VIEW FROM THE MIDWEST: OCTOBER 9, 2007

Purdue Fails to Challenge Ohio State in Mid-Season Test

By Paul Smith / smith@collegeblitz.com

West Lafayette, Ind. — This was going to be The Mid-Season Test of Tests.

Purdue had stepped up in Big Ten credibility late in 2006 and how No. 3 Ohio State would do against coach Joe Tiller's "Basketball on Grass" offense, a combined Advil/Excedrin/Anacin headache for league defensive coordinators over the past decade, would answer the unconvinced's questions re: how good the Buckeyes are.

Or at least Ohio State's defense.

Pretty friggin' good, it turns out.

A 23-7 rout of the 5-1 Boilermakers provided convincing evidence that while the Buckeyes no doubt are still working out some offensive kinks, the defense is one of the nation's true elite.

High-falutin' enough to take a Boilermakers offense that had averaged 44.4 points a game and shut it out until the final eight seconds where Jeff Lindsay made it just inside the right pylon with a 1-yard Curtis Painter rollout pass that finally broke the Bucks' shutout.

Shutout. Against an offense that averaged 495.8 yards a game, Ohio State held Purdue to four (4) rushing yards, 272 overall, much of it accomplished in the game's final 8-minute "garbage time."

"I talked to (O.S.U. coach Jim Tressel) before the game," Tiller told Al Lesar of the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune. "I asked him if this was his best defense ever. He said it might be."

Tressel may have a few kinks to iron out with an offense that five times, including three interceptions of Todd Boeckman.

Those who have covered Buckeyes football during his career know Tressel isn't given to -est adjectives.

But he battled to surpress a major smile Saturday night when the subject turned to defense. "I don't think their offense had seen a defense like ours yet," Tressel said. "Our defense was flying around."

Indeed, it was all over the Boilers' potent weapons -- Painter, running back Kory Sheets, and eight talented receivers like the gnats on the Yankees players at Jacobs Field in the American League playoffs last Friday night.

In six games, the Buckeyes are yielding 197 yards a game and have taken two potent Big Ten offenses -- holding down Northwestern's talented quarterback C.J. Bacher in a 58-7 rout two weeks back -- and stuffed them in their pockets.

Ohio State jumped out early when Boeckman hit Ray Small and Brian Hartline for touchdowns and left the rest of the night's offense up to Ryan Pretorius, who connected on field goals of 44 yards (to finish off a 17-0 first half), 39 and 23 yards.

Cornerback Malcolm Jenkins, the only Jerseyboy on the entire O.S.U. roster (from Rutgers' back yard, Piscataway, N.J., no less) helped take the energy out of Purdue's offense early, often blanketing the Boilers' star receiver, Dorien Bryant (447 yards, five touchdowns) and teaming with fellow cornerback Donald Washington and safeties Anderson Russell and Kurt Coleman, plus a mean-spirited pass rush to choke off virtually every Purdue offensive effort.

Not exactly an upset, then, that punter Jared Armstrong was called on to display his talents 12 times.

"Everything seems to be falling into place," said Jenkins to an impressively deep media thicket. "We control our own destiny from here on."

They almost certainly will control Kent State this coming Saturday in Columbus, but then comes a testing stretch with Michigan State, then a game at an always-tough venue, Penn State, then home to Wisconsin (5-1) and surprising Illinois (5-1) before closing out at you-know-where Nov. 17.

But Michigan, after 3 straight impressive wins, showed a few of those early-season warts in edging massive underdog 33-22 Eastern Michigan Saturday and the Boilers don't figure to be in a particularly good mood when they visit U-M's Big House this week.

Maybe one of the more sobering aspects of the Bucks' success for future opponents might be that defensive coordinator Jim Heacock has dealt with injury as well as any assistant in the country.

Defensive end Vernon Gholston, one of the very best nationally, favored his right ankle throughout his stint and the Buckeyes played without tackle Todd Denlinger.

With Purdue's spread-field offense, opponents' nickel packages often have to be hustled onto the field at the last second. But Heacock went to a four linemen-two linebacker set often, causing plenty of confusion and false-start penalties on the Purdue side.

"We're not used to that and we had to make a lot of adjustments during the week," said Gholston, who teamed with Denlinger replacement Dexter Larimore, an opposite-tackle combo of Doug Worthington/Nader Abdallah and speedy Bob Rose to keep constant pressure on Painter. "I think we did a pretty good job."

Maybe Gholston memorized the oft-used Tressel Understatement Primer. But even the Purdue backers among the new-era Ross-Ade Stadium crowd of 65,497 raved about Ohio State's forbidding defense.

"That," Tiller said pointedly, "was a pretty complete butt-whippin'."

The Boilers marketeers, mindful of Penn State's now-famous "Whiteout" that has helped build the Nittany Lions one of the nation's biggest home field advantages, urged the Purdue community to participate in a "Blackout."

In truth, the 12,000 or so students did turn the northeast portion of the stadium into a sea of black, but for the most part, it was more of a black-and-scarletout, because, according to Purdue's Gold & Black Illustrated, some 25,000 were wearing Ohio State colors.

"Our fans are pretty astounding," Tressel allowed. "We had 10,000 at Washington and we always get good crowds around the league, except at Penn State and Michigan, where tickets are unavailable."

With the withering 80-plus temperature, the huge Ohio State presence seemed to light a fire under the defense on the few occasions when Purdue threatened to get back in the game.

"That fired us up, no doubt," Gholston said.

And so the season is half over. The Big Ten has been dissed from Athens to Apalachicola, from Gainesville -- particularly from Gainesville -- to Greenwood, deep in the heart of 'Sooeeey Pig" country. The Pac Tenners stifle giggles, so do some Big 12 folks.

But if Michigan is having something of a down year and Penn State stumbles a couple of times on the road, maybe it's because the league is a little more competitive than some of these geniuses will admit.

Northwestern, the same team that was a brilliant individual-effort kickoff return from being shut out at Ohio State, goes into East Lansing and hands new Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio his first loss.

Indiana goes to Iowa last week and upsets the Hawkeyes. Wisconsin takes a No. 7 ranking to Champaign and loses to Illinois, which is suddenly filling its remodeling stadium again.

The S.E.C. crows, particularly those around Baton Rouge, no doubt will regale the nation about their teams' dominance.

But slowly a fire is burning in Columbus. The schedule contains a sobering supply of challenges, but if the Buckeyes make it through, you can be pretty sure they'll be right back in the Bowl Championship Series national title game come January.