Okay, as spring football practices go, it wasn’t Rembrandt or Picasso or DaVinci, but that wasn’t the point. After nine sessions Indiana coach Bill Lynch wanted to see progress, find young guys who can play and keep guys healthy.
So on an unseasonably warm afternoon beneath a blazing sun and cloudless blue skies at Memorial Stadium, the Hoosiers strutted their stuff.
“We put some new things in on both sides of the ball,” Lynch said. “We’re starting to get some guys dinged up so we played a lot of young guys in as practice went on. The more young guys you have in there the tougher it gets. It won’t be quite good. We put new things in on Tuesday, work on it on Thursday and Friday so by the time we scrimmage on Saturday’s it’s generally pretty clean.”
Clean is good, development is better. Lynch is building his program with the idea of redshirting as many freshmen as possible unless a new guy can come in and fill a need. He wants to make sure the young guys can handle what teams such as Ohio State and Penn State and even Michigan w
“Overall we’ve had a good spring,” Lynch said. “We’ve have a lot of young redshirt guys get in so we can see where they fit into it. One thing I can tell you, we’ve found more guys ready to play, whether it’s on offense or defense or special teams.”
This is huge given IU lost a ton from an already shaky defense. It lost some key offensive linemen. Lynch wants instant impact guys, players who will make a difference from their first snap, regardless of experience.
It’s about winning, of course, and after seasons of 3-9 and 4-8, the fans are way past the patient stage. They want to see IU upset somebody, be a Big Ten factor (upper third in the conference is fine) and make a bowl. You know, do what Ohio State does all the time.
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