For IU football, a perfect sendoff — and an ideal warmup for Purdue

BLOOMINGTON – Indiana sent out the senior class that transformed its once-listless defense with a shutout Saturday. It put in its best day of Big Ten work in 27 years.

Now the Hoosiers have set themselves up to achieve bowl eligibility for a third-straight season, and do something they’ve never done: beat Purdue five times in a row.

“I don’t think I have to make a big deal about that,” IU coach Tom Allen said Saturday. “They understand how huge it is. But at the same time, it’s Purdue, and that’s enough that needs to be said.”

IU demolished overmatched Rutgers 41-0 Saturday, in as complete of a game as this program has managed in league play in years. The Hoosiers (5-6, 2-6) outgained their visitors by 317 yards, posted four sacks to Rutgers’ none and put two backs over 100 yards rushing.

They led 17-0 after one quarter and finished the game with 27 straight rushing plays. Both numbers spoke to a level of dominance IU hasn’t enjoyed against a Big Ten opponent in at least a generation.

The offense deserves some credit. Richard Lagow tossed two more touchdown passes and, one pick aside, continued his positive momentum since being restored to the starting quarterback job. Morgan Ellison and Cole Gest followed a solid joint display at Illinois by each breaking 100 yards rushing and each finding the end zone (Ellison did twice) against Rutgers.

But Saturday belonged to that once-beleaguered defense, the one that used to look up at not only the entire Big Ten, but a lot of the country as well. Allen was hired two years ago to fix what seemed unfixable.

He has.

For Tegray Scales, Chris Covington, Chase Dutra, Greg Gooch, Robert McCray, Nate Hoff, Rashard Fant, Tony Fields and a host of others, such a dominant performance in their Memorial Stadium curtain call on senior day was the most fitting ending imaginable.

“It’s a great way to go out,” said Fant, one of the Hoosiers’ fifth-year seniors. “It shows the process and the journey we’ve had to overcome.

“My first three years, we were really bad. Now we’ve turned it around and we’re good, but we’ve still got to keep improving.”

There’s been plenty of improvement just in the last two weeks.

IU allowed Rutgers only 190 total yards, and 87 on the ground. The Hoosiers’ four sacks took their season total to 35, more than they managed through 13 games last season.

The shutout was Indiana’s first in Big Ten play since 1993, and the 41-0 final score represented the heaviest league win the Hoosiers have managed since defeating Northwestern 42-0 in 1990.

“That’s pretty special. That’s hard to do now,” Allen said of the shutout. “It is very fitting for a group of young men that, unfortunately, when I got here, they were struggling and had lost their confidence, had some soul-searching to do. The guys that were out there today were really the core of the turnaround.”

Saturday’s win means the Hoosiers have taken the field with their postseason hopes in the balance for two weekends running and answered the challenge both times. Now, there’s just one left.

For the third-consecutive season, IU enters the Old Oaken Bucket game against Purdue 5-6, needing a win for bowl eligibility.

Victory over Purdue would mark the Hoosiers’ first-ever five-game winning streak in the series. It would mean every senior on roster — fourth- or fifth-year — would finish their college career undefeated against the Boilermakers. And it would be Indiana’s sixth win in the series’ last eight games, IU’s best such stretch since accomplishing the same feat between 1987-94.

“It feels great, just knowing the guys are fighting for us, and we’re fighting for those guys,” Gooch said of his younger teammates. “(Purdue) is a good team. We respect the game, we respect our opponents. We’re gonna treat them like any other team and just prepare and do everything else we do during a normal week.”

Two weeks ago, following a potentially demoralizing 45-17 loss to Wisconsin, Allen asked his seniors to stand up at a weekly team meeting and explain what three wins to end the season would mean to them.

The Hoosiers have not won three-straight Big Ten games since 1993. Even against opponents like Illinois and Rutgers, neither of whom will be bowling this season, getting from 3-6 to 6-6 was going to be difficult.

Since that meeting, IU has won the first two of those three games by a combined 51 points, notched 12 sacks and outgained a pair of opponents by 451 total yards.

There’s only one hurdle left.

“I’ve never once mentioned anything about do-or-die, one-game season,” Allen said. “But when I had the seniors talk about what this (stretch) meant to them, that came up over and over again.”

“They know,” Allen added. “They know.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

►MORE: 3 reasons IU beat Rutgers, 41-0