CHAOS TEAM Indiana loses yet another heartbreaker to a top-10 team

No. 10 Penn State kept its slim Playoff and totally real New Year’s Six bowl hopes alive by beating Indiana in Bloomington on Saturday, 45-31.

It was a good game, but neither’s fans will leave it feeling all that good about themselves, probably. Penn State has been scorching hot and almost lost to an unranked team, and Indiana is well past the point of taking moral victories.

For the Hoosiers, the loss continues an upsetting trend of playing quite well against good Big Ten opponents but then failing to actually beat those teams.

The Hoosiers have come close to beating top-10 teams under head coach Kevin Wilson before.

In 2012, they lost 52-49 to then No. 8 Ohio State.

In 2015, they lost by a touchdown to a No. 1 Ohio State, by eight to a No. 9 Iowa, and by a touchdown to a No. 14 Michigan, just for good measure.

This year, they’d already lost by five to No. 10 Nebraska. (They also beat a ranked Michigan State, but that depreciated quickly.)

Indiana has also gotten blown out in a couple of games against highly ranked opponents. That, above, is an arbitrary hand-picking of games. It’s not as if every single week brings Hoosier drama. But IU has clearly gotten close to giving Wilson signature victories before, and something has always gotten in the way. It has to be hard.

Someday, Indiana’s going to play one of these games and win it. I have no idea when that will happen, but it will eventually.

The most enjoyable element of the afternoon was the ABC broadcast’s intense focus on a couple of kids who got footballs stuck in a tree and tried to get them out.

But the on-field portion of the festivities was pretty fun, too. Indiana’s defense showed up in a big way and limited star Penn State running back Saquon Barkley to one of the worst outings of his career. With the exception of a brief 10-point IU lead in the third quarter, this was a one-score game until Penn State scored a defensive touchdown on Indiana’s last drive.

It seesawed back and forth, with the teams trading late touchdowns to set up a dramatic finish. Barkley was bottled up most of the afternoon from a yardage standpoint, but he scored twice in the fourth quarter, and a 2-yarder with four minutes left put the ball in Indiana’s hands with a chance to win it.

Penn State’s defense forced a turnover on downs, but Indiana held the Nittany Lions to a field goal after that. Indiana was left with the ball, one minute, no timeouts, and a touchdown deficit. The Nittany Lions defense held again to seal the game.