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Observations from yesterday going into The Game
1. Defensive adjustments
I really admire the ability of Heacock and his staff to make halftime adjustments.
Northwestern got 297 total yards but only 65 in the second half. All the turnovers made the first half more exciting but the second half suggests to me that they are fully tuned up for TSUN. It is all the more impressive when you consider this was an away game and that the second string played a lot of the second half.
2. Rushing attack
Yesterday, we only put about 70 yards more on Northwestern than the average team has put on them. A lot of that has to do with the early turnovers and short field situations.
What impressed me is that we put 231 yards rushing up on a team that has allowed 145 on average. All of our running backs looked good, thanks in large part to excellent zone blocking.
The Game is going to be played in the trenches. Man-to-man. Smashmouth. How long ago was it that we bemoaned the lack of a running game?
I am very comfortable with this team's ability to play the #2 team in the country in the trenches. Man-to-man. Smashmouth.
1. Defensive adjustments
I really admire the ability of Heacock and his staff to make halftime adjustments.
Northwestern got 297 total yards but only 65 in the second half. All the turnovers made the first half more exciting but the second half suggests to me that they are fully tuned up for TSUN. It is all the more impressive when you consider this was an away game and that the second string played a lot of the second half.
2. Rushing attack
Yesterday, we only put about 70 yards more on Northwestern than the average team has put on them. A lot of that has to do with the early turnovers and short field situations.
What impressed me is that we put 231 yards rushing up on a team that has allowed 145 on average. All of our running backs looked good, thanks in large part to excellent zone blocking.
The Game is going to be played in the trenches. Man-to-man. Smashmouth. How long ago was it that we bemoaned the lack of a running game?
I am very comfortable with this team's ability to play the #2 team in the country in the trenches. Man-to-man. Smashmouth.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
Game on!
By beating Northwestern, top-ranked OHIO STATE set the stage for a historic contest against MICHIGAN. Never in the 102 games before has the rivalry matched the No. 1 and No. 2 teams, both undefeated, for a chance to go to the national championship.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Todd Jones
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Enough waiting ... what's your prediction on Ohio State vs. Michigan?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Who is your pick to be the surprise "difference-maker" in The Game?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: If the Ohio State-Michigan game is a close one, should there be a rematch for the national-championship game?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Your team faces a must-win game, who's your pick to coach?
- 2006 Ohio State football highlights DVD Pre-ordering now available!</I>
- Vote for your all-time Buckeyes (and maybe win two tickets to The Game!)</I>
As a fan?s sign at yesterday?s Northwestern-Ohio State game points out: Michigan week starts now. The top two teams in the country square off at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in Ohio Stadium.
EVANSTON, Ill. ? Poetic justice has shaped this week?s 103 rd football game between Ohio State and Michigan into something greater than the usual grudge match rich in pathos. By winning their respective Big Ten games yesterday, the two traditional powers find themselves facing a showdown of historic proportions, just as it should be since they?ve been the nation?s two top-ranked teams since mid-October. Never before has a conference had two 11-0 teams, but Ohio State and Michigan will take those records ? along with their 7-0 Big Ten records ? into their annual regular-season finale Saturday in Ohio Stadium.
"It?s something we can?t wait to be a part of," said Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who is 4-1 against Michigan.
Besides a spot in the Bowl Championship Series title game, the winner of "The Game" will also earn an outright Big Ten title, something Ohio State hasn?t accomplished since 1984.
The Buckeyes, No. 1 in the polls and BCS rankings, stretched their winning streak to 18 games, best in the nation, yesterday and kept alive their hopes for a second national championship in five seasons by clobbering mistakeprone Northwestern 54-10.
No. 2 Michigan, losers to OSU the past two seasons, did its own part yesterday to assure that The Game this week will be a ticket-scalper?s dream by cruising to a 34-3 victory at Indiana.
"You couldn?t really script it any better," Michigan defensive back Leon Hall said.
Ohio State and Michigan first played The Game in 1897, the year the light bulb was created, but never has it crackled with as much electricity as this matchup does.
They have played it every year since 1918, the year of the Spanish flu pandemic, but never has it caused such feverish delirium among the fan bases of both universities.
They have played it as the final game of the regular season since 1935, the year of the Dust Bowl, but never has such a great depression awaited the game?s loser in six days.
"The Ohio State-Michigan game is always the biggest game," Tressel said. "It doesn?t matter what your records are or what?s on the table."
Still, the rankings of both teams and the national championship stakes give this version of Ohio State-Michigan enough added pizzazz to make the participants appreciate its historic significance.
"I?ve never known both teams to be undefeated," said Buckeyes quarterback Troy Smith, who helped his Heisman Trophy candidacy yesterday by throwing four touchdown passes. "It?s bigger than the things I?ve known. I?m actually part of it. It really blows my mind."
It kicks up the winds of history, too, for this is only the third time since The Game became the traditional regular-season finale that Ohio State and Michigan enter their meeting undefeated and untied.
Ohio State was 9-0 and Michigan 10-0 in 1973 before they tied 10-10. In 1970, the Buckeyes were 8-0 and the Wolverines 9-0 entering a game that OSU won 20-9.
Not since 1975 have both teams had such scintillating records when they met. That year, Ohio State was 10-0 and ranked No. 1 in the national polls while Michigan was 8-0-2. The Buckeyes won 21-14 in Ann Arbor.
That classic was at the height of the "Ten Year War" between OSU coach Woody Hayes and Michigan coach Bo Schembechler. During that stretch beginning in 1969, both teams entered the game ranked in the top five a total of five times, and in two other meetings the teams were ranked in the top 10.
Now, the fierce rivals are positioned to have a blast from the past, a textured version of The Game that college football fans throughout the nation have been clamoring for since Oct. 15, when Michigan rose to No. 2 in the Associated Press poll, its highest ranking since winning a national title in 1997.
Ever since, the Wolverines and OSU, ranked No. 1 for 11 weeks, have been stalking one another from afar, hoping to arrive at this week?s game with unblemished records.
Now they?re here, just as any pigskin poet would wish for.
"The fact that it?s one versus two is the way we think it should be," Tressel said.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
COMMENTARY
Thoughts about Wolverines always have been on Buckeyes? minds
Sunday, November 12, 2006
BOB HUNTER
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Enough waiting ... what's your prediction on Ohio State vs. Michigan?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Who is your pick to be the surprise "difference-maker" in The Game?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: If the Ohio State-Michigan game is a close one, should there be a rematch for the national-championship game?
- BUCKEYE BACK TALK: Your team faces a must-win game, who's your pick to coach?
- 2006 Ohio State football highlights DVD Pre-ordering now available!</I>
- Vote for your all-time Buckeyes (and maybe win two tickets to The Game!)</I>
</IMG>
EVANSTON, Ill. ? OK, now they can admit it. Maybe the Ohio State players did think about Michigan during the six weeks they spent crossing a vast wasteland of a schedule between the Iowa game Sept. 30 and a 54-10 win yesterday over Northwestern.
Maybe even Jim Tressel had a stray thought or two about Michigan during weeks when the St. Paul Benevolent Society might have provided the Buckeyes better opposition than some of the hapless imposters who made it security and into the stadium.
"When you have a rivalry like ours, you think about it often," Tressel said yesterday.
Of course he does. The idea that any member of Ohio State?s football family simply suppressed all thoughts of unbeaten Michigan has always been preposterous. Now, with nothing standing between the No. 1 Buckeyes and the No. 2 Wolverines, all that silly fibbing can stop.
"It?s kind of impossible not to catch yourself (doing that)," linebacker James Laurinaitis said, "because any time you?re watching ESPN or anything ? for instance, this last week, all they are promoting is to watch No. 1 vs. Northwestern and watch No. 2 vs. Indiana before they meet up. It?s one of those things that any time you turn it on, it?s there."
All this madness about every game in the Big Ten being "tough" is necessary, I suppose; it just gets a stale after awhile. Now that Northwestern is out of the way ? and it was never much in the way based on the drubbing yesterday ? an admission that Michigan is never far from the players? minds certainly would seem to be in order.
"Yeah, your mind wanders from time to time," safety Brandon Mitchell said. "But you?ve got to focus week to week. Of course, you look ahead, maybe you?re looking at their defense on film and you?re like, ?Ooh, I can?t wait to play that game.? But I think the coaches have done a good job as well as the other seniors of just making sure everybody focused on just one game at a time."
College football has come a long way from the days when Woody Hayes used to have his Buckeyes practice for the Wolverines every week. If there has been even a tiny blot on the Buckeyes? 11-0 season, and you have to look real hard to find one, it?s that the Big Ten has looked more like the old Big Two and Little Eight (or Nine) than it has in years.
If there were ever a season when Tressel could have taken a page from Woody?s book and done that, this might have been it. Then you look around and see other top teams stumble against weaker opponents and you realize that the Buckeyes? ability to withstand this stretch of crummy opponents without a loss is a significant accomplishment, maybe just as impressive as that much-ballyhooed early season win at No. 2 Texas.
Although all the mindless gunk about a 3-7 squad being dangerous or a 2-6 team being on a roll seems the precise definition of "drivel," it seems to have helped get this Ohio State team to its date with Michigan unbeaten. Sixteen fifth-year seniors doubtless had a part in that, too.
"I?m excited for this group of seniors because they?ve been everything that I hoped they?d be from a maturity standpoint," Tressel said. "They have handled all the stuff of people talking since late September that we don?t have any tough games left until Michigan, and they kept working to get better and better."
A little honesty seems in order, though. The weekly dance around the opposition?s foibles became tedious the longer it went on, even if there was nothing that could be done about it. The schedule is the schedule. It has to get its due, even if it doesn?t offer many challenges.
Regardless of drab scenery, Michigan is always there at the end.
"You find yourself thinking about it a lot," Antonio Pittman said. "It?s always one game at a time, one week at a time, but now that the week is here, we can think about it a lot now."
Exactly. He was thinking about it a lot before and now he?s thinking about it a? aw, never mind.
Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.
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