COLUMBUS, Ohio — This was Friday night just after the Ohio State men’s basketball team had rolled over Campbell, 104-60, burying 10 consecutive 3-pointers in one dizzying stretch. Coach Jake Diebler had his press conference and finished it with an exhortation and then slapping the table three times.
“Go Bucks tomorrow.”
Yep, it was a sports weekend in Columbus, focusing on many programs on a roll, but mostly one. The football team was assigned the task of showing who was still the boss in the Big Ten. Sure, the men’s soccer team is seeded No. 1 in their NCAA tournament, the women are No. 10, the women’s basketball team is ranked No. 12, and the men’s basketball team is 4-1 and had been ranked until losing at Texas A&M. But the heavy work would have to come down the street at Ohio Stadium.
The parking lots would be open at 5 a.m. for No. 2 Ohio State vs. No. 5 Indiana football. The traffic would start building just after 6. Kickoff was not until noon, and by then, 105,000 humans, with about 100,000 of them wearing Ohio State red, would be in place. Into this scarlet maelstrom, the Hoosiers came Saturday, hoping to reverse generations of history.
It didn’t happen. Ohio State made it 30 wins in a row when these two get together. Current coach Ryan Day was nine years old the last time the Buckeyes lost a football game to Indiana. The all-time gap is now 81-12-5. Then again, in basketball, it’s 110-84 to the good for Indiana, but that’s Diebler’s problem.
Saturday ended 38-15. It was 31-15 until the Buckeyes — ahem — scored with 35 seconds left from the 1 when they could have run out the clock. There has been no shortage of confident words from the Indiana camp as their insurgency has grown, especially coach Curt Cignetti, starting with his famous “I win. Google me.” battle cry. It made a catchy phrase for a program needing new blood but is fodder for opponents. One wonders if that last touchdown was a not-so-subtle reminder about who was still who.
“We said leave no doubt,” Day told FOX in his postgame interview. “We wanted to finish it the right way and make sure that everybody knows that this is The Ohio State Buckeyes.” Later in his press conference, “Our guys just played with a chip today, and that’s the way you have to play the game of football . . . We just felt like we wanted to put an exclamation point on the win.”
Quarterback Will Howard scored the touchdown on a keeper, and the cameras later caught him on the sideline saying, “Google that.” Later, he voiced deep respect for all Cignetti has done at Indiana in such a short time but also mentioned, “You got to remember you’re coming in to play the Buckeyes, man. It’s a little different . . . Kind of remind them what the Buckeyes are about. You accept what you ask for.”
For his part, Cignetti took the high road. “He’s got to do what he has to do for his team,” he said of Day.
Ohio State-Indiana games sure have grown interesting.
So, no more spotless record for Indiana. “In life all good things come to an end eventually,” Cignetti said. The question is if a 38-15 loss derails the Hoosiers’ charge toward the College Football Playoff. They’ll have to wait now. Two weeks, time enough to (presumably) wallop Purdue upside the helmet with an Old Oaken Bucket next Saturday, hope that enough competitors are upset that they might want to send a thank you card to Florida for disposing of Ole Miss Saturday and remind anyone who will listen that no way an 11-1 Big Ten team should be left out of the bracket. And if anyone says differently, as Cignetti offered on ESPN GameDay, “People can stick that narrative up their you-know-what.”
Someone asked him in his postgame press conference if Indiana still deserved a playoff berth after this. “Is that a serious question? I’m not even going to answer that one; the answer is so obvious.”
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And so it went in Columbus. The Ohio State athletic department is a wheel of successful programs with one sport questionably at the hub. Diebler stood in a hallway after his basketball team’s rout and described the dynamic.
“As a first-time head coach, I would be foolish not to seek knowledge and wisdom just from the numerous established championship head coaches across our department,” he said later. Fact is a fact; this is a football school in the minds of most, and Diebler added how “It can be different here versus maybe other schools. But make no mistake, Ohio State is an everything school. It helps that we love rooting for the best football team in the country year after year, but there are so many talented athletes and coaches and rich traditions in programs across this department.”
Saturday would be busy for Diebler with basketball planning and many recruits in, but “I’d like to be watching the game a little bit.” If he happened to be watching, he saw Indiana desperately trying to take the next step. It has been a challenge for the Hoosiers to get recognized. During the pre-game coin toss, the referee called them Illinois. Oh, well. They moved briskly to a touchdown on their first possession for a 7-0 lead. No cause for Ohio State alarm yet. Akron and Marshall scored first on the Buckeyes, too, and the final results were a combined score of 101-20.
But Indiana is not Akron. Indiana Is not even Indiana. Not the Indiana that the Ohio States and Michigans of the world have steamrolled for generations. The lead lasted into the second quarter, and it was 7-7 with a minute left in the half. The Hoosiers had stopped the Buckeyes near the goal line and also intercepted them at the 11. They were turning into pests. But Ohio State inexorably took over by chasing after Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke (only 68 yards passing, five sacks) and letting the Hoosiers punt game self-destruct. One snap went through the Indiana punter’s hands to give the Buckeyes the ball at the Hoosiers’ 7-yard line and set up the go-ahead touchdown just before halftime. Probably the turning point of the afternoon. And if that wasn’t, this was Caleb Downs returning another punt 79 yards for a score in the third period. “A game-changing play,” Day said.
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Plus, the Indiana quarterback was under constant siege. “Every time we dropped back to pass, something bad happened,” Cignetti said. Why? “Sometimes we had missed assignments, sometimes we had communication errors, sometimes we got physically beat. But it wasn’t very pretty.” He also used the phrase “pressure of the moment” and then changed his mind. “Maybe pressure of the moment was the wrong term. Maybe it was the ability of the opponent. This team’s loaded. Loaded.”
Such malfunctions are no way to push your way into the A-List party. Still, Indiana might yet get past the bouncers at the playoff door. The Hoosiers will want a strong closing argument in their final game. Poor 1-10 Purdue.
Funny thing about the Ohio State-Indiana relationship. In football, they usually seem to be on different planets. In basketball, the two schools are joined at the hip of a particular legend who grew up in Orrville, Ohio. The Buckeyes’ one and only national championship in basketball came nearly 65 years ago in 1960. They would go 53-3 the next two seasons, but two defeats were to Cincinnati in the 1961 and ’62 national championship games. A sub on those teams with a 3.8-point career scoring average was named Bob Knight. He’d end up an icon in Indiana by winning three national championships and throwing one chair.
Cignetti has a whiff of Knight about him. He can come across as direct, maybe occasionally a tad prickly. He is also quickly becoming an Indiana folk hero.
However, Ohio State is still Ohio State when it comes to Indiana. In the end, the Buckeye players were standing arm-in-arm facing the band, sharing the post-game rendition of Carmen Ohio. Same thing the basketball players had done 19 hours earlier.
Big weekend in Columbus. “You can’t just have a top-5 win like this and just move on. . . . We also need to make sure we take a deep breath and recognize the things that happened today,” Day said. But not for long. Michigan is coming to town next Saturday.
