Roses for Buckeyes, as Ohio State Edges Iowa

Wednesday, 18 November 2009 00:00

Michigan City, Ind. -- The lightheaded among the Ohio State faithful saw Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi roll his ankle against Iowa Nov. 7 and suddenly, a collective sign of relief blew across large portions of Buckeye Nation.

Fortunately, though, that did not include the football team, nor its coach, Jim Tressel.

The No. 9 Bucks (9-2 overall, 6-1 in Big Ten play) had no illusion that the gritty, time-tested Iowa Hawkeyes, still rated 15th, were going to trip across the Ohio Stadium turf and disappear in a Buckeye avalanche.

Did not happen. Iowa hung tougher than anyone imagined, forced the Bucks to earn their first trip to the Rose Bowl since 1998, hanging on for dear life in the process before scoring a 27-24 overtime victory before 105,455, the eighth largest crowd ever in the Big Horseshoe.

The new Hawkeyes target was James Vandenberg, and all he did was connect on two key touchdown passes -- one in the third quarter (a nine-yarder to Marvin McNutt that created a 10-10 tie), then after Ohio State had jumped out to a seemingly-safe 24-10 lead, another to McNutt after Derrell Johnson-Koulianos returned a line-drive kickoff 99 yards to get the visitors back into contention.

The Q-word was expunged from the Iowa vocabulary in training camp, apparently. The discouraging home loss to Northwestern that crushed the Hawkeyes' hopes of crashing the elites' big banquet wasn't larger than it appeared in the Iowa's rear-view mirror. It was gone. No quit anywhere to be found.

"I was a little disappointed after the kickoff return, quite honestly," Tressel said afterward. "That you can't let someone come into your stadium and win the special teams and really until (Devin Barclay's 39-yard overtime field goal) that won the game, I'd say they won the special teams, but that field goal tipped the scales a little."

Actually, a whole lot. The Bucks had in many ways outplayed Iowa (9-2, 5-2), but these Hawkeyes, like Ohio State, had gone into Penn State's hallowed stomping grounds and come out with an impressive victory in which they outmuscled the Nittany Lions (21-10).

"We had to play a perfect game to win it," said Kirk Ferentz, Iowa's coach, talking to The Associated Press's Rusty Miller. "We didn't quite do it. Maybe if we had, we might have won. This was a heck of a challenge."

Iowa dealt with a landslide of adversity inside what is one of the nation's most hostile venues, but Vandenberg, a freshman who was thrust into the Northwestern game after Stanzi went down and showed some promise there, played with uncommon courage, particularly in the second half.

"It hurts right now, but we're going to bounce back," said Vandenberg, who completed 20 of 33 passes for 233 yards and the two touchdowns, but was intercepted three times.

"The people worked hard to get open and I got great protection (for the most part)," he added. It's a great experience. After the first play goes, everything slows down. Give Ohio State all the credit, they played great the whole game."

But on a day when the Bucks ran for 229 yards, nearly getting triple-figure efforts from both Brandon Saine (103 yards, two touchdowns) and Dan Herron (97) and a solid ball-control effort from quarterback Terrelle Pryor, they needed a superlative overtime defensive display -- sacking Vandenberg for the first time and forcing the Hawkeyes back to near-midfield on their four shots at the goal line -- to set up the game-winning kick from Barclay, a 26-year-old former pro soccer player.

The Buckeyes overtime offense nearly ran into a similar situation, but on third down, Tressel had seen enough and summoned Barclay.

"We had so much confidence in Devin that we were going backwards to make his kick longer," Tressel quipped as the Wolstein Center media crowd giggled.

You can be sure humor will be a bit rarer commodity this week, however. "It's Michigan week," Tressel proclaimed, as the Buckeyes contemplate the 192 mile trip Up North -- as if anybody needed prodding.

Let the verbal border wars begin (for the 107th time)

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