IU looked like it can be good vs. Louisville but lost. Again. Can Tayven Jackson change it?

INDIANAPOLIS – Tayven Jackson arrived at a crossroads Saturday.

It was perhaps unfamiliar to him, but certainly not to the program he now quarterbacks. As he stretched for Lucas Oil Stadium’s southwest pylon late in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s 21-14 loss, he straddled a line with which Indiana football seems eternally fighting.

Between good and bad. Between success and failure. Between meeting the potential it shows and forever just teasing, tasting, never truly fulfilling that promise.

Indiana (1-2, 0-1) knows this frustrating crossroads so well, having spent much of the last decade stuck there. Though Jackson blamed himself for Saturday’s loss, for missing yet another chance to tip IU football onto the right side of the fence, there was credible evidence to suggest the Hoosiers might have — in Jackson and some others — the ability to finally march forward.

“Proud of our football team, but you’ve got to play two halves of football,” IU coach Tom Allen said. “Disappointed by our first-half performance.”

He will have been just as heartened by the second half, in a game truly split by either side of halftime.

Doyel: Like Michael Penix Jr. before him, QB Tayven Jackson can lead IU to new heights

Across the first two quarters, Louisville controlled Indiana like even Ohio State could not. An impressive defensive line was dominated. Mistakes in coverage took the top off a reeling secondary. Jackson’s foot might have been on the gas, but the offense was stuck in neutral, mistakes and miscues undoing whatever good squeezed out from a labored performance.

“Too many self-inflicted wounds in the first half,” Allen said. “Got a lot of work to do. Got a young quarterback that can make plays and is growing up.”

In that second half, IU might have grown up with him. Jackson was the individual standout, Indiana’s redshirt freshman signal caller finishing 24-of-34 with 299 yards and a touchdown.

He also threw an interception, the fault for which he should share with his intended receiver, DeQuese Carter, who could not squeeze both hands around a ball thrown too high. But the two-time state champion with Center Grove played like this building has never overawed him, marshaling multiple drives of 90-plus yards, finding eight different receivers, sliding away from pressure with an ease beyond his years and looking very much the high-ceiling quarterback analysts saw when Jackson was still in high school.

“I just loved the fact that he just makes plays. He’s able to create, extend plays, eyes downfield, find receivers,” Allen said. “He’s got a lot of confidence, a lot of moxie. I’ve said from Day 1, that’s one of his strengths.”

And yet, the Hoosiers again fell short. Another afternoon of familiar dejection, remorse and regret, for a program leading college football in the export of all three.

No moment captured it better than Jackson’s desperate lunge for the pylon, nor did any better encapsulate the hurdles Indiana still makes for itself than what came after.

Jackson’s stretch triggered memories of Michael Penix’s famous overtime conversion against Penn State, in 2020, but on this day, ACC officials ruled Jackson down at the 2-yard line. On review, they would advance the ball as far as what the referee described as “the 1 1/2-foot line.”

Indiana called a valuable timeout, attempted a slow-developing tailback dive and got stuffed. Louisville picked up the necessary third downs. A comeback fell as short as the ball to the goal line when Jackson’s knee grazed the Lucas Oil Stadium turf.

“I have not,” Jackson, asked if he’s seen a replay of the play, said. “I don’t want to watch it. We lost that game because I didn’t get in.”

A quarterback’s commendable assumption of responsibility aside, there was so much to like from Jackson in this game.

There was plenty to like elsewhere, too. From Jaylin Lucas, who rolled up 127 offensive yards (98 of them receiving) and a touchdown. From Aaron Casey, who was probably, for the second time in as many games against a Power Five opponent, the best defender on the field. From a defensive line that adjusted and improved from one half to the next, and a coaching staff that got it wrong in the opening 30 minutes before getting it right in the next 30.

Indiana looked like getting blown away, then dominated what might be one of the 3 or 4 best offenses it sees all season, shutting Louisville (3-0) out for an entire half, while the Hoosiers’ redshirt freshman quarterback delivered IU’s best performance from the position since Michael Penix was last healthy and firing in Bloomington. The effort fell agonizingly short of victory.

And so, this crossroads.

Is Indiana a team remade by the portal, young but punching above its weight and bound for bigger things? Or is this the sort of setback the Hoosiers too often come to regret by Thanksgiving? Was this Maryland 2017 or Michigan State 2019?

As Jackson stretched for that pylon, and you considered Tom Allen’s aggressive onside kick call, his offense’s surge and his defense’s revival, you wondered if he might consider attempting a 2-point conversion, to take a one-point lead with 4 ½ minutes left. Put the game in the hands of that defense.

It was a question rendered academic by the failed play call that followed, Allen saying postgame, “We didn’t execute, obviously.”

“We’ve got,” he followed, “to keep battling.”

The fundamental question of this season, or any season: To what end? Is this a young, feisty, incomplete team that will become more competitive as it becomes more complete, turning a formative September into a lucrative October and onward? Or will we look back at this as the latest in a slew of one-possession games in which the coin tosses fell against IU football, and left fans feeling like the program remains stuck on the wrong side of that fence?

Jackson looks like the sort of player who just might have enough about him to break that wheel. Through both good and bad, the Hoosiers looked Saturday like they might have enough players of such caliber to do the same.

Until they prove it, though, they’ll still be standing here, at the same frustrating fork in the road that separates winners and losers, that Indiana can’t help but arrive at year, after year, after year.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU vs. Louisville: Indiana looked like it can be good but lost. Again.