Hail to the conceivable, Part Deux

 Driving around with the radio on a smidge before 5:00 yesterday afternoon, and a high school basketball game was just about to start already. Nothing odd about that, persay. It was January, it was Friday night, it was Indiana. Of course there would be high school buckets in the high school buckets state.

But at 5 p.m.?

Once again, your Indiana football Hoosiers had given us something even the codgers among us had never seen before.

Not even IU basketball, after all, had ever pushed aside the high school version on a Friday night in January. That IU football would cause schools to shove back starting times and/or move their games off Friday altogether was ... well, as Wallace Shawn said in "The Princess Bride": Inconceivable!

And yet, it happened. IU was playing Oregon in the Peach Bowl for a berth in the CFP national championship game, and kickoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. So a girls-boys doubleheader between Northrop and Snider was tipping at the alien hour of 5 p.m. High school basketball, the holiest of Hoosier holies, moved aside.

Of course, we're way past the point where Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers made a ghost of the previously inconceivable. Roll unbeaten through the regular season? Conceivable. Beat No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game? Conceivable. Destroy Alabama -- Alabama, for pity's sake -- in the Rose Bowl?

Conceivable.

And now we take you to Atlanta last night, the Peach Bowl, first play of the game against a smart, talented Oregon team whose only loss was to Indiana back in October.

Was that really D'Angelo Ponds picking Dante Moore and taking it to the house on the first snap of the game?

Conceivable.

The game wasn't over the moment Ponds danced across the goal line, but it might as well have been. The Hoosiers went on to score touchdowns on four straight  possessions, took a 35-7 lead into halftime, and led 42-7 before Oregon managed a couple of garbage-time scores. The final was 56-22, a lamination no one saw coming except, perhaps, Coach Cig and his guys.

And yet, there it was. The Hoosiers forced three turnovers and turned them into scores, while turning it over zero times themselves. Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza was ridiculous again, throwing more touchdown pass (5) than incompletions (3) for the second game in a row. He found four different Indiana receivers for scores, led by Elijah Sarratt's seven catches for 75 yards and two touchdowns.

And now ... onward.

To play for a national title. Against Miami in Miami. With a quarterback who can't seem to miss, and a wide receiver corps that runs impeccably precise routes and never drops a ball, and a defense that never lets opponents take an easy breath.

In two playoff games, that group has beaten Alabama and Oregon by a combined 69 points, outscoring them 94-25.

In two games, Mendoza has thrown eight touchdown passes, no interceptions and just five incompletions.

In two games, Sarratt has 11 catches for 115 yards and three scores.

Hail, America. Hail to the conceivable.