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The Ohio State Buckeyes are fully prepared for the climax of their season. Their last two regular-season games are against undefeated Indiana and archrival Michigan. After taking care of Northwestern at Wrigley Field Saturday, the No. 2-ranked Buckeyes move into those games with a 9-1 record and head coach Ryan Day knows that the team still has a chance to reach all of its preseason championship goals.
The Buckeyes took care of business with a 31-7 triumph over the Wildcats. Ohio State fell behind by a 7-0 margin in the first quarter when Northwestern quarterback Jack Lausch ran the ball in from 7 yards out, but this would not be a day for the Wildcats to register an upset. Ohio State would score the next 31 points to put the game away in routine fashion.
Quarterback Will Howard completed 15 of 24 passes for 247 yards and he threw a pair of touchdown passes to Carnell Tate. The two-headed running attack of Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson once again carried much of the load for Day's offense. Judkins had 15 carries for 76 yards and pair of touchdowns, while Henderson carried the ball 11 times for 74 yards while averaging 6.7 yards per carry.
Freshman star wide out Jeremiah Smith had another big game with 4 receptions for 100 yards.
Safety Sonny Styles played a huge game for the Ohio State defense and he had 5 tackles and a team-leading 2.0 sacks. Defensive end Jack Sawyer had 6 tackles and an interception
Day explains that Buckeyes could not look past Northwestern
The Ohio State head coach knows his team must come through against Indiana and Michigan after previously losing a game to top-ranked Oregon by one point on the road.
He knows that Northwestern did not present the same kind of challenge as the top-ranked teams the Buckeyes will likely see in the future, but they were capable of causing trouble if Ohio State was looking past the Wildcats.
“Yeah, a lot of people ask me that going into the game,” Day said, per 247 Sports.. “It's like how do you stay focused on this knowing there's other things down the road? But the truth is, like, you lose this game here and you're out against the Big Ten Championship game.”
The head coach also pointed out that Big Ten opponents don't let visiting teams come in and steam roll them. “Everything you do is hard in the Big Ten,” Day continued. “You know, you're not just going to walk in and think you're just going to from the first snap on, roll your helmets out there and run the team out of the stadium. It doesn't work that way.”
