Ohio State 34, Miami, Ohio 14
Buckeyes Workout In Brief Stacato Bursts

By Paul Smith
paul.smith@collegeblitz.com

COLUMBUS — The entire story of No. 4 Ohio State's season-opening 34-14 victory over in-state rival Miami last Saturday can be summed up in brief staccato bursts, much as the Buckeyes' offensive display.

For your consumption, this six-pack of truth is brutally simple.

• $350,000.
• Pre-Texas workout.
• Snaps for Justin Zwick, who may or may not start vs. Texas.
• Few tipoffs for the Longhorns.
• Five sacks of Miami's Josh Betts. Seemingly dozens of hits.
• Smothering defense/Ball possession.

To begin, the $350,000 payday always comes in handy for the many cash-strapped Mid-American Conference visitors to Ohio Stadium over the years. The usual capacity crowd -- in this case, 104,695, represents about six times the home attendance of your average M.A.C. team.

Miami of Ohio, they call one of America's more underrated academic/social schools, to differentiate it from Miami, Inc., the football factory in south Florida C.E.O.'ed by Larry Coker.

Jim Tressel being Jim Tressel, his Buckeyes were given an impressive crash course in how good the Redhawks -- and the M.A.C. -- can be during the week by the fifth-year coach, just a reminder to keep focused on Game One and not Game Two -- against Number Two (Texas) next weekend.

The Redhawks finished 8-5 last year and as many know, Miami was where the Steelers' celebrated No. 1 draft pick, Ben Roethlisberger, built his impressive collegiate resume.

And fellow M.A.C. residents Bowling Green and Marshall have come into the Big Horseshoe in recent years and thrown a 60-minute chill into the Buckeyes.

This time, the well-prepared Bucks turned up the heat from the start.

"I don't think there's quite the gap there used to be (between the Big Ten and M.A.C.)," rookie Redhawks coach Shane Montgomery said after his team fell behind 34-0 with three minutes left in the third quarter before Tressel rested most of the regulars.

"Recruiting-wise, (the Bucks are) still getting what they want."

Ohio being one of the nation's true talent motherlodes does help beef up the Miamis, Toledos, Bowling Greens, and, yes, now Kents, Akrons and Ohio Universities, though.

But the real tell-tale difference between a good M.A.C. program and a potentially-great Big Ten one won't necessarily be found on the stat sheet, but in the game's play-by-play summary.

In falling behind 27-0 in the third quarter when 250-pound senior plowhorse Brandon Schnittker scored his first Buckeye career T.D., Miami hadn't made it past the Buckeyes' 39-yard line.

The pre-Texas workout had a few glitches, a few missed blocks and occasionally sloppy tackling when Betts was able to find talented wide receiver Martin Nance running free for 20-yard receptions a couple of times.

"When you're getting sacked and rushed like our people did to them, it's going to be tough to score points," Tressel said.

And when you have a steady-if-unspectacular quarterback in junior Justin Zwick, who had a brutally-efficient day in completing 17-of-23 passes for 155 yards and a mind-boggling left-corner diving 20-yard touchdown by Santonio Holmes, you know your opponent is in for a long, long day.

Holmes' T.D. catch, capping the game-opening Buckeyes field-long drive after Miami won the toss and deferred to the second half, buoyed O.S.U.'s confidence and only the exacting jeweler's eye of the tape-watching coaches could find many flaws in the Bucks' performance.

The successor to field goal legend Mike Nugent, now with the New York Jets, fifth-year senior Josh Huston, added two chip-shot field goals and Donte Whitner cut in front of Nance and ran back an ill-advised Betts pass for a 26-yard touchdown with 1:21 left in the half and a 20-0 lead.

It was atonement in full for a roughing-the-kicker penalty Whitner sustained earlier to keep Miami's offensive possession alive.

"If things don't go your way, you just have to come out and play," Whitner said. "I was just trying to make up for my mistake...Being down 20 at Ohio Stadium, that's a pretty big deficit..."

The shrugs and hanging heads on the visiting sideline told the rest. 

"All of a sudden, when the score's 20-0, there's a little different emotion, I think," Tressel said. "So that play was huge."

In all this, the Texas assistants who eyed the proceedings from atop the press box, could glean little. There were a few crumbs here and there -- a couple of reverses to heavily-hyped Ted Ginn, Jr., whom the Redhawks defensed admirably for most of the afternoon, and Anthony Gonzalez.

But the Bucks flavor-of-the-day was vanilla. Tressel may be many things to many people, but stupid isn't one of them. Although Ginn did get to display his awesome breakaway ability on a 42-yard pass from freshman Todd Boeckman.

For three quarters of the game, the Buckeyes' suffocating defense never allowed the Betts/Nance alliance to do much more than work very short sideline routes. The running game, of which you can bet your 10-gallon hats the Bucks will see plenty Saturday, was nonexistent with Miami.

In Notre Dame's locker room entry to its north end stadium tunnel is a permanent sign: "Play Like a Champion Today."

The slogan was only temporary outside the Bucks' locker room, but it was deadly-accurate: "Affect the quarterback."

It sure affected the outcome.

In this game, Miami never had a chance although, in fairness, the Redhawks showed some offensive talent against the Bucks' reserves, getting late T.D.'s from Jimmy Calhoun (3-yard run) and wideout Ryne Robinson, on a 35-yard pass from Betts.

Bucknotes: O.S.U. is 23-1 in its last 24 games against the M.A.C. ... The win was the 100th opening victory for the Bucks, who are 100-12-4 in such games ... Inquiring minds wanted to know if next Saturday's mega-game began to play in the Bucks' minds, particularly after Ginn grabbed a perfect spiral from Boeckman for O.S.U.'s final score ... "When I committed to Ohio State my (high school) junior year," said Cleveland St. Ignatius product Gonzalez, who played a key role in the Bucks' victory over Michigan last November, "I knew they were on the schedule and I've been looking forward to it since then." ... Coaches are usually loath to admit such an in-game mindset, but Tressel, often candid, was true-to-form: "Probably in the middle of the fourth quarter," he said to The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Jodie Valade. "I'm not going to lie. We're anxious to be part of a matchup like that." ... Gonzalez's eyes lit up..."This place is gonna look pretty sweet in the dark." ... The Bucks did give the Longhorn staffers a little bit of a wrinkle when Tressel lined up in spread formations and used sophomore Antonio Pittman fairly liberally in the first half. He wound up with 100 yards in 14 tries. "He showed some burst; it was a good first step for him," Tressel told the Akron Beacon Journal's Terry Pluto. ... Saying "Thank God for knee braces," center Nick Mangold grimly recalled his early-game awkward spill at the line of scrimmage that saw the Bucks' training staff at full gallop as he lay face down ... He returned and played until the early fourth quarter.