Lynch closed the show by encouraging fans to come out for Saturday’s Big Ten opener against Illinois.

“I hope everyone comes to the Rock and cheers on the Hoosiers because it’s a big game for us and I think we’re going to put on a pretty good show,” he said.

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Hoosier Scoop update (People Magazine edition): Apparently Tim Bugg has been connected with former IU women’s soccer player Carrie DeFreece. The couple is planning a wedding at an unspecified date.

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IU should be at full strength this Saturday against Illinois, Lynch said. Offensive lineman Charlie Emerson didn’t play Saturday after suffering a head injury the previous week, but could have.

Emerson is expected back this week and the Hoosiers didn’t experience any new injuries Saturday. Redshirt freshman Mike Stark filled Emerson’s spot.

“Mike Stark got a chance to play and he played very well,” Lynch said.

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Lynch said at the start of the program that he thinks his team has taken care of business prior to this week’s start of the Big Ten schedule. “They’ve done a great job of taking it one day at a time.”

He said the Hoosiers didn’t play as well as they need to in the second quarter of Saturday’s 41-24 win, but came back and played well in the second half.

Kellen Lewis found success in running the ball, Lynch said, on some plays when IU’s receivers were covered because Akron was dropping eight players into coverage but had only three players rushing Lewis.

“He can do so many things,” Lynch said. “If he can get one on one out in space, he’s going to be a tough guy to bring down.”

Defensively, playing 10 or 11 guys on the defensive line this year is not only keeping the linemen fresh, but is creating more competition for playing time.

“When they are in, all 10 of them are playing like their hair is on fire,” Lynch said. “They are getting after that quarterback.”

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I’m hanging out again this week at the Bill Lynch radio show at Coaches Bar and Grill in downtown Bloomington. The players guests tonight are long snapper Tim Bugg and cornerback Leslie Majors. The show has just started. I’ll be back with highlights as the hour unfolds.

As you may have expected, Indiana’s Kellen Lewis has been named Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week.

Lewis, a sophomore, is receiving the award for the third time, after Saturday having rushed for a career-high 199 yards, ­the third-highest total ever for an IU quarterback.

The Jacksonville, Fla. native is the first Hoosier since Antwaan Randle El (six honors from 1998-2001) to win the Player of the Week award three times.

Randle El is the only IU QB to rush for more than 199 yards in a game. He had 210 yards vs. Minnesota on Oct. 21, 2000 and added a 209-yard effort at Illinois on Nov. 4 that same season.

Lewis ran for a pair of scores and also had three touchdown passes against Akron. He finished with a 19-of-24 effort (79.2 percent) against the Zips, which is the second-highest single-game passing completion percentage in school history.

Through the first three weeks of the campaign, Lewis is the top rushing quarterback in the nation. Among all players, he stands 31st nationally, averaging 105.67 rushing yards per game.

Lewis ranks 24th nationally in passing efficiency. He is 15th in total offense with 320 yards per game.

It’s free, and you can hear it by clicking here.

Bill Lynch held a happy but reserved press conference deep within Memorial Stadium about a half hour ago. He’s pleased with this team and, of course, happy to have Kellen Lewis as his quarterback.

It’s hard to even imagine how this game would have unfolded with anyone else playing quarterback.

“Kellen was obviously the difference maker,” Lynch said.

Lynch is still concerned with his team’s periods of ineptitude. Football is, as one player put it, a game of waves. But Indiana’s waves seem to come crashing down with particular fury. Instead of just having spurts of mediocrity, the Hoosiers regress and really hurt themselves. That’s probably just the hallmark of a team trying to grow.

One of the glaring mistakes today was Ray Fisher’s 17-yard loss on that screen play. Bill Lynch was asked after the game what he hoped Fisher had learned from that play. Yes, we ask questions that are that dumb.

“Direction, I hope,” was Lynch’s answer.

Also after the game, James Hardy referred to him and Kellen Lewis as being “almost like a couple.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Back with more in a few . . .

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INDIANA 41, AKRON 24 (2:43, fourth quarter)

A poor punt, a decent return and a foolish Akron penalty gives Indian the ball just 30 yards from a touchdown.

• Lewis rolls right. He waits and waits, continue to roll. Then he fires to James Hardy near the goal line, and Lewis gets into the end zone.

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Akron starts at its 20, hoping to get a quick score and get back into the game. It fails.

• Indiana’s defensive line shuts it down. First Greg Middleton gets a sack to force the Zips back, then the line converges on Jackson as he tries to take it up the middle on 3rd and 21.
  Read the rest of this post »

The word today from press box is that Charlie Emerson and Austin Thomas will not start, but are available to play. In their place, redshirt freshman Mike Stark will start at right tackle and true freshman Mitch Evans will start at strong safety.

Because A.J. Ratliff is ineligible, Sampson himself will be the one to perform the jump-over three-guys-and-then-dunk trick.

Details below, from IU media relations.

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HOOSIER HYSTERIA SET FOR OCTOBER 12
The Indiana University Athletics Department will hold its annual Hoosier Hysteria on Friday, October 12 in Assembly Hall,  The event will feature the IU men’s and women’s basketball teams and the IU volleyball program.

“It is  just an incredible night,” said IU men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. “I think it just symbolizes the passion, support, and caring that our fan base has for this program.  I know that when I got here, I found our kids get as excited about it as the fans do.  It is something that they look forward to.”

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. and the cost of admission is $5 (event night or in advance) or two canned goods (event night only) to benefit the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. The evening will begin when the Hoosier volleyball squad hosts Michigan State in a 7 p.m. match.  The activity will continue with an autograph session with both the men’s and women’s team and then each squad will take the floor for their first official practice session of the season.

A detailed schedule of events for the night will be released in the coming weeks.  For ticket and event information, call 1-866-IUSPORTS or visit IUHoosiers.com.

“We try to make it as fun as possible, nothing serious,” added Sampson. “We want everybody healthy the next day. It is an incredible event, full of enthusiasm and passion. We look forward to it every year.”

So, it’s Thursday. And I don’t know how useful this exercise will be this late in the week. But let’s go with it anyway.

I simply haven’t had time to re-watch the game now that college football games last so long. You’ve got to carve out a good chunk of time just to see anything useful. Here I am, 7 a.m. Thursday.

• First impression: it’s not easy to be a college football commentator. Dave Armstrong and Mike Gottfried really added very little to the broadcast. Gottfried is like John Madden in that he loves to restate the obvious, but does so by using fewer annoying catch phrases and a slew of boring coach speak. Too bad they don’t let him use the telestrator. And then, Armstrong says things like this about Josiah Sears: “He’s not just Sears, he’s Sears andRoebuck.” Question — isn’t the game on a 3-second delay? Isn’t there someone in a truck somewhere, a producer, who might have a bleep out button? Please, use it.

• OK, onto football. What’s with the running right? On Indiana’s first drive, Marcus Thigpen cut that way every time. That’s Charlie Emerson and John Sanberg’s side. Wonder if the coaches see them as better run blockers.
• I rarely watch ESPNU. So I never realized how bad the commercials are. It’s all goofy stuff like a belt thingy you strap around your stomach that will supposedly give you buff abs. I just ordered one. And, being in the buying mood, I also bought the next product: yes, the power scooter chair. Now, I’ll have flat abs even though I won’t walk anywhere.
• Being a Philadelphia Eagles fan, I wish Tracy Porter could have flown from Kalamazoo to Green Bay to field punts for the Eagles on Sunday. At least he knows how to catch the ball.
• You may recall how open Anthony Middleton was on Western Michigan’s first touchdown. Tough to tell what went wrong on that play, but it appears as though middle linebacker Adam McClurg should have been drifting more that way. As it was, he stayed in the middle, only a few yards from fellow ‘backer Will Patterson. Looks like McClurg may have been slow on his read. Plus, safety Nick Polk wheeled and said something to McClurg as soon as Middleton crossed the goal line.
• The commercial with Lee Corso putting hairspray on before getting into bed alongside two mascot heads disturbs me. Deeply.
• Did Indiana ever really attack the middle of the field, where Western Michigan was weak due to an injury to safety Louis Delmas? Doesn’t seem like it.
• I wouldn’t watch that new Cavemen show if you paid me Lee Corso’s salary to do so.
• E.J. Biggers played James Hardy really, really well. In fact, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t give the nod to Biggers, overall, since he was matched up one-on-one with the 6-7 wide out so many times. It’s just nearly impossible to stop Hardy in the red zone, which is where he made two of his three catches.
• It was brought to my attention that a Bloomington sports talk radio show took umbrage with something I wrote in my column following this game. I wrote that Indiana had been out-coached in the second half. They claimed no such thing happened. To be honest, I don’t really listen to sports talk radio so I have no idea what their argument was. But I’ll stand by my original statement. Western Michigan’s fans had deserted them and the Broncos were a mess. Even after turning the ball over on its first offensive play of the third quarter — its fifth straight time coughing it up — Western Michigan continued to play tough and eventually made it a game. Meanwhile, Indiana played down to its competition, which was a major flaw last season. The Hoosiers needs to push through and play assertively this season, and that trend should have started as soon as they came out of the tunnel for the second half. It didn’t.
• What’s the lesson of the three straight QB sneaks? I think it’s evidence that Indiana’s offensive line recruiting philosophy — finding tall, rangy players — has left an offense that isn’t going to run anybody over. There was just no push.
• Ray Fisher’s getting it. Let me now praise the coaches for helping him to do so: a player of Fisher’s talent and stature can’t just step in a be an immediate impact player. But he can’t sit on the scout team and learn to play in these big stadiums, either. Indiana’s offensive crew — Bill and Billy Lynch, Matt Canada — ensured that Fisher caught a few passes last year. He made his mistakes, and he learned how to be effective. He’s really impressive in this game, especially on this drive with about six minutes left in the third quarter. On one play he was very elusive and, with Indiana needing to run down the clock, cut back to the middle of the field instead of heading toward the sideline. Then, on another play, he kept running and came back toward a scrambling Lewis, who found him for a completion.
• The Hiller to Ledbetter pass that made it 37-27 was practically perfect. Technically, freshman Mitchell Evans — the subject of intern Zak Keefer’s story in Thursday’s paper — got beat, but it was more a case of perfect catch and throw.
• I’m not sure that William Patterson didn’t make the play of the game. On 2nd and 13 with about six minutes left — Western Michigan trailing by 10 and having just scored and then stopped Indiana — Patterson reached in to strip the ball from Jamarko Simmons as he was coming down from leaping up to make the grab. Simmons comes down with that ball and makes that big play, that drive might not stall.