Indiana's Curt Cignetti becomes the first back-to-back winner of AP coach of the year

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Indiana's Curt Cignetti becomes the first back-to-back winner of AP coach of the year

2025-12-17 00:58 Last Updated At：01:10

Indiana's Curt Cignetti exceeded expectations again this season and it earned him a second consecutive honor as The Associated Press coach of the year in college football.

Cignetti is the first coach to win the award in back-to-back years since it was first presented in 1998. He is the fourth coach to win it twice, joining Brian Kelly, Gary Patterson and Nick Saban.

The 64-year-old Cignetti is 24-2 while leading the Hoosiers to unprecedented heights in his two seasons since leaving James Madison of the Championship Subdivision to take over what had been the losingest program in major college football. Last year, the Hoosiers won their first 10 games, were ranked as high as No. 5 in the AP Top 25, and reached the first round of the College Football Playoff.

He outdid himself this year, showing his smashing debut was not a one-off.

Indiana is 13-0, Big Ten champion for the first time since 1967, No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time and the top seed for the CFP. He also is coach of Indiana's first Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the AP player of the year.

Cignetti was a landslide winner for coach of the year in voting by the nationwide panel of 52 media members who cover college football. Cignetti received 47 first-place votes. Texas Tech's Joey McGuire and Vanderbilt's Clark Lea received two each, and Virginia's Tony Elliott got one.

The magnitude of Cignetti's work at Indiana can't be overstated.

In 2022, the Hoosiers became the first Bowl Subdivision program to reach 700 all-time losses. They entered this season with 714, a figure that still stands, and they've since been passed by Northwestern (717) for the dubious FBS mark.

In a program that had never won more than nine games in a season before Cignetti's arrival, the Hoosiers have double-digit wins for a second straight year and completed a regular season without a loss for the first time.

Cignetti had said before last week that his program was chasing Ohio State in recruiting and on the field. The 13-10 win over the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship game marked another milestone.

“It’s another step we need to take as a program,” he said after the game. “It’s a great win, obviously. And we’re going to go in the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. And a lot of people probably thought that wasn’t possible. But when you get the right people and you have a plan and they love one another and play for one another and they commit, anything’s possible.”

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Funerals for people slain in Australian antisemitic mass shooting begin as suspected gunman charged

SYDNEY (AP) — A suspected gunman in Sydney’s Bondi Beach massacre was charged with 59 offenses including 15 charges of murder on Wednesday, as hundreds of mourners gathered in Sydney to begin funerals for the victims.

Two shooters slaughtered 15 people on Sunday in an antisemitic mass shooting targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, and more than 20 other people are still being treated in hospitals. All of the victims identified so far were Jewish.

A police official said the 24-year-old suspected shooter was charged in Sydney hospital on Wednesday, where he has been since police shot him and his gunman father at Bondi. His 50-year-old father died at the scene, a police official said.

The charges include one count of murder for each victim who died and one count of committing a terrorist act.

Funerals began as a country reeling from its deadliest hate-fueled massacre of modern times turned to searching questions, growing in volume since the attack, about how it was able to happen. As investigations unfold, Australia faces a social and political reckoning about antisemitism, gun control and whether police protections for Jews at events such as Sunday's were sufficient for the threats they faced.

First, however, was a day of anguish for families from Sydney's close-knit Jewish community who gathered, one after another, to begin to bury their dead. The victims of the attack ranged in age from a 10-year-old girl to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor.

The first farewelled was Eli Schlanger, 41, a husband and father of five who served as the assistant rabbi at Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi and organized Sunday's Chanukah by the Sea event where the attack unfolded. The London-born Schlanger also served as chaplain in prisons across New South Wales state and in a Sydney hospital.

“After what happened, my biggest regret was — apart from, obviously, the obvious – I could have done more to tell Eli more often how much we love him, how much I love him, how much we appreciate everything that he does and how proud we are of him,” said Schlanger's father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, who sometimes spoke through tears.

“I hope he knew that. I’m sure he knew it,” Ulman said. "But I think it should've been said more often.”

Outside the funeral, not far from the site of the attack, the mood was hushed and grim, with a heavy police presence. Jews are usually buried within 24 hours from their deaths, but funerals have been delayed by coronial investigations.

One mourner, Dmitry Chlafma, said as he left the service that Schlanger was his longtime rabbi.

“You can tell by the amount of people that are here how much he meant to the community,” Chlafma said. “He was warm, happy, generous, one of a kind.”

Among others killed were Boris and Sofia Gurman, a husband and wife aged in their 60s who were fatally shot as they tried to disarm one of the gunmen when he got out of his car to begin the attack. Another Jewish man in his 60s, Reuven Morrison, was gunned down by one shooter while he threw bricks at the other, his daughter said.

Many children attended the Hanukkah event, which featured face painting, treats and a petting zoo. The youngest killed was Matilda, 10, whose parents urged attendees at a vigil on Tuesday night to remember her name.

“It stays here,” said Matilda's mother, who identified herself only as Valentyna, pressing her hand over her heart. "It just stays here and here.”

The suspects in the massacre were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, who had carried out “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” Australia's federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett said Wednesday. The father, whom state officials named as Sajid Akram, was shot and killed.

His son, who hasn’t been formally named by the authorities, was being treated Wednesday at a hospital, where he had woken from a coma. Mal Lanyon, police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located, told reporters that investigators expected to charge the younger suspect when the man had “appropriate cognitive ability” to understand what was happening.

The authorities have said the younger suspect came to the attention of the security services in 2019 but have supplied little detail of their previous investigations. Now authorities will probe what was known about the men.

That includes examining a trip the suspects made to the Philippines in November. The Philippines Bureau of Immigration confirmed Tuesday that Sajid Akram traveled to the country from Nov. 1 to Nov. 28 along with Naveed Akram, 24, giving the city of Davao as their final destination.

Groups of Muslim separatist militants, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, once expressed support for IS and have hosted small numbers of foreign militants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past. Philippine military and police officials say there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants in the country’s south.

The younger suspect was Australian-born. Indian police on Tuesday said the older suspect was originally from the southern city of Hyderabad, migrated to Australia in 1998 and held an Indian passport.

The news that the suspects were apparently inspired by the Islamic State group provoked more questions about whether Australia's government had done enough to stem hate-fueled crimes, especially directed at Jews. In Sydney and Melbourne, where 85% of Australia's Jewish population lives, a wave of antisemitic attacks has been recorded in the past year.

After Jewish leaders and survivors of Sunday's attack lambasted the government for not heeding their warnings of violence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed Wednesday to take whatever government action was needed to stamp out antisemitism.

Albanese and the leaders of some Australian states have pledged to tighten the country’s already strict gun laws in what would be the most sweeping reforms since a shooter killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. Mass shootings in Australia have since been rare.

Albanese announced plans to further restrict access to guns, in part because it emerged the older suspect had amassed six weapons legally. Proposed measures include restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens and limiting the number of weapons a person can hold.

Meanwhile, Australians seeking ways to make sense of the horror settled on practical acts. Hours-long lines were reported at blood donation sites and at dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of swimmers formed a circle on the sand, where they held a minute's silence. Then they ran into the sea.

Not far away, part of the beach remained behind police tape as the investigation into the massacre continued, shoes and towels abandoned as people fled still strewn across the sand.

One event that would return to Bondi was the Hanukkah celebration the gunmen targeted, which has run for 31 years, Ulman said. It would be in defiance of the attackers' wish to make people feel like it was dangerous to live as Jews, he added.

“Eli lived and breathed this idea that we can never ever allow them not only to succeed, but anytime that they try something we become greater and stronger,” he said.

“We’re going to show the world that the Jewish people are unbeatable."

Graham-McLay reported from Wellington and McGuirk from Melbourne.