision really the night that we beat Minnesota. When I went home and when I woke up, you know, it was kind of confirmed based on how I felt. Wanted to confirm what I was thinking before I went to bed, and supported by everybody in the organization.
Q. You said he got sick last week. Did that throw a wrench in things at all?
CURT CIGNETTI: Not really. It was a bye week so Tuesday was a walk-through and Wednesday and Thursday were about an hour ten minutes, and gave us an opportunity to look at Tyler Cherry and Jacob Bell, which was great to do because Tyler did really well and Jacob Bell really impressed me.
Because Josh was still recovering, and so it was good.
Q. This might be kind of asked and answered, but do you anticipate any further evaluation or in your mind is Grant just the guy going forward?
CURT CIGNETTI: My position is going to be we’ll evaluate it this week as we go.
Q. Big picture your team has been in dogfight, dogfight dogfight. You’ve had to battle. Here you are nine wins, two left, in position for a third consecutive CFP appearance. Just your thoughts on the resiliency or whatever words you would choose.
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, you know, our guys have really come through in tight, close games. This one ended up being a two-score game because we made some plays at the end. I had a team like that my first year at Elon where we won games two through nine, eight in a row, and they all went down to the final play.
We’ve had a lot of the close games this year, and I think it’s the mark of a team that’s got a lot of grit, competitive excellence, can play when the game is on the line.
That’s what this team has, competitive character. You know, we’ve had a lot of blow-out wins around here in ’24 and ’25. Probably three times more blow-out wins than close games, but we’ve had a lot of close games this year, but we always find a way.
Q. You didn’t seem thrilled with your position in the playoff rankings. Do you anticipate moving up? Any further thoughts on where you are?
CURT CIGNETTI: I haven’t seen a single score and really doesn’t matter who is where Tuesday I guess it would be.. because it’s all going to play out on the field. There is a lot of the football left.
So I’m just proud of the team and the way we responded against a tough opponent. We had shot ourselves in the foot, had some MOs in the first half, and came out and played a strong second half.
Q. Coach, can you talk about how Coach Shanahan called the game tonight? And then the run game in the second half, that started to get going.
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, well, we been kind of playing in a tent so to speak the last two weeks, conservative, and we all hated it.
We wanted to attack this team, and we came out early and made some plays and left some on the field, too. Had too many penalties again. I don’t know how hard it is to stay on sides, especially when you got all these veteran guys up front.
I thought Mike did a really nice job all night long. We wanted to play to win and attack and not play with any fear, and I think you saw that up until the very end.
Q. The way Jacob Savage played, I know he led you in tackles. He had that key tip pass. Just the way he’s played, probably not like a freshman.
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, he’s a mature guy. He had like 150 tackles as a senior, maybe more. But he had three years of that in high school. Now, then you look at it and say, well, how is this going to translate at this level, you know, Kentucky high school football?
But the guy just loves ball and he’s got a nose for the ball, and instinct, and he’s really, really smart, super smart. He’s a high achiever. He’s worked his way up into a starting role and stepped in for Ro Hardy and played great football.
Q. I know last year you talked about winning the key situations and how important that was. In a game like this, third down, red zone, how much does that success help springboard you toward some of the goals you have this year?
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, that was huge. We were 7 of 13 on third down offensively, and defensively 2 of 11 they were on third and 0, one on fourth. So we won that, and we have really struggled on third down the last couple of weeks.
We led the country last year, but not been very good lately. A lot of missed opportunities. We cashed in on a lot of those opportunities tonight.
And then in the red area, we’ve done a great job defensively of holding people to field goals. Been doing that for a while.
And we were able to punch the ball in the end zone. Not enough. You would like to score every time you’re down there, touchdown, but enough to get it done tonight.
Q. You said you won a lot of games by big margins around here. What do you think winning some of these types of games that have gone down to the last few minutes does for this football team as you go forward no into the most important part of the season?
CURT CIGNETTI: I think this really strengthens your belief. When it’s a back-and-forth game and every play becomes so important and has a history and life of its own so to speak, and you consistently find ways to get it done, I think it gives you a really kind of — it brings you together as a team, which fosters great leadership, guys with a voice and tremendous belief in the organization.
Q. The interception by Isaiah Jones in the red zone, what did you see on that play?
CURT CIGNETTI: Well, from my angle you don’t get to see quite everything, but that was maybe the huge play of the night. It reminded me of three or four other interceptions we’ve made defensively over the last three years or going back the last ten years.
He’s playmaker. It was a key, clutch play.
Q. How important was the run game in establishing control of this one, especially Khobie Martin the way he came on late?
CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, I think you saw it in the second half. We were starting to lean on them a little bit and wear on them, and statistically we talked about that at halftime, you know, that the second half, when you looked at the numbers, the two teams playing tonight, that we had a chance to kind of create an opportunity.
We were wearing on them and we were starting to run the ball well. It takes the run game time normally. By the end we pretty much had our way with it.
Q. To follow up on that, you’ve had Beebe and Turbo, who have produced for you at times this year. What’s different about Khobie? Seemed like he really just kind of injected something into that run game, especially in the second half.
CURT CIGNETTI: He’s fresh, number one. He got hurt the second play of the first game. Played a few plays against Minnesota. You know, he’s a big guy. I mean, he’s 205, 210, but he’s very agile. He’s fast. He has acceleration. He can lower the boom on people, too. He’s got great body flexibility. He’s fresh.
And then you have Beebe, you know, who has got the heart of a lion and just continues to come through and carry the male. He’s dinged up but you would never know it based on how he plays.
He has a lot of Kaelon Black in him and can’t say enough good things about him.
