Bob Hunter commentary: Guiton was ready for challenge
By Bob Hunter
The Columbus Dispatch Sunday October 21, 2012
The numbers glowered like a schoolyard bully about to make you take your sniveling act somewhere else. Ohio State had 47 seconds to go 61 yards with no timeouts, a blink of time to score a touchdown and a two-point conversion or lose to heavy underdog Purdue.
But there was another element that lent a lottery-like feel to the assignment: Backup quarterback Kenny Guiton, who had replaced injured starter Braxton Miller and thrown an interception on the Buckeyes’ previous possession, was the one being asked to perform the miracle.
When fate calls in this kind of situation, it usually doesn’t get an answer.
“The interception, I just grabbed him and I said, ‘You’ll be right back and we’ll win the game,’ coach Urban Meyer said. “And he looked right back at me and said, ‘I gotcha, Coach.’ How many times has he been in that position? How many times has anybody been in that situation?”
Actually, the redshirt junior quarterback said he had been in a similar situation once before, in the first game he started as a sophomore for Eisenhower High School in Aldine, Texas. He threw an interception that an Aldine Nimitz defender ran back for a touchdown, led a rally in the final two minutes to tie the score and then won it in overtime, just the way the Buckeyes did yesterday.
But Guiton admitted that was “a little bit different,” that high-school heroics weren’t quite like performing a bona fide loaves-and-fishes football miracle before more than 105,000 panicked fans in Ohio Stadium. Those who saw this finish will be talking about it for years.
“It’s a long-shot situation, but at the same time, you always have to have your head up, ready to take it on,” Guiton said. “And that’s one thing everybody plays football for, to shock everybody and show them what you can do.”
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