Devine intervention: Former Mineral Ridge RB helps save Indiana’s season

December 10, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

Former Mineral Ridge RB helps save Indiana’s season

Devine Redding delivered his best right as Indiana’s season was about to go down the tubes. Mired in a six-game losing streak heading into a Nov. 21 contest against Maryland, the Hoosiers’ bid to keep their bowl hopes alive took a blow when the Big Ten’s second-leading rusher, Jordan Howard, went down with a knee injury after just three carries and Indiana fell behind 21-10 in the first quarter.

Redding, a Mineral Ridge product, stepped in and had the best game of his career, rushing for a career-high 133 yards as Indiana rallied to win 47-28. He followed that peformance with a another career best, 144 rushing yards and a touchdown as he once again started in relief for Howard in a 54-36 win against Purdue.

Back from the brink and playing in its first bowl game since 2007, morale inside the Hoosiers’ program couldn’t be higher.

“It’s big for everybody — everybody has been supporting us,” Redding said of reaching bowl eligibility. “We can take all the support we can get and basically everybody just wants to play right now.”

Redding, a sophomore at Indiana, has spent most of this season as the second fiddle to Howard, a junior who has already declared for the NFL draft, but he has numbers some starters would envy. He’s eighth in the Big Ten with 785 rushing yards and eight touchdowns this year. He says he has a good dynamic playing with Howard and has enjoyed being part of the Big Ten’s highest scoring offense.

“It’s like a domino effect, he makes the plays and then I come in and do the same thing,” Redding said. “We just feed off each other with our energy, the energy of the crowd and our coaches as the game flows.

“He’s patient. He’s one of the most humble guys that I’ve ever met. He doesn’t take any compliments and he’s just a great person to be around.”

When it came time to be the featured back, Redding didn’t wonder too much about what would happen if his team dropped one of its last two games.

“I was just stepping out of the huddle and getting through the plays first and let the results come to me,” Redding said.

Redding is one of four Mahoning Valley running backs — all from Trumbull County — plying their trade in the Big Ten, joining Michigan State’s L.J. Scott (Hubbard), Michigan’s De’Veon Smith (Howland) and Iowa’s LeShun Daniels Jr (Warren Harding). He leads that group in rushing yards as well and was at a loss to explain why that position is so plentiful in the Valley.

“I don’t know — I think we just want it, you know?” Redding said. “This is what we like to do and we’ve grown up around it and been around it for so long, it’s basically in our blood.”

He spent three seasons with the Rams before transferring to Glenville midway through his junior year of high school. Redding rushed for 1,100 yards in his final season at Mineral Ridge. According to the Hoosiers’ back, the move came because his dad had moved to the Cleveland area and Redding and his brother wanted to live with him. He hasn’t forgotten his humble origins with the Rams.

“I reminisce,” Redding said. “I think about my time at Ridge and I’ll sometimes contact some of the players there. We still chat and we’re friends.”

With Howard’s status up in the air for the Pinstripe Bowl against Duke on Dec. 26, Redding could get another chance to have the backfield all to himself.

“[The past two games] prepared me well,” Redding said. “It’s good just to have another game to play in and have fun and spend more time with my teammates.”