Indiana's title defense opened with the kind of statement a preseason No. 6 was supposed to make, and Josh Hoover's first start behind center looked nothing like a work in progress.
Hoover, the TCU transfer replacing Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza, faced a strange kind of homecoming subplot in his own building: the opposing quarterback was Tayven Jackson, who started 5 games for Indiana before Curt Cignetti ever arrived in Bloomington. Jackson lining up against his old team made for a tidy storyline, but it was Hoover's day to answer questions — Indiana leaned on him early behind a defense that returned 8 starters from the country's No. 2-ranked scoring unit a year ago.
+8 returning starters from the nation's No. 2 scoring defense
+Home opener at Memorial Stadium
−Lost Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza to the NFL Draft
−First career start for transfer QB Josh Hoover
−Untested chemistry between a new QB and his weapons
North Texas walked in as close to a full rebuild as college football produces. Eric Morris left for Oklahoma State after an 11-1 season and took 18 coaches and 19 players with him, leaving Neal Brown to install a run-first scheme with almost nobody who played meaningful snaps a year ago. That kind of turnover is easy to write about and hard for a market to price cleanly against a defending champion at home, and the number reflected as much before kickoff.
None of that projected math changed the box score. Indiana scored early, built a comfortable lead by halftime and never let North Texas back within 2 scores from there. Whatever growing pains a first-year starting quarterback and a rebuilt visiting roster were going to produce, they showed up immediately and stayed all afternoon.
The final was 52-16, with Indiana closing it out on a 21-point 4th quarter that turned a comfortable game into a laugher. North Texas' lone sustained answer came on a 9-play drive that ended in a 33-yard field goal — a nice sequence in an afternoon that had almost nothing else to point to for the visitors. Jackson threw for 181 yards against his old team, a respectable number in a game that was well out of hand by the 3rd quarter.
For a program that went 16-0 and won it all last season, this was the low-stress opener Cignetti wanted — proof the defense is still elite and an early answer that Hoover's arm can hold up without Mendoza around. For North Texas, it's one lopsided game against a much better roster before the schedule starts telling the real story of Neal Brown's rebuild.
