Football
The-Ozone Note and Quotebook
By John PorentasGreater Group: OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel is fond of the concept that how a person or group handles adversity goes a long way toward telling you about that person or group. When the Huskies scored a touchdown to end the first half his Buckeye football team faced a little adversity. Tressel liked what he saw in the way they handled it.
"With a young team, getting put behind the eight-ball a little bit, there was a lot of momentum going their (Washington's) way at the end of the second quarter, first half, a lesser group perhaps could have folded," Tressel said.
"I think that third quarter that they want to get there, they really want to, because they could have just gone out and played timid and whatever because we were kicking them the ball and the whole thing," Tressel said.
Offensive Tackle Kirk Barton saw it the same way, in specific in his new teammates along the offensive line.
"We had a lot of guys play well who had never played in this kind of environment, namely Ben (Person) and Jim (Cordle), they hadn't really played in a hostile environment like this, and I think they played well. I'm excited about how we reacted at half time and how we came out fighting," Barton said.
Tressel said his youthful squad took their cue on how to handle the situation from the small number of veterans on his squad.
"It being a young bunch that took the leadership from guys like James and Kirk Barton and Vernon Gholston and all those guys, they accepted that leadership and then made the plays."
According to Barton Tressel also got some leadership help from a source some might call surprising.
Fiery strength coach Eric Lichter leads the Buckeyes onto the field in Seattle.
Photo by Jim Davidson"Eric Lichter gave us a great little speech to the offense. It was cool," said Barton.
Barton said the fiery Lichter not only inspired the Buckeyes, but turned out to be quite a prognosticator.
"He's a vocal guy," said Barton.
"He's one of the best guys in our program. I love being around him. I love talking to him. He said 'You know what a sweet-ass team would do right now? They'd go out and put up 30 and they wouldn't give up anything. That's kind of what we did except they scored that late touchdown, but we scored 30 in the second half.
"It's funny he picked 30. I was wondering how we were going to score 30? I thought maybe 28 or 35 or 31, but it worked out like that. It was pretty funny how it worked out.
"He was pretty stoked about how we put up 30," Barton said.
Plenty to Fix: Head Coach Jim Tressel liked the way his Buckeyes responded to adversity and was pleased with the win over the Huskies, but found plenty of things to fix after the game, among them were some gaffs on special teams that had his brow a little wrinkled. While it wasn't all bad on special teams, Tressel definitely didn't like a blocked field goal and the number of return yards the Huskies were able to put together.
"We always talk about you have to win the special teams when you go on the road. There for a while it didn't look like we were going to win the special teams, although our kickoff coverage recovery (of a fumble) was huge, our punt that we dropped down there on the four was huge, a couple of A. J.'s long punts were huge, but all in all, we let too many kickoff returns out," Tressel said.
The blocked field goal bothered Tressel as well, but he did not lay the blame for that miscue at the feet (or foot) of his kicker. He said that the Huskies got penetration after a bad snap disrupted the timing of the play. That left Pretorius a sitting duck for a block.
Ryan Pretorius "I hit the ball exactly the way I wanted to on that one too, but when there's a hand in front of you you can't do anything," said Pretorius.
The other thing that bothered Tressel was OSU's lack of points in the first half due to mistakes by the offense.
"That first half some things didn't go exactly the way we wanted," he said.
"Our defense played tremendous. Their offense went down and threw a nice strike for a touchdown there at the end, but our defense was tremendous. Offensively, we had chances. A fourth-and-one penalty when we gashed them for a first down. It just wasn't what we hoped for."
James "Beetle Juice" Scott Beetlejuice: The Buckeyes made some gaffs against Washington, but they also made some big plays. Among them were a forced fumble and recovery of a kickoff in the second half that led to an OSU touchdown. Freshman defensive back James Scott, who made the recovery, has already earned a nickname with his teammates.
"James Scott, number 11, we call him Beetlejuice," said Kirk Barton.
"We were fortunate we got the ball on the ground and Beetlejuice recovered it and we were in good shape."
Barton explained the origin of the rather unusual nickname.
"You know on Howard Stern, little Beetlejuice, that's what he looks like," said a grinning Barton.
Honing it Down: The Buckeyes have played a lot of players through the first three games, but start the Big Ten season next weekend when they host Northwestern. OSU defensive coordinator Jim Heacock said that the Buckeyes will continue to roll players, but after this week's game some of them will see more playing time than others.
"I think we'll do a big evaluation after this game and see who's playing well.
"The thing you want to ease into is playing the best players the most.
"We've been pretty equal in our playing time and we want to make sure we get our best players on the field in key situations," said Heacock.
Tough Guy: When you think of tough guys in football your thoughts usually turn to linebackers and fullbacks, but OSU quarterback Todd Boeckman is slowly earning that reputation as well among his coaches and teammates. That was exhibited on a play in the first half where Boeckman took a shot in the chops from a blitzing linebacker but still completed the pass. Tressel was impressed.
Todd Boeckman "I thought one of the ones in the first half where they came with the blitz right up the middle, the one he hit to Hartline, he stood in there like a pro," said Tressel.
Boeckman remembered the play well.
"There was one in the first half, I threw the ball to Hartline. The backer came right up the middle, nobody touched him, and I took a shot. It's just always kind of nice where you can take that hit and still deliver the ball," said Boeckman.
"Toughness is a big part of playing quarterback. You've just got to stand there and make those plays, make those plays happen and make those guys believe in you."
Boeckman had a decent first half but was outplayed by Jake Locker who was superb. The second half was a different story, however, as Boeckman made big plays and Locker struggled to move his team and was the victim of several interceptions.
"Todd knew full well that no turnovers was going to be the key to this game," explained Jim Tressel.
"He probably was waiting (in the first half) until he was 100 per cent sure, and that's usually too late, so we always talk about you better let it go when you're 80 per cent sure or you're going to be too late, them just how you're going to be at 100. I think it was because he wanted to do badly for the team what the team needed," Tressel said.
Boeckman said it was just a matter acclimating to playing in front of a hostile crowd and settling down.
"At first I think the crowd got to me a little bit, just the hype of the game, just everything. I settled down a little bit, I think the whole team settled down. We didn't finish in the first half. We finished in the second half and made some plays," Boeckman said.
"Todd had a little bit of fire out there today, which, you like that," added Kirk Barton.
"I can't say enough about Todd. You guys probably think I'm dating him or something because of how I talk about him. He really is a great leader. He was under Troy for four years and you can tell some of that fire kind of rubbed off on him. He really is a great player. He's going to be a great quarterback here for the next two years."
Locker Impresses: Washington redshirt quarterback Jake Locker turned out to be as advertised coming into the game, a very good quarterback. Locker did throw a three interceptions, but kept his team in the game with his passing and running. Locker left the Buckeyes impressed.
"He's excellent," said Jim Tressel.
"He's a good player, a good thrower, tough, strong, the sky's the limit for Jake. He's young and this going to be a great learning thing for him. He faced a pretty fair defense, so I'm sure he's going to learn a lot from this experience.
"He's special," said Jim Heacock.
"I thought a couple times we missed tackles and lost leverage, but I think overall we played hard and competed against him and battle him and got a couple of sacks and forced some turnovers. There were a couple of drives, a couple of plays that I thought we have to do better," Heacock said.
Offensive Line Stinks?: For two weeks the OSU offensive line has taken some heat for the lack of offensive output. The OSU offense looked just fine thank you against Washington, a team that most would call a step up in competition from Youngstown State and Akron. The offensive line opened big holes for Beanie Wells all day and protected Todd Boeckman well. Kirk Barton, however, knows that it's never enough if you are an offensive lineman at OSU.
Kirk Barton "Anytime something goes wrong you usually blame the offensive line,": said Barton.
"I'm used to the media blitz on the o-line. I've been here for five years and I think we've had one good o-line, even though we've gone to three BCS games and we went to the Alamo Bowl, but we've always had a bad offensive line according to the media, so we just try to keep our heads up and tell ourselves we're still good players even though you don't think we are."
Buckeyes Show Up: Husky Stadium has a reputation for being loud, but the Buckeye faithful did a good job of showing up to help counter that in Seattle. Most of the closed end of the stadium was wearing red and there were pockets of Buckeye fans on both sides of the stadium. Jim Tressel was impressed not only that they showed up, but how vocal they were.
"I was amazed at how many people we had, to travel this far and maybe some of them are alums from up here in the Northwest or California or whatever, but to see that much red in this stadium, as much noise as they were making, we had heard all this about how noisy the stadium was, but our guys, our folks, made a little noise,' Tressel said.
The Buckeyes had their support, but Husky stadium also lived up to its reputation as a loud place.
'It's a noisy place. We asked the kids at halftime if you could hear at all and they said they couldn't, so we just kept talking that you have to see the ball," said Tressel.
Apology: OSU freshman tailback Brandon Saine scored the last touchdown of the game on a 37 yard run as the clock expired. The Buckeyes didn't need the score to win, and Tressel wanted to be clear after the game that he wasn't trying to run up the score.
"I told Ty (Willingham) after the game that I didn't not mean for that thing to go. That was an off-tackle play that I thought would get two yards and we'd call it a day," said Tressel.
"He's (Saine) got great speed. Just about the time he was coming around the corner I was getting Gatorade dumped on me and I almost caught him, because that stuff was cold, but I wish that didn't happen. I'm glad he got some reps and I wish that didn't happen. I think Ty knows that."
Tressel got the Gatorade bath in celebration of his 200th win and was awarded the game ball by his team after the game. Tressel said he was appreciative of the gesture, but could do without the shower.
"They poured all that cold stuff on me, whatever it was. I don't know if it was water or Gatorade or what, Muscle Milk, I don't know what it was exactly, but it was cold.
"I told the guys in the locker room I appreciated it and all that, but I was more interested in (win number) 201 than I am in 200.
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