VIEW FROM THE MIDWEST: NOVEMBER 10, 2007

No. 1 Buckeyes Power Past Badgers After a Scary Sight

By Paul Smith / smith@collegeblitz.com

This was in the middle of the third quarter last Saturday and the Ohio State congregation was quieter than virtually any pregame moment of silence.

The scoreboards wore mournful looks as they declared: OHIO STATE 10 WISCONSIN 17.

Sheesh, not again!

Somehow, lost in all the brilliance of the Jim Tressel Era was one nagging stat -- three straight Ohio Stadium losses to the always-feisty Badgers, two on Tressel's watch. The last Ohio State home victory over Wisconsin dated back to John Cooper's coaching years, 1996.

Gone was a 10-3 halftime lead where the top-ranked Buckeyes had slammed shut a powerful Wisconsin offense that had produced seven victories in nine games, 279 points (31 per game).

The Buckeyes' brilliant right tackle, Kirk Barton, was in no mood to allow the same kind of funk overtake the team that seemed to occupy the players' minds in the 41-14 Bowl Championship Series title loss to Florida last January.

"Our season was on the line," Barton proclaimed to The Associated Press' Rusty Miller after the 10-0 Buckeyes (6-0 in Big Ten play) scored 28 unanswered points for a 38-17 victory Saturday.

"We've already had a one-loss season, last year," added Barton. "We don't want another one. We just kind of looked at each other and said, 'Hey, we don't want to feel like we did last year.'

"We want to win them all if we're going to be remembered around here as a special team."

As if to underline his point, he told the Chicago Tribune's exceptional college voice, Teddy Greenstein, "I was trying to emphasize, 'This is it.'"

In a year where the Big Ten has taken endless hits from Iditarod outposts like Storrs, Conn. to the left coast, with particularly loud stopovers in every state where a twangy dialect is heard, the Buckeyes have toiled under an umbrella of disrespect.

The jumping up and down on the near sideline was genuine. It was a fresh supply of adrenaline with a complementary side order of testosterone.

With freshman wunderkind Chris "Beanie" Wells doing much of the heavy lifting, the Bucks punishing offense took over. On a day where Todd Boeckman posted a bit more pedestrian numbers (17-for-28 passing for 166 yards, with two touchdown passes to Brian Robiskie), Wells turned the final 21 minutes, 53 seconds into his own personal showcase.

"In the first half, I didn't get the football," said Wells, who consulted Dick Tressel after Ohio State's unsuccessful opening third quarter drive. Talking to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Buckeye beat guy Doug Lesmerises, he hinted at a reborn hunger.

"...In the second half I got it and I really wanted it. I told my coaches I wanted the football."

This was no ego trip by yet another football diva. This was a quintessential team player offering a solution to the Buckeyes' phlegmatic offense.

"We didn't intend to run it as much as we ended up doing it," said offensive coordinator Jim Bollman to Lesmerises. "But Beanie ended up pounding it pretty good a couple of times, so there was no sense going away from that."

The "pretty good" turned out to be 169 yards, virtually all in the second half, in 21 carries, including touchdown runs of 31, 30 and 23 yards. The 31-yard run, in which he broke a couple of early tackle attempts, helped produce a 17-17 tie with 2:41 left in the third quarter and the Bucks never looked back.

"I think adversity helps a team and helps an individual," Jim Tressel said. "A lot of the training that these guys do is adversity. It tests them...You get in the games and swings as they talked about, that tests you and it helps you to grow to understand what it's going to take and we'll have a better understanding of what it's going to take to win the Big Ten after today which will help us going into next Saturday (against Illinois in Columbus)."

Translation from the Tresselese: practice, practice, practice.

Indeed, the Buckeyes, taking full advantage of the absence of one of the Badgers' key weapons, a wrecking ball named P.J. Hill who averages 100 yards a game, took full control of the game from a team reduced to two fake punts -- one successful, the other a dud that was blown up by James Laurinaitis, who had a monster game, as Ohio State seized total momentum to begin the fourth quarter.

Two touchdown passes from talented Tyler Donovan that built U-W's lead, 28 yards to Travis Beckum, to produce the tie on the Badgers' first third-quarter possession and 2 to Chris Pressley became little more than post-game footnotes.

"We barked at our guys all week to go into today's game with an attitude to win," said second-year Wisconsin coach Brett Bielema, longtime assistant to longtime Badger legend Barry Alvarez. "We practiced and prepared not to be intimidated by the atmosphere of this place...It was a tough game and Ohio State persevered."

As any longtime Buckeye can tell you, that could describe many an Ohio State-Wisconsin game.

Bucknotes -- Wisconsin is now 7-3, 3-3 and hosts Michigan (8-2, 6-0) Saturday...The Bucks have now won 28 straight regular-season games, and tied a Big Ten record with 20 straight league victories, dating back to the 17-10 loss at Penn State Oct. 8, 2005...Ohio State is 67-9-1 when ranked No. 1...The Buckeyes have won 10 or more games five times in Tressel's seven seasons...Tressel's Ohio State mark is 72-14...The Bucks lead the U-W series 51-17-5.