BLOOMINGTON – IU coach Tom Allen pushed so hard for an aggressive offense ahead of Saturday's matchup against Maryland he thought people around the program might have grown tired of hearing him talk about it.

Allen acknowledged as much after his team’s 34-32 win against the Terrapins.

IU (5-5, 2-5 Big Ten) came in with just one Big Ten win (against lowly Rutgers). Stale was a word more often associated with coordinator Mike DeBord’s offense, at least publicly, than dynamic. The Hoosiers weren’t turning heads, and more importantly weren’t winning games.

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So Allen harped on the size of receivers on IU’s roster such as the 6-4, 229-pound Donavan Hale and 6-3, 215-pound Nick Westbrook. He wanted to exploit the advantage they owned against smaller cornerbacks and safeties. It worked.

“It’s hard to cover them, so you get interference calls and we got a bunch of those,” said Allen. “It’s hard, and I know you can’t do it every snap obviously, but that’s to me, it’s an objective for sure. I just know how hard it is on (defense) and I don’t like having to go against those kinds of receivers. So it was very effective today for us and it won us the game.”

A team’s inability to stretch the field vertically can allow a defense to load the box, shut down a running game and force that unit to be one-dimensional with quick, short passes because nothing else will work. Think back to IU’s loss against Iowa, when just four passes for the Hoosiers netted 15 yards or more and Iowa was called for one pass interference penalty. IU rushed for 67 yards as a team and redshirt sophomore quarterback Peyton Ramsey tossed the ball 42 times, completed 31 passes for 263 yards with two interceptions.

The Hoosiers scored 16 points and lost by 26.

Against Maryland (5-5, 3-4), the number of passes that gained 15 yards or more might have only increased one to five, but there were also four pass interference calls accepted and another declined. Most of those completions were longer than the longest caught pass against Iowa, too. And IU ran for 131 yards on a 4.4 yards per carry average as Ramsey averaged a little more than 15 yards per completion.

“They were giving us those down the field throws,” said Ramsey, who also targeted sophomore Ty Fryfogle deep. “For me it was just a matter of letting Donavan, Nick and Ty go make plays. They did a really good job today.”

Ramsey completed 16 of his 28 passes for 243 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. He also ran for a 35-yard touchdown in the second quarter, and couldn’t emphasize enough just how important it was the Hoosiers kept their aggressive mindset from the first half rolling in the second.

“It set a tone of, ’We are going to go win this thing,’” Ramsey said. “The coaches instilled their trust in us to go make a big play and we were able to do it.”

DeBord has said this season IU’s choices on offense have a lot to do with what the defense presents. Don’t force something that isn’t there. But against Maryland his play calls pressed the Terrapins for a response more so than many of the Hoosiers’ previous opponents.

IU was the aggressor, and it paid off.

“Coach, he does a good job with the play calling,” said Hale, who caught three balls for 92 yards and a score. “We’ve just got to execute it. When they do throw the ball deep, we’ve just got to make plays.”

IU fans should expect more of the same against Michigan and Purdue, the two opponents left on IU’s schedule as the Hoosiers attempt to clinch a bowl trip. Allen doesn’t want to coach conservatively.

“I just want to be more aggressive,” said Allen, referencing his decision to go for it on fourth down on IU’s opening drive of the third quarter but also his maturation as a coach. “I just think that's how you win.”

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Jordan Guskey on Twitter at @JordanGuskey or email him at jguskey@gannett.com.