Column: The season that wasn't for IU football

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- At Big Ten Media Day in Chicago way back in July, IU senior kicker Mitch Ewald said it was a "complete understatement" to say IU expected to go to a bowl game this season.

After losing to Ohio State 42-14 Saturday at Ohio Stadium, IU's bowl chances were officially dashed.

Ewald said back in July the team's goal wasn't even to go to a bowl. As he said, that was the minimum he and his teammates expected. He said then that the team's goal was to be one of the top three teams in the Big Ten.

But at 4-7 and 2-5 in conference, IU finds itself as the ninth-place team in the 12-team Big Ten. It's a bottom-feeder, again.

In a season that showed so much promise, it's now officially gone. Another season has come and is almost gone, and IU will not be going bowling for the sixth straight season.

"This is definitely not the season I predicted or that our team hoped for," senior wide receiver Kofi Hughes said.

And in one of the oddest turns of the season, it was once again IU's offense, the area viewed as the team's biggest strength, that doomed the Hoosiers in defeat.

IU scored just 14 points, well below its 39.1 average. It didn't score until there were just under six minutes remaining in the game.

When junior wide receiver Shane Wynn finally put IU on the board with a four-yard touchdown pass, it ended a stretch of more than 125 game minutes in which IU had failed to score a touchdown.

Before that score late in the fourth quarter, IU hadn't reached the endzone since the 11-minute mark of the fourth quarter in the Nov. 9 game against Illinois.

Before that touchdown, IU had six drives end inside the Ohio State 35-yard line that resulted in zero points.

"It's frustrating because as an offense we pride ourselves on always trying to score every possession," sophomore quarterback Tre Roberson said. "For us coming short on those possessions, it was real frustrating."

Again, the Hoosiers couldn't pin the loss solely on its defense, which again struggled, giving up 42 points. While it certainly didn't play at a high-level at times, it did force Ohio State into three turnovers and two punts. It gave the offense chances -- chances that were never capitalized on.

"I don't know what it was," Hughes said of the offense's struggles. "Our defense did everything that we could've asked to win this game. Create turnovers, create some stops, give us great field position all day. I really don't know what was going on."

The problem wasn't moving the ball. No, the Hoosiers had just 29 fewer yards than the Buckeyes. But they also had 28 fewer points.

Every possession, something else stopped the Hoosier offense. Three of those times it was failing to convert a crucial fourth down, one of which was at the Ohio State two-yard line.

"It felt like we were in the game," Roberson said, "we just wasn't scoring. The name of the game -- you gotta score points in order to win and we just didn't score any points."

Even Ewald, who had come into the game with a perfect kicking record in both field goals and extra points, missed not one, but two field goals, off the uprights.

Two times? Off the posts? From a perfect kicker, the best in IU history?

That sort of, in a way, summarized IU's season. It wasn't what anyone expected.

No one expected IU to struggle offensively. No one expected IU to have a routinely porous defense, again, that gave up almost 39 points on average. No one expected IU to lose to Navy or to Minnesota.

No one, including Ewald, expected IU to fail to make a bowl game.

When Ewald's second kick bounced off the left upright, he put both hands to his helmet and shook his head.

The kick, the game, the season, didn't go as planned.

Saturday wasn't IU's game, and 2013 wasn't its season to live up to expectations.

-- robhowar@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Robby Howard on Twitter @robbyhoward1.