Buckeyes Back in the Big Ten Race – Ohio State Buckeyes
11/11/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 11, 2011
By Chris Britt
Winning three consecutive Big Ten games has propelled the Buckeyes right into the middle of a hotly contested conference race to see who will represent the Leaders and Legends Divisions come December 3, in the inaugural Big Ten Football Championship Game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind.
Ohio State, which currently sits second in the Leaders Division with a 3-2 record in conference play, is coming off a 34-20 victory this past Saturday against the Hoosiers. After falling behind 10-0 early in the first quarter, the Buckeyes outscored the Hoosiers by 24 points the rest of the afternoon.
With a large number of freshman and sophomores seeing significant playing time, the young Buckeye squad had a lot of learning and growing up to do on the gridiron and fast.
“I think we understand our team’s identity,” Fickell said. I think our guys have realized the things that we put in front of them, that it’s about the effort, the turnovers, the toughness side of things. We’ll continue to grow and develop. It still doesn’t change.
“This is Ohio State football. We’ve had an identity for over a hundred years. We have a great base for what we are and what we believe in. It’s just a continued growth of that. It might be a little bit more of a focus on some specific things because of who we are and who we have right now.” Tyler Moeller, a senior defensive back, backs up Coach Fickell’s thoughts on the teams’ identity as of late.
“We do have a strong identity,” Moeller said. “We’re tough. Anything that comes our way I think we can handle it. We dealt with so many things on the field, off the field this year. If something happens, I think guys are doing a great job of handling it, kind of just shrugging it off, handling it face up. That’s the biggest thing about our team, we can handle adversity.”
And what the Buckeyes have right now is a talented cast of student-athletes that has stayed determined and remained relentless throughout this unusual football season. The team could have thrown in the towel after a 3-3 start, which included a 0-2 start in the Big Ten.
But no, the team stayed united with a common goal of growing up together and proving the naysayers wrong. And after a 17-7 win in Champaign and a dramatic 33-29 win vs. the Badgers, the pundits suddenly had a different Buckeye team to talk about – one with a developing offensive identity, led by true freshman quarterback Braxton Miller and senior tailback Boom Herron, who returned to the team against the Illini after a suspension. Andrew Sweat, Jonathan Hankins and John Simon were also leading a defensive front seven that began pressuring the opposing quarterbacks and making the opponent’s running attack feel like they were constantly hitting a brick wall. This type of pressure made opponents like Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana a one dimensional team forcing them to attack the Silver Bullet defense mostly through the air.
In addition, the Ohio State secondary has been solid of late with everyone contributing. Redshirt freshman Bradley Roby shut down the Big Ten’s top receivers in Illinois’ A.J. Jenkins and Wisconsin’s Nick Toon, while junior Travis Howard intercepted Indiana’s Tre Robinson late in the fourth quarter to seal Ohio State’s win against the Hoosiers.
Trailing only Penn State in the Leaders Division, Ohio State continues to control its own destiny by winning out coupled with another Nittany Lion loss along the way. The Boilermakers (4-5, 2-3 Big Ten) will attempt to upset the Buckeyes bid to become conference champions for the second consecutive time in West Lafayette, Ind. Purdue upset seventh-ranked Ohio State 26-18 in Ross-Ade stadium during the 2009 season and would love nothing else than to spoil a Buckeye bid to the conference championship.
Purdue is coming off a rough 62-17 loss at the hands of Wisconsin and will be looking to rebound in a big way. And if Purdue wants to get to a bowl in 2011, a win over Ohio State would go a long way for the Boilermakers. Ohio State knows what is at stake, especially on the road in the Big Ten.
“We have to make sure our guys can understand the challenges every week whether we’re home or away. Hopefully that’s one thing we can take out of last week,” Fickell said. “It’s a new week every week. This is a great league. There are guys on every team that are going to have opportunities to make plays. Whether you’re on the road, whether you’re at home, it’s about you. We can’t blame, hey, we didn’t have quite the emotion. We haven’t had the emotion from the crowd either. Whose fault is that? It’s on us to put the emotion on the crowd. If we’re away, it’s on us to take the emotion from the home team. There are some travel things that you have to make sure you understand that it’s a business trip and stay focused.”
Staying focus is something this team has had no problem doing and will continue to finish with the same goal in mind.
