VIEW FROM THE MIDWEST: NOVEMBER 17, 2007

Illinois Knocks Out No. 1 Ohio State

By Paul Smith / smith@collegeblitz.com

You often read the bit about pain being etched on players' faces.

Well, understand we were talking football, not Iraq, not the new virus strain that defies antibiotics, not
your basic daily life affecting issues.

Whoops, scratch the last one, because clearly Ohio State's football fortunes clearly do affect much of daily life in the great state of Ohio. Sundays and Mondays, at least.

But Saturday's story could be told with the looks on the stunned players' and Ohio Stadium crowd's faces after upstart Illinois, always a troublesome opponent for the Buckeyes, knocked Ohio State from the unbeaten and probably blew up the Bucks' national title chances, 28-21, as three killer B's ruled the day.

Bewilderment.

Baffled.

Bewitched.

Illinois, which cowered into a little bunch of fuzzballs and played dead for Michigan in its own Memorial Stadium two weeks prior, spent a steely-gray Columbus afternoon using the then top-ranked Buckeyes as a pin-cushion.

Using a defense that repeatedly came up with huge plays, including three interceptions of usually efficient Todd Boeckman, and a spread-the-field Florida-type offense that too often turned sure 3-yard losses into 4-5 yard gains, the Illini (8-3 overall, 5-2 in Big Ten play) played Roadrunner to the Bucks' Wile E. Coyote.

Running backs -- particularly exceptional talent Rashard Mendenhall, a classic tailback -- barely eluded Ohio State pursuers as the Illini wove a web of confusion and frustration around the Buckeyes, who are all but eliminated from the Bowl Championship Series national championship chase.

Late Sunday afternoon, the B.C.S. standings confirmed that, pushing the previously #1 Bucks all the way down to seventh.

"We were on our way, and a loss like this kills that dream," said linebacker Marcus Freeman to The Columbus Dispatch's O.S.U. beat writer Ken Gordon.

"Whenever you lose as a No. 1 team, it's a terrible feeling," said James Laurinaitis, one of the best linebackers in a Buckeyes history filled with All-Americans and National Football League standouts at the position. "Especially when you control your own destiny and you let something like this happen."

For many, the eyes were moist. Expectations are always high in Columbus, as high as anyplace in America. But Ohio State's 2007 team, not figured by most to be a player in the title chase, had built the hopes of their insanely-loyal fanbase by reeling off 10 straight victories against a somewhat suspect schedule.

The stunning 37-17 drubbing of a good, solid Penn State team in one of college football's enduring pits had seemingly solidified the Bucks as a level above the rest of the Big Ten and a deserving occupant of college football's penthouse.

They had tied the league record for consecutive Big Ten wins with 20 with the previous week's 38-17 rout of Wisconsin.

All of which went down like the Hindenburg Saturday,
the first loss to an unranked team at home since Oct. 13, 2001, coach Jim Tressel's first year in Columbus. Oh, the humanity.

"We didn't come in here to try to play them close," insisted Ohio native Ron Zook, the Illini's third-year coach who went 4-19 in his first two years in Champaign. "We didn't come up here to be like last year (where Illinois threw a fourth-quarter scare into O.S.U. before losing 17-10). We came here to win."

Discount a somewhat annoying 49-minute run before the Illini got called for their first penalty -- credit Illinois mostly for disciplined play, but several missed holding calls did play a not-inconsiderable role and you still see a superior performance by a possessed team.

"Juice" Williams' maturation process appeared complete as he threw four touchdown passes.

Illinois ran for a virtually unheard-of 260 yards as part of a 400-yard total output that dropped jaws from the indented upper north stands seats to the "B" level atop the south anvil. The silence was eerie at times.

Gone was the dominant defense all but a handful of the 105,453 regulars had idolized. Within five game-opening plays, you were looking at a 7-7 tie as a result of Chris "Beanie" Wells' 11-yard touchdown run after Todd Boeckman hit Brian Hartline for 65 yards. An 80-yard up-the-middle bolt by Daniel Dufrene set up Michael Hoomanawanui's three-yard touchdown reception from Williams.

Three plays later. And so it went. Maurice Wells' 19-yard touchdown run was answered by a 33-yard Jacob Willis T.D. reception two series later. And that was just the first quarter.

And that was the problem...and then some.

Williams' exceptional ballhandling skills resulted in play-action fakes that froze the Bucks' backers and rushers. All of which was made possible by the presence of junior college transfer Dufrene and Mendenhall.

When a wide-open Brian Gamble gathered in an 8-yard dart from Williams to cap a 52-yard drive 17 seconds before halftime for a 21-14 lead, the Illini never looked back.

"That's what happens when they keep running the ball and being successful," said an astonished Freeman to Gordon. "You have guys that say, 'OK, we've got to stop the run,' and that's when they play-action. It's tough."

After Boeckman Williams executed a perfect second-half-opening 80-yard drive, a wicked mix of Dufrene and Mendenhall bolts, tossed in with one key rush-evading scramble and punctuated by a 31-yard strike to Marques Wilkins that put Ohio State down 28-14, the first time the Bucks trailed by two touchdowns in The Big Horseshoe since Nov. 19, 2000.

The John Cooper era.

The Illini intercepted Boeckman three times, one on an ill-advised throw into fourth-quarter double coverage where even a superb playmaker like Brian Robiskie had no chance. The Bucks had seemed to build momentum from Beanie Wells' 17-yard T.D. run with 34 seconds left in the third quarter and a defensive stop of the Illini early in the fourth.

Illinois possessed the ball for a virtually unheard of 90 percent of the fourth quarter, but after Boeckman's third pick, Ohio State had forced the Illini into a fourth-and-inches situation on their own 33. But situation-substitution confusion reigned as players darted on and off the field.

Tressel, believing the Bucks had too many men on the field, called time out with 6:53 left. It proved to be the final blow to Ohio State's chance to salvage the game.

"I wish I wouldn't have called timeout," Tressel admitted to Gordon. "We still had 12 or 13 guys out (on the field), which would have been a problem. I'd like to have that one back."

During the timeout, Williams, who may wind up being a salesmanship major, convinced Zook the risk of handing the Buckeyes the ball inside the Illini 35 was well worth taking.

"As me and James (Laurinaitis) were talking on the sideline, we said, 'Man, this is tough because they might get that mindset, 'Hey, we can get it,' ' because it was fourth and (inches)," Freeman told The Dispatch's college football guru Tim May.

"Juice grabbed me and said, 'I'll get you the inch,' " Zook said to May. "Then I said to him, 'You better.' I saw it in his eyes. I know how competitive he is. He's a tough guy. I felt confident we were going to get it."

It was yet another Illini diceroll that came up 11. And as a result, Ohio State (10-1, 6-1) came up one short of lucky No. 11.

Bucknotes -- Big Kirk Barton, one of the Buckeyes' better interviews and one of the great right tackles in the country, had trouble groping for post-game words.

One of the memorable post-game scenes was the 6-feet, 6-inch, 310-pound senior, a certain N.F.L. first-rounder next April, singing "Carmen Ohio" with the rest of the team as his eyes moistened..."You kind of feel like a failure when you can't get a win on Senior Day," he told Gordon. "I just hope all the young guys remember this, because I want to remember how it feels on my senior day. It's the last game; I'll remember it the rest of my life. It's disappointing." ...

Fortunately for the Buckeyes, even if they are virtually out of the title chase, they do get a shot to be undisputed Big Ten champions for the second straight year this Saturday at Michigan...Under Tressel, Ohio State is 43-5 at the 'Shoe, 72-15 overall, an .828 percentage...Disturbing Trend reborn: A few Illini players decided to dance around and possibly deface the midfield "O" insignia, a no-no in most teams' culture. It resulted in a brief hoo-hah between some players before they resumed shaking hands.