Greetings, Buckeye fans. I hope everyone is well-rested, unless you have been up all night watching the 24-hour college basketball marathon.
Just as long as the team is refreshed and ready for the final two football games of the season, which as it turns out, happen to be the two biggest games of the season.
And it's not just because that's all that stands between Ohio State and a 12-0 record, but also because there's no love lost between the players and either of their remaining opponents. That's especially the case for guys like Philly Brown, Big Hank, and Zach Boren who were around in 2010.
As we all remember1, Ohio State was undefeated and ranked #1 when they went in to Camp Randall that season, but Wisconsin jumped around out to an early lead that the Buckeyes couldn't recover from. It ended up being their one loss in a season that only counts in our memories.
The Badgers can't be feeling all warm and fuzzy toward Ohio State after this never-gets-old play, either. Yesterday in his weekly press conference, after confirming that the depth chart should basically be ignored since Sabino is supposed to start, Urban Meyer mentioned how his players talked not so fondly about Wisconsin and said, "This is a rivalry game."
And no matter how much he denies any feud with Bielema, I'm guessing Urban has had this game circled more than any others, except for The Game next week, of course.
THE RUNDOWN. Saturday figures to be a very physical matchup between Wisconsin's 17th-ranked rushing offense (218.8 ypg) and Ohio State's 16th-ranked rushing defense (107.9 ypg), as well as Ohio State's 8th-ranked rushing offense (256.1 ypg) and Wisconsin's 13th-ranked rushing defense (103.4 ypg).
Even coming off a school-record 564 yards on the ground, the Badger running game hasn't been entirely consistent this season and can be stopped by teams that are not Indiana:
Although the Wisconsin-Nebraska game was over a month ago, when the Badgers were pretty much a mess, that same Cornhusker defense gave up 371 yards the very next week to Ohio State.
As much as I loathe the transitive property, hopefully that's a good sign for Ohio State on both sides of the ball.
MILLER FRIGHT. Wisconsin will try to succeed where so many (including themselves) have failed with the goal of containing Braxton Miller.
Bielema praised the QB with flattery he'd normally reserve for strippers or cocktail waitresses:
"He just exudes everything you would like in the world of college football. I think he's just a tremendous talent, too. I'm not saying he's (former Badgers quarterback) Russell Wilson, but he carries a lot of those same things. . . I just wish we didn't have to play him every year because he truly is special."
The Badgers will be plenty motivated as they seek their first true "statement win" this season. Not only would a victory avenge last year's loss, but it'd also give them a shot at sharing the Leaders Division title to go along with their guaranteed trip to Indianapolis.
However, it'd be understandable (and preferable) if they're still suffering from PTSD related to the Miller/Smith connection.
The uniform for THE rivalry?L'CHAYIM. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that athletes are more than the sport they play, so it's always interesting finding out more about them. For example, the other day I learned that Ryan Shazier has alopecia areata and last night, Twitter informed me that Michigan basketball player Jon Horford is a cook and a wanderer.
When it comes to senior captain Zach Boren, we know he's the son of two Michigan grads, excelled at baseball, and has switched from offense to defense, a move that he's quite enjoying:
"I like playing offense and defense, but I guess I like defense better because I played offense for three and a half years," Boren said. "Defense is a change, a big jolt, and I'm still riding that wave."
The Plain Dealer's Bill Livingston passed along some TIL news about Boren: like his coach he refers to UM as "The Team Up North", he's a big Indians fan whose great-grandfather was a trainer for them when they last won a World Series, and he's Jewish. One of the classes he's taken at Ohio State was in Yiddish because, as he explained:
"I wanted to learn more about the culture," he said. "I know when my older brother was playing for The Team Up North, there were some Jewish All-Americans at the games. My dad was a Jewish All-American too, so he introduced me to them."
Thankfully, this is just a bit of Boren trivia and not something that puts him at risk for harassment as it might have decades ago. And luckily for the team, he does roll on Shabbos.
THE BIG SPREAD MACHINE. Speaking of TTUN, I like to imagine that Urban and Tom Herman got their Mr. Burns on when they watched Saturday's Northwestern-UM game. The Wolverine defense found Northwestern's spread offense problematic, especially on option pitches.
MLive's Kyle Meinke warns, "Danger, Will Robinson" to that because if they don't quickly improve on the perimeter, a certain scarlet and gray team could make them pay:
For as good as the defense has played this year, the Wolverines have struggled against teams that spread the field and can run with the quarterback. Air Force did it. Nebraska did it.
And Northwestern really did it.
And Ohio State, no one needs reminding, has Braxton Miller and a high-powered spread attack under first-year coach Urban Meyer. They run a version of Northwestern's offense, but they do it better.
And Michigan plays Iowa with their no-threat offense this week, so it's possible they will somehow make Michigan's defense worse, which would be exxxcelllent.
FOR THE HOOPS. While the football team dropped a spot in the AP poll this week, the basketball team remained at #4 in both polls. Their second game is on Saturday—at a super inconvenient time of 5pm2—when they take on Rhode Island. Of course, that was supposed to be the third game of the season, but science! and all.
But the group behind the Carrier Classic is no Cornwallis and will not surrender to condensation, and as such, the Carrier Classic will return to the USS Yorktown next year. Once again, both a men's and women's game will be featured, and the organizers believe they have figured out how to avoid the same watery fate.
The following season, the NCAA Tournament in 2015 will be very much in the heart of it all. As usual, the first round will tip off in UD Arena. Like they have recently, Ohio State will play host during the second and third rounds. The action will take place in Nationwide Arena, but of course, the Buckeyes will not be allowed to play there3.
That's not the case for the Midwest Regional, which will be in Cleveland at Quicken Loans Arena. Considering how well Ohio State performed there two seasons ago in the Tourney, let's hope the 2014-15 basketball team gets the chance to take the court in the Cleve.
JUST BREATHE IN THE AIR AND LINK IN THE LIGHT. Braxton will be profiled in tomorrow's episode of The Journey... S-E-C!... At one point, this photo was on Duke's official athletics site... Amazon's best books of 2012... Good public bathroom advice... Tobias Fünke is a member of the Swiss Labour Party... A deleted Jean-Ralphio scene.
- 1 I was there, so it's pretty much burned into my memory, but the same could be said for last year's game, for much more pleasant reasons. ↑
- 2 The Ohio State athletic department should be powerful enough to better coordinate the football and basketball schedules. ↑
- 3 As host and the only Division I game in town. ↑
