p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
No. 1 Indiana booked its ticket to the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on Dec. 6 after defeating Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game. With such a long gap before its New Year\u2019s Day matchup against No. 9 Alabama in the Rose Bowl, Indiana offensive lineman Carter Smith said the Hoosiers are seeking a balance in preparing while still practicing with intensity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about keeping the speed of the game,\u201d Smith said Saturday. \u201cThe biggest thing for us in the offensive line room has been going like it\u2019s a game, every single breath, because we know that being away from the game for so long can affect that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first two weeks of preparation were lighter workouts as the Hoosiers recovered from the season, tight end Riley Nowakowski said. Without knowing their opponent, the Hoosiers didn\u2019t want to overwork older players. Instead the coaching staff gave younger players opportunities to get reps during practice.<\/p>\n
But after Alabama punched its ticket to the Rose Bowl, the mentality changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really got into game prep and I think that\u2019s kind of how you do it. \u2026 You start to really lock in and get back into normal game-speed stuff and game type of practices,\u201d Nowakowski said. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to stay locked in mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with the bright lights of the Rose Bowl, Indiana offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan said the pressure will not be overwhelming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere might be a slight adjustment early in the game, but I feel like our guys will be ready to go and the experience within our group will help us there as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> No. 1 Indiana booked its ticket to the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on Dec. 6 after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28848,59336,423,59335,9520,48,52,51,47,50,49,18754,18158,34060,59337,7641,4576,10657,278,427,211],"class_list":["post-110701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-alabama","tag-college-football-history","tag-game","tag-hoosiers","tag-indiana","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-year","tag-no","tag-opponent","tag-perfect-motivation","tag-practice","tag-program","tag-rose-bowl","tag-season","tag-team","tag-ticket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}