Coach Ryan Day may have been understating things a bit when he said there’s a lot that comes with a loss Ohio State.
Last Saturday’s historic fourth quarter collapse by the Buckeyes in their 24-23 loss at TEXAS has brought angst and second-guessing usually reserved for losses to archrival Michigan.
Day spent Tuesday’s press conference passing out after suffering just his second setback in 27 games in September as he tried to outline his hopes of preventing the loss to the snow and impacting the rest of the season.
“It’s extremely disappointing, it’s crazy and we’re excited to get back on the field and keep going because the last couple of days haven’t been fun here,” Day said. “We had some really good conversations with the guys. I think they’re going to be in a good mindset going forward. We understand we’ve got a lot of football ahead of us. So that highlighted some things we need to fix.”
It was the first time in program history that the sixth-ranked Buckeyes have lost when leading by at least 17 points in the first half. Going back to 2004, teams ranked in the AP Top 25 were 197-0 when holding a 20-point lead at any point in the fourth quarter. Ohio State was up 23-3 heading into the final 15 minutes before the Longhorns scored on their final three drives.
Day may have been too aggressive at times — including a botched fourth-down conversion when the Buckeyes could have kicked a field goal — which he owned.
“When it’s time to win the game, we all have to be on the same page and live with the score. Like we throw the ball on third-and-four to Jeremiah (Smith) on a fade to win the game (in the fourth quarter). Yeah, I absolutely own that. We didn’t have enough answers in the fourth quarter to go ahead, but we’re going to win the game.”
One situation late in the game, Day admitted he might do differently next time is to let one team score in order to have enough time to possibly go for a game-winning drive.
Day called his final timeout with 53 seconds left when Texas’ Hollywood Smothers was stopped on first down at the 1. Smothers ended up scoring two plays later and with 25 seconds on the clock.
“If we win the game then it would be the right decision. And at this moment you have to make a difficult decision and I decided to try to hold the line,” he said. “Ultimately we would have liked to see what it would have looked like if they had scored. So we will have to think about that when it happens again.”
Julian Sayin passed for 278 yards but completed just five of 16 passes in the second half. The junior has a 75.9% completion rate in his two seasons as Ohio State’s starter, but is 62.5% in losses.
Before opening Big Ten play Sept. 26 against Illinois, the Buckeyes (1-1) host Kent State on Saturday.
Ohio State is averaging 59 points and winning by an average margin of 51.7 points in its seven games against MAC teams since Day took over in 2019.
The biggest concern is making sure the Buckeyes right the wrongs by the time they have crucial road tests next month against No. 18 Iowa, No. 4 Indiana and No. 12 Southern California.
“See what we did wrong, try to improve them and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Sayin said. “I think we have a good group of guys on our team. I think we can use that as fuel. I love the group of guys on the team and I have a lot of confidence in them.”
Reporting by the Associated Press.
