Buckeyes Slam Wildcats 58-7 to Open Big Ten Season
by Dave Weissman, Columbus Wired
Photos by Tom Theodore, Columbus Wired

The No.8 Ohio State Buckeyes celebrated the 500th game played in Ohio Stadium with a 58-7 romp over Northwestern in the Big Ten opener for both teams.

Everything seemed to click on offense as OSU scored on its first three possessions, two TD passes to Brian Robiskie and a Chris Wells rushing TD. The defense added a fumble recovery for another TD to put the Bucks up 28-0 by the end of the 1st quarter.

By the end of the first half, the score was 45-0. It is the most points since Ohio State posted 52 points (52-0) against Pittsburgh, Sept. 21, 1996. And, it is the most points scored in a half since 56 (56-7) against Iowa, Oct. 28, 1995.

The last time Ohio State scored four touchdowns in the first quarter was a 1995 victory over Iowa, 56-35, in Ohio Stadium. The only thing left for the 105,178 fans was to watch the band at halftime and hope there were no serious injuries. Chris Wells did leave the game after the first drive of the second half with a sprained ankle.

The Buckeye offense seemed to gel after the second half last week in the win in Washington. QB Todd Boeckman finished 11-for-14 for 179 yards and four TD passes, three to Robiskie and also throwing a 48-yard TD pass to Ray Small.

The four TD passes were a career high for Boeckman. Backup QB Rob Schoenhoft got in for a few snaps at the end of the 1st half, while third-string QB Antonio Henton had a long stretch of play in the 4th quarter.

“I thought Todd did some very good things. Obviously when you make big plays like he has so far this year, he's been extremely accurate on the deep ball,” Buckeye head coach Jim Tressel said.

OSU showed championship form in earning their 22nd regular season victory in a row. OSU defeated the Wildcats 54-10 last year at Northwestern. Overall, the Buckeyes have won 23 of their last 24 games.

“You know, as someone asked, "What do you do when you get such a decisive lead?" You work on things. You still work on the quarterback to throw to the open guy and if the open guy happens to be the deep guy, you throw it to him. So, no, once we got to 45, we started calculating how could we get to 90, you know you want to do what you can do and I thought our guys handled it okay,” Tressel said.

This looked like the Northwestern of the 80’s and 90’s, not a team that has won several Big Ten Championships. Northwestern had its three-game winning streak snapped in a heartbreaking 20-14 loss to Duke last week.

Wildcat QB C.J. Bacher was hounded all day by the Buckeye defense. He finished the game 17-32 for 120 yards and 2 interceptions. He rushed seven times for a negative 39 yards.

"Obviously, not the way we wanted to start Big Ten football play," said Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald. "We talked earlier in the week about wanting to come out and start fast. We changed up practice…obviously, it didn't have the impact we had hoped."

RB Chris ‘Beanie’ Wells scored a TD, gained 100-yards on 12 carries in the first half. The other Wells, Maurice rushed 15 times for 44-yards and two TD’s.

"We really were stressing this week to get them in a hole early. If we won the toss, get them down 7-0,” said offensive tackle and co-captain Kirk Barton said. “If they got the ball, our defense was going to stop them."

The defense did not allow the Wildcats to get into any rhythm. The silver bullet defense has not allowed TD in Ohio Stadium this year. The Northwestern offense was credited with zero rushing yards and 120 yards passing. They also had three turnovers.

Defensive captain James Laurinaitis, showing why he is an All-American candidate, was all over the field for the Buckeye defense. The entire defense was playing like silver bullets to the ball. They were rough, tough and hard hitting the entire game.

“It was a good start to the Big Ten season. I think we all realized it was going to be physical, it was going to be attacking,” Laurinaitis said. “I think it was a good start from a defensive standpoint.”

The defense finally allowed a first down to Northwestern on their third drive of the game. The fact that they gave up a set of fresh downs to the opponent must have upset them as free safety Anderson Russell’s blitz forced a fumble and Vernon Gholston picked up the ball and rumbled 28 yards to give the defense a score.

Brian Robiskie caught only three passes in the game, all in the first half and all for touchdowns. The last time a Buckeye receiver was credited with three was Joey Galloway in 1994.

“Robo is a kid who really studies the game. He's very disciplined in his route running. He's long. He goes out with those hands and he can reach out and pluck the ball out of the air.” Tressel said.

The only Buckeye blemish was when Northwestern’s red shirt freshman Stephen Simmons took back the 2nd half opening kickoff 99-yards to get the Wildcats on the scoreboard and ruin the Buckeye shutout.

Other than the kickoff return for a TD, there were not any positives on the Northwestern side of the ball.

"We were erratic and not in synch," Fitzgerald said. "You can't play Ohio State that way. It looked like we were thinking too much. We were not playing as one heartbeat on offense and Ohio State took advantage of it."

Ohio State (4-0, 1-0) now travels next week to Minnesota for an 8 pm kickoff. They return to ‘the Shoe’ in two weeks against Purdue.