COLUMBUS, Ohio — No. 9 Ohio State will try to recover from a stunning home loss to Oregon when it hosts Tulsa on Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Eastern.
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The Buckeyes had no consistent answer for Oregon’s run game in their 35-28 loss on Saturday. The Golden Hurricane dropped to 0-2 after coming up short at Oklahoma State, 28-23.
Who: Tulsa (0-2) at No. 9 Ohio State (1-1, 1-0 Big Ten).
When: Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021.
Time: 3:30 p.m. Eastern.
Where: Ohio Stadium, Columbus (104,944).
TV: FS1.
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Latest line: Ohio State -25.
Announcers: Tim Brando and Spencer Tillman.
Read some of what Nathan Baird of Cleveland.com wrote about how Ohio State players approached this week of practice following the loss to Oregon.
Most Ohio State football players had never experienced a week of practice like this — preceded by a loss and teeming with doubt and frustration.
Such a scenario had lingered as perhaps the last unanswered question of the beginning of Ryan Day’s tenure. How would his team respond the first time it tripped up and had to rescue a damaged season? That answer will likely not truly come this Saturday against Tulsa, or next Saturday against Akron.
The Buckeye players themselves, though, said they felt a new energy this week.
“We haven’t had a better practice than today all year offensively, I would say,” said junior receiver Garrett Wilson, one of the Buckeyes who experienced his first regular-season loss. “They’re trying to learn new things on the defensive side, so that comes with a learning curve. But the energy and the attention to detail the last two days, I feel like it hasn’t been like that since camp started.
“We knew we had some problems, but whenever you lose, it magnifies them. So there’s no room for messing up at practice anymore.”
The last time an Ohio State team suffered such a loss, on Oct. 20, 2018, at Purdue, it defined the season. One could argue, though, that the subsequent performances were equally to blame for denying OSU a playoff spot. A narrow home win over a 4-8 Nebraska team. An even narrow road win against another losing team, Maryland.
That team’s slap in the face came eight games in, when it had less time to repair the damage. Timing is the lone silver lining of the Oregon loss. A defense in transition has time to recalibrate, and individual players have time to improve.
“We’re hungry,” junior left tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere said. “This is a learning experience for a lot of us because it hasn’t happened in a while here. So coach (Ryan) Day took it in stride and said that this is a learning opportunity for all of us — coaches, to players, everyone — for us to learn what we did wrong and how to improve and fix the mistakes that we made so we can have a better team.”
Ohio State still belongs in a tiny subset of the sport which has established standards for itself that are almost impossible to meet. As running back Miyan Williams put it, “We’re at Ohio State — we’re not supposed to lose.”
Such standards already demand a strong sense of urgency. Day speaks of it often — the pressure to never fail, or even play well and lose. So naturally, that urgency intensifies when the platform on which the program stood above almost all others is pulled out, dropping Ohio State to a new vantage point.
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No. 9 Ohio State vs. Tulsa free live stream: How to watch, TV, odds - cleveland.com
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