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jake trotter
Bloomington, Indiana – No team in college football had won a conference game by 50 or more points this season – except Indiana,
The second-place Hoosiers accomplished the feat for the second time on Saturday.
A month after destroying Illinois by 53 points, Indiana defeated UCLA 56-6,
Coach Curt Cignetti said, “We try to play every game like it’s nothing, regardless of the competitive circumstances, there’s a game on the line.” “That’s our mentality.”
Indiana linebacker eden fisher Bruins quarterback selected Niko Imaliaeva On the second snap of the game and returned it for a touchdown.
The Hoosiers led 35–3 at halftime, then opened the second half with a 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive before resting several of their starters.
star quarterback Fernando Mendoza The remaining half sat as his younger brother, a freshman Alberto MendozaTook his place at quarterback.
“UCLA is a very capable team,” said Fernando Mendoza, who threw for 168 yards and a total of four touchdowns to remain at the top of the Heisman conversation. “Teams are always looking for… ‘Hey, do we have that spark? Can we come back from this game?’ And so from the beginning, we knew we needed a dominant drive… to stoke their flame and impose our will.”
The Bruins arrived in Bloomington riding a three-game winning streak, highlighted by an upset over then-seventh-ranked Penn State on October 4.
But after Mendoza threw an interception of a tipped pass at the line of scrimmage on Indiana’s first offensive possession, the Hoosiers scored touchdowns on seven of their next eight drives.
Cignetti said that the combination of Indiana’s running game, producing 262 rushing yards, and its defense, which only allowed UCLA to muster 201 total yards, ultimately broke the Bruins’ will.
“You start to see a team waving the white flag,” Cignetti said. “This usually happens sometime in the third trimester. That may be what happened here.”
According to ESPN Research, Indiana is the first Power 4 school since Clemson in 2018 with two 50-point conference wins in the same season.
The Tigers finished 15–0 that year and won the national championship.
