Displaced Cleveland Fan

Unbelievable.

Or, not surprising. Either one will fit.

Ohio State was not supposed to win this game. They barely beat Navy last week. USC was coming off a lopsided win. Ohio State, an “overrated” #8 was an underdog at home to #3 USC. The Buckeyes were supposed to lose.

But something happened. For 53 minutes, the Buckeyes outplayed the Trojans. With 7:29 left in the game, Ohio State was up 15-10 with USC starting at their own 14 yard line. After a sack and a false start, it looked like the Buckeyes’ defense, which was tough all night, would get the ball back for the offense again.

But then something else happened. USC started moving the ball. All of a sudden the defense couldn’t make any stops. The Trojans’ freshman QB led them down the field. The whole time I was waiting for them to score. It would have been too good to see Ohio State win. Something like this had to happen. And it did. With just over a minute left, the Trojans scored and made a 2-point conversion to go up 18-15.

The Buckeyes got the ball back. But with no timeouts, there was not much they could do. They almost held on, but lost it on the last drive. It was inevitable.

Unbelievable.

So how far will Ohio State fall in the rankings? Despite the close loss to a higher-ranked team, you have to think they’ll drop. Here are the other results that will impact the Buckeyes position in the new polls:

• #5 Oklahoma State lost to unranked Houston. They will drop significantly. This frees up a space above the Buckeyes’ current #8 position.
• The other 6 teams currently ahead of the Buckeyes won.
• The six teams behind them (#9 Brigham Young, #10 California, #11 LSU, #12 Boise State, #13 Oklahoma, #14 Virginia Tech) all beat up on their cupcake opponents by an average of over 45 points. The closest game was #11 LSU beating Vanderbilt by 14 points.

While it’s possible that the Buckeyes stay ahead of these other schools because of fact that they played a much tougher opponent, I’m not optimistic about the voters’ perception of Ohio State. So the Buckeyes could be ranked anywhere from #7 to #13 when the new polls come out. My guess is that BYU and Cal will pass them and Ohio State will be #9 next week.

-dcf

Tags: Ohio State, scores, USC

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Ohio State Buckeyes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.