{"id":2856,"date":"2026-03-19T05:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T05:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/iu-football-curt-cignetti-says-staff-has-only-missed-on-one-winter-transfer-portal-evaluation-the-daily-hoosier\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T05:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T05:57:13","slug":"iu-football-curt-cignetti-says-staff-has-only-missed-on-one-winter-transfer-portal-evaluation-the-daily-hoosier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/iu-football-curt-cignetti-says-staff-has-only-missed-on-one-winter-transfer-portal-evaluation-the-daily-hoosier\/","title":{"rendered":"IU football: Curt Cignetti says staff has only missed on one winter transfer portal evaluation – The Daily Hoosier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Known for turning high school 0-stars into college 5-stars, IU football coach Curt Cignetti’s ability to evaluate talent is becoming legendary.
And it’s the foundation of the incredible turnaround he has orchestrated in Bloomington.
Just how on point have Cignetti and his staff been in evaluating and bringing in talent from the transfer portal?
“I can only think off the type of my head one mistake we’ve made in the winter portal in two years,” Cignetti said last week on the Y-option podcast<\/a>.
One mistake would be a fairly incredible outcome since Indiana has by our count brought in 40 players over the last two winter transfer portal cycles.\u00a0 The list of the 40 players is below.
Who might be the one miss?
Cignetti really didn’t miss on anyone in the winter portal cycle ahead of the 2024 season, although he did have the luxury of bringing several players with him from James Madison.\u00a0 But all 21 players IU brought in via that initial haul were producers for the team if they weren’t injured before the season.
There are two players who might fit the description of a miss in the winter cycle ahead of the 2025 season.\u00a0 Wide receiver Makai Jackson only played in four games and saw just 51 snaps before he decided to shut things down and preserve a redshirt season.\u00a0 He was a player who arrived with a lot of promise but couldn’t crack the main rotation.
And cornerback Amariyun Knighten only played two games and 20 defensive snaps in 2025.\u00a0 He has since transferred out of the program.
There is no secondary spring transfer portal cycle this year, but there were spring cycles ahead of both the 2024 and 2025 campaigns.
Cignetti says they’ve missed on three or four players in those spring cycles, and he suspects that might be in part due to the players arriving late and having less time in the program.\u00a0 The players he’s likely thinking of in that regard are defensive backs Cedarius Doss and DJ Warnell, and linebacker Nahji Logan.\u00a0 They all arrived in the spring of 2024.
One problem that has arisen with some of those players is they arrive late, aren’t able to climb the depth chart, and end up carving out a secondary role (e.g. on special teams, etc.).\u00a0 Some have then decided after four games they’d rather sit out to preserve a redshirt season.\u00a0 That appears to have been the case with Warnell and Logan.\u00a0 To his credit, Doss played his special teams role throughout the season while seeing limited defensive snaps.
Indiana also hit some home runs in the spring cycles, including the additions of D’Angelo Ponds, C.J. West, Tyrique Tucker, Stephen Daley, and Kellan Wyatt.
In addition to evaluating how a player performs, Cignetti is also big on preserving the culture of his program.\u00a0 He says he won’t budge when transfer prospects make demands.
“When I have a guy and they want to be promised this or that, playing time, they’ve told me ‘I’m going to start,’ no, no.\u00a0 I’ve never done that and never would,” Cignetti said.\u00a0 “How could I possibly not lose the locker room if I’m promising guys that they will do this or they will do that?\u00a0 Everything’s earned.”
The list of players Indiana has added via the portal following the 2023 and 2024 seasons is astounding when considering how productive they ended up being.\u00a0 Here’s the list of all players who have transferred in ahead of the last two seasons:
PORTAL CYLES AHEAD OF 2024 SEASON<\/strong>
Winter portal<\/em>
Spring portal<\/em>
PORTAL CYLES AHEAD OF 2025 SEASON<\/strong>
Winter portal<\/em>
Spring portal<\/em>
For complete coverage of IU football,\u00a0GO HERE<\/a>.
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The Daily Hoosier<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u201cWhere Indiana fans assemble when they\u2019re not at Assembly\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n



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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Known for turning high school 0-stars into college 5-stars, IU football coach Curt Cignetti’s ability to evaluate talent is becoming legendary.And it’s the foundation of the incredible turnaround he has orchestrated in Bloomington.Just how on point have Cignetti and his staff been in evaluating and bringing in talent from the transfer portal?“I can only think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}