Ty Son Lawton, Kurtis Rourke carry Indiana to 31-7 victory over Florida International

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Ty Son Lawton and Kurtis Rourke made quite a first impression in their Indiana debuts.

So did new coach Curt Cignetti.

Lawson scored two touchdowns in the first half Saturday, Rourke threw for another score and took the Hoosiers on a time-consuming third-quarter scoring drive to help Indiana pull away from Florida International 31-7, making Cignetti the first Indiana coach to win his debut since 2007. He wasn’t exactly celebrating.

“There’s a lot of things we’re trying to change here. Another thing we’re trying to change in tradition is we’ve got to keep the people in the seats after halftime,” said Cignetti, whose name appeared on a T-shirt handed out to the student section with a logo similar to Marlboro cigarettes. “We need to create a Power Four environment in the stadium. But we’ve got to play better, too.”

It wasn’t all bad, though.

The Hoosiers dominated their season opener on paper — outgaining the Panthers 414-182 and 234-53 on the ground while forcing two turnovers. And with Lawton and Rourke leading the way and Elijah Green closing it out with a 51-yard TD run with 1:06 to play, Indiana led wire to wire with a rushing total that was higher than any game last season.

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“There were some nice creases, some nice cuts, nice chunks, and now we’ve got to take the next step with a little bit better down-field blocking or breaking a tackle here and there,” Cignetti said.

Lawson, who followed Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana, carried 16 times for 74 yards. Rourke, a transfer from Ohio where he was the 2022 Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Year, went 15 of 24 with 180 yards.

But Cignetti, who has never had a losing season in 13 seasons as a head coach, certainly let his team know where it needed to make improvements after committing nine penalties.

“I think when you look around college football, you’re seeing that in the openers right now,” he said. “It’s almost like they’re teachable moments.”

The Panthers (0-1) have lost five straight and eight of their last nine dating to last season, falling to 0-13 all-time against Big Ten schools.

Keyone Jenkins completed 20 of 29 passes for 129 yards with one interception and hooked up with Rocky Beers for a 7-yard TD pass in the final minute of the first half for Florida International’s only score. Beers left the game with a hamstring injury after the score and was ruled out of the game in the second half.

“I thought Indiana did some good things, I also thought that we shot ourselves in the foot a few times,” Panthers coach Mike MacIntyre said. “We didn’t capitalize on some opportunities we had.”

The takeaway

Florida International: The Panthers were simply overmatched, even against an opponent that had a complete offseason overhaul.

Indiana: With 54 new players on the roster, there were plenty of questions about whether the Hoosiers would look in sync. They did. The next goal for Indiana: Showing it can repeat such a dominant effort — on a short week — before the schedule gets increasingly tougher.

Delay of game

Florida International’s troubles started well before kickoff — with a late arrival at Memorial Stadium. One of the team’s four charter buses broke down about 20 minutes from the stadium and they made it less than two hours before the scheduled 3:30 p.m. kickoff.

Up next

Florida International: Hosts Central Michigan at the recently renamed Pitbull Stadium next Saturday.

Indiana: Welcomes Western Illinois to Bloomington on Friday.

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