Column: Seniors end season with well-deserved win

The Hoosiers’ fastest sprint Saturday came at the end of the game.

The clock expired on IU’s 56-36 thumping of Purdue, and the Hoosiers collectively ran to the Boilermakers sideline to collect their prize — the Old Oaken Bucket.

In a season filled with disappointment, IU’s season ended as perfectly as it could.
In that moment, no one was thinking about the failures of this team. Instead, the last moment people will think of for IU’s 2013 season is a moment of pure, unbridled bliss.

And for the seniors, particularly wide receiver Kofi Hughes, tight end Ted Bolser, safety Greg Heban and kicker Mitch Ewald, it ended just as it should have.

These seniors deserved the Bucket. They deserved that victory sprint. They deserved to take silly pictures with the Bucket.

Take a minute to think about what they have had to go through.

It’s the last group that was coached by former IU Coach Bill Lynch.

They had to endure the process of adapting to a new coach as sophomores — a change several players didn’t survive.

“There were so many other guys before Wilson that have now quit, whether they got kicked off or not,” Hughes said.

Then there were the growing pains of adjusting to Wilson. IU won just one game in 2011. Times were tough.

“There’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t know about, and it wasn’t always easy to be a Hoosier,” Hughes said.

Last season IU made a small jump forward but still lost the Bucket Game, and the season ended on a sour note.

That wasn’t the case for the 2013 campaign.

After grabbing the Bucket from the Boilers, Bolser ended up with it and was instructed to carry it over to the student section to sing, “Indiana, Our Indiana.”

Somewhere in the swarm of singing Hoosiers, Bolser ended up handing off the Bucket to Hughes.

He was happy to give it to his teammate. Hughes said he was happy to finally hold what he had been working for over the past four years.

“Holding that bucket and being in that moment is a great statement — a great ending for this long journey that me, personally, that I’ve been on and with everything that has happened and this team and everything we’ve fought through,” Hughes said. “The adversity that IU football has had to go through is really tremendous.”

After the game, players took pictures with the Bucket.

At the center of one of the pictures sits Bolser, Hughes and Heban, grinning.
“Being around all those guys at the end of the game with the Bucket, it’s just memories. Just building memories,” Heban said.

While the three are some of the only players on the team who know what it’s like to win the Bucket, this one was different.

Hughes said as a freshman he was on the outer edge of the picture.

His time with the Bucket was brief.

Saturday, he was the one hoisting the Bucket above his head because he knew all that it represented.

“The last four years I’ve been able to really know what the meaning is behind the Bucket,” Hughes said. “Especially as a senior. I don’t think you can really understand how significant the Bucket Game is until you are a senior, until you’re in those shoes, and it’s your last game and you can understand the rival. I think there was a really big difference in just how much it meant to me.”

This group that has been through so much finished with a sweet win, and the seniors left the program in better shape than when they came in.

Now, the program has direction. The program has discipline. They know what they want, and they have set out a way to achieve their goals.

While it didn’t happen this year, the program is closer than ever to turning the corner.
And it was the work ethic of Hughes, Bolser and Heban that helped change that.

“I think we as a senior class set the foundation of what the standard is here at IU for IU football for what needs to be done, and I think they’re going to continue to fulfill that over the next couple of years,” Heban said.

When Hughes reflected on the game, he sounded like a proud father. He sounded like the senior leader he is.

“The biggest thing that I wanted today was just the whole team playing as one because that’s something that we really haven’t done the whole season,” Hughes said. “It was either the defense was hot or the offense was cold or vice versa. But tonight we put it all together versus our rival, and I was really proud and happy to see that.”

A couple of years ago, no one on the team talked like that.

Hughes has made the program better not just by his jaw-dropping catches, but by the way he has carried himself this entire season, including waiting for his chance at the Bucket.

Hughes never had to ask for it. The team called for the Bucket to be given to him. He — and the entire senior class — had earned it.

“I think everyone else, they know the adversity that I’ve faced and the issues I had to fight through and the good times and the bad times,” he said. “I think they all knew how much it meant to me personally just to end on a good note and finish where we’re finishing.”

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