Curt Cignetti: 'It's hard to beat a really good football team twice'
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There are very few rarities in sports these days and it’s a treat when you see something you don’t see very often or at all in the world of college football. It happens in the NFL all the time to every team, as well as in baseball and basketball.
In college football, however, playing the same team twice in one season doesn’t happen all that often. But we’re all about it see it happen when the OregonDucks face the Indiana Hoosiers in the College Football Playoff semifinals in Atlanta at the Peach Bowl. The winner moves on to play for the national title.
Indiana’s challenge will be defeating a Top 5 team twice in the same season, and no one knows that accomplishing that feat will be more difficult than Hoosiers’ coach Curt Cignetti.
“It’s hard to beat a really good football team twice, and Oregon is a really good football team,” he said to the Big Ten Network crew after his team crushed Alabama in the Rose Bowl 38-3 on New Year’s Day.
Should Indiana defeat the Ducks for the second time, it might be one of the better feats in college football history. They would defeat Oregon in Eugene at Autzen Stadium and then at a neutral site, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
In that first meeting, Indiana’s defense was able to put pressure on Dante Moore just enough to hold the Duck offense to just one touchdown in the 30-20 Hoosiers victory. Texas Tech must have used the same game plan as they did the same thing, but the Red Raiders’ offense wasn’t nearly as good as Indiana. Texas Tech was held scoreless in the 23-0 Duck win and the team from Lubbock, Texas didn’t have the Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback. Oregon will have to game plan, again, for Fernando Mendoza, who went 20-of-31 for 215 yards, with a touchdown and an interception that was returned for a touchdown.
If the Ducks want to ensure that defeating them twice is indeed difficult, Oregon will need to bring its A game on both sides of the ball.
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This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: Indiana’s Curt Cignetti knows beating Oregon twice will be tough
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