Unbeaten Hoosiers and their coach and quarterback dominate the AP’s Big Ten midseason awards

First-year coach Curt Cignetti promised a new and improved Indiana, and he has delivered with the unbeaten Hoosiers off to their best start since 1967.

The Hoosiers have already doubled their win total from last season, and for that they earned four of the 10 Associated Press Big Ten midseason awards.

Nine AP writers who cover the conference voted 16th-ranked Indiana the most surprising Big Ten team of the first half of the season, Cignetti the top coach and quarterback Kurtis Rourke the top first-year transfer and most surprising player.

Since 1968, the season after its only Rose Bowl appearance, Indiana has finished with just 12 winning records and never won more than eight games. The Hoosiers went 14-7 in 2019-20 but slipped back to 9-27 the next three seasons.

Enter Cignetti, who at 63 has his first head coaching job in a power conference. He arrived after going 52-9 in five seasons at James Madison and flipped the Indiana roster with 54 newcomers, half of them transfers. Of the 27 transfers, 13 followed him from James Madison.

The one who has made the biggest impact came from Ohio: Rourke, a sixth-year player who has made a better-than-expected transition from the Mid-American Conference to the Big Ten. His 292 yards passing per game rank second in the league, he’s tied for the lead with 14 touchdown passes, and his 73.8% completion rate is third in the country. He’s the first Indiana quarterback to throw for three TDs in three Big Ten games since Harry Gonso in that magical ’67 season.

Rourke operates an offense that averages 516 yards and 48 points per game and leads the Big Ten with 32 pass plays of 20 yards or longer.

Top offensive player

Dillon Gabriel, Oregon. The quarterback who transferred from Oklahoma for his final season has completed 76% of his passes for 298 yards per game. He’s thrown for at least two TDs in every game and has a total of 13. His 1.5% interception rate (3 on 201 attempts) is tied for fifth-best among the power-conference quarterbacks with at least 200 attempts, according to Sportradar.

Last week, he threw for 341 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another score in the second-ranked Ducks’ 32-31 win over Ohio State in a top-five matchup.

Top defensive player

Mason Graham, Michigan. The defensive tackle has lived up to his preseason AP All-America billing and is building his NFL draft stock. He regularly has contended with double-teams and, according to Pro Football Focus, has played no fewer than 46 snaps in five of the Wolverines’ six games. He played more than 46 in only one game last season.

Graham, who teams with Kenneth Grant to form one of the nation’s top defensive line duos, has 3.5 sacks, four tackles for loss and 21 tackles. His PFF rating is eighth-highest among FBS interior linemen and third-highest in the Big Ten.

Top first-year freshman

Jeremiah Smith, Ohio State. The wide receiver averages 17.3 yards on his 32 catches and 92 yards per game, the second-best numbers by a freshman behind Alabama star Ryan Williams. Physical and able to pick up yards after the catch, Smith caught a season-high nine balls for 100 yards and a touchdown last week while being covered by top Oregon CB Jabbar Muhammad.

Most disappointing team

Southern California has found life in the Big Ten challenging, to say the least. The season started out with a neutral-site win over LSU, but now the Trojans are 3-3 overall, 1-3 in the Big Ten and out of College Football Playoff contention.

USC was No. 11 in the AP Top 25 just two weeks ago after erasing a double-digit deficit to beat Wisconsin. But a bad loss at Minnesota was followed by last week’s home overtime loss to Penn State in a game in which it led or was tied the final 49 minutes of regulation. This week the Trojans go to Maryland for their longest road trip of the season.

Hottest seat

USC is 5-8 since it opened last season 6-0, and the Trojans’ start in Big Ten play has upped the pressure on Lincoln Riley.

The biggest issue is defense. Stopping the run is crucial to success in the Big Ten, and that’s where the Trojans have struggled. They’re 16th out of 18 in the conference in rushing defense. They’ve given up five runs of 30 yards or longer, including four that have gone for 40-plus.

Biggest injuries

There’s a tie between Wisconsin quarterback Tyler Van Dyke and USC linebacker Eric Gentry.

Van Dyke transferred from Miami and beat out Braedyn Locke for the starter’s job. Van Dyke led the Badgers to wins in the first two games before going down with a season-ending knee injury against Alabama. The Badgers are 2-1 since.

Gentry was coming off the best game of his career — 12 tackles, three tackles for loss, one sack against Michigan — when he left the next game against Wisconsin with an undisclosed injury. The Trojans have been without their defensive anchor for two games.

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AP Sports Writers Dave Campbell, Tom Canavan, Larry Lage, Steve Megargee, Eric Olson, Anne M. Peterson, Joe Reedy, Andrew Seligman and Mitch Stacy contributed.

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By ERIC OLSON
AP College Football Writer