Indiana football receiver Donaven McCulley taking Curt Cignetti's lessons to heart

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football receivers Donaven McCulley and Omar Cooper Jr. have been close friends since middle school.

They attended Lawrence North High School together where Cooper grew accustomed to catching touchdown passes from the former Indiana Mr. Football finalist.

Cooper spoke with a smile about how McCulley has made it through the last six months — entering the transfer portal, reserving course to stay in Bloomington, learning a new coaching staff and Curt Cignetti calling him out over the spring — poised to build on the breakout season he had in 2023.

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He led IU in all the key receiving categories last year with 48 catches, 644 yards and six touchdowns.

“When coaches get on him and are hard on him, it fuels him up,” Cooper said. “It makes him angry, but when he plays angry he plays better to me."

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McCulley traced Cignetti’s “tough love” approach to the conversations they had back in December when he was being recruited by the likes of Florida State and Michigan.

While the coaching staff outlined their past success developing receivers — they had multiple 1,000-yard receivers in two of the last three seasons and had five different receivers reach the milestone from 2019-23 — McCulley told them about the aspirations he has of taking his game to new heights.

It’s why Cignetti took the rare step of publicly criticizing McCulley back on April 2 when he told reporters that McCulley needed to “pick it up a bit.” After the spring game, Cignetti admitted he usually reserves that kind of criticism for the practice field. McCulley caught a touchdown in the exhibition back in April.

“I don’t do that a lot,” Cignetti said. “I did it once last fall with our quarterback (at James Madison), and he really responded.”

McCulley has viewed the offseason as rewarding and challenging in equal measure.

“I told him (Cignetti) to coach me hard and do what you got to do,” McCulley said, after Wednesday's practice. “Him getting me on this spring and challenging kind of helped me really learn how he operates and the team operates. I took the initiative to really get into the playbook more and try to master the play book."

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Indiana receiver Donaven McCulley is ready to launch

Cooper had one other observation about McCulley’s game on Wednesday.

"One of the biggest things, he hasn't been the fastest guy growing up,” Cooper said. “Over the past six months I've been seeing him get progressively faster. I feel like the weight training staff had a good program with that."

The 6-foot-5, 203-pound receiver already makes for an imposing presence on the field. If he's more explosive this fall it will present problems for opposing defensive backs that already struggled to defend him.

McCulley’s marquee performance last season came when he put up 11 catches for 137 yards and two touchdowns against Illinois. He made three contested catches and drew five penalties (four pass interference flags and one holding call).

Are more games like that on deck?

"I know I can play at that high level since I started (play receiver),” McCulley said. “I felt like the last half of the season were the results of us really getting the ball out and spreading the ball out."

McCulley also believes the whole offense will benefit from a receiver's room brimming with talent. Cignetti brought over one of those 1,000-yard receivers from JMU (Elijah Sarratt) over with him to Indiana and added three other experienced transfers (Myles Price, Ke'Shawn Williams and Miles Cross) while bringing back the likes of Cooper, E.J. Williams Jr. and Andison Coby.

"I feel like we got an entire room of guys that can just go out and make a plan and take over the game," McCulley said. "I feel like us having a deep receiver room is going to affect defensive backs."

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here .

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana football receiver Donaven McCulley taking Curt Cignetti's lessons to heart