COLUMBUS, Ohio — If a football game were 40 minutes, Wisconsin would have won.
For the first two-thirds of Saturday’s game the Badgers did just about everything to hang around and then take the lead on the No. 1 team in the country.
They shut down the big play dimension of the Buckeyes’ offense and they scored two offensive touchdowns — a feat only Washington had achieved against mighty Ohio State entering the game.
UW quarterback Tyler Donovan found holes in the normally impenetrable Buckeye coverage, passing for 238 yards and two scores. Freshman Zach Brown even held his own in place of injured starter P.J. Hill, netting 63 yards on the ground.
Then it all caved in. Wisconsin’s 17-10 lead seemed to wake the sleeping giant as the Buckeyes turned up the burners and scorched the defenseless Badgers. Over the final 20 minutes of the game Ohio State accumulated 166 total yards. Wisconsin had 55.
“They showed that they were the better fourth-quarter team today, and they put together a complete game and we didn’t,” UW linebacker Jonathan Casillas said.
The culprit was Ohio State’s Chris Wells. His ability to take over in the second half changed the course of the game and left Wisconsin feeling like it let one slip away.
“They weren’t running the ball effectively [in the first half] and I think we had that advantage on the defensive side of the ball that we can do whatever we want to do,” Casillas said. “When they started running the ball they gave us some problems, and we couldn’t stop them on third downs and that really hurt us.”
Just when the momentum swung in Wisconsin’s favor, Ohio State turned up the intensity and took it right back.
“They had the momentum, the plays were going their way, they had some big runs that went their way,” Casillas said. “When you get that momentum on your side, a lot of things happen for a reason, it’s up to the other team to create that momentum swing, get that pendulum back on our side, and we didn’t do that in the fourth quarter.”
Losing starting cornerback Allen Langford and starting defensive tackle Jason Chapman to injuries certainly didn’t do Wisconsin any favors in stopping Wells and Ohio State from moving the football in healthy chunks. And with the offense suddenly struggling to pick up a first down, it put more pressure on a tiring, thinning defensive front. But safety Aubrey Pleasant didn’t see it that way. He saw it as a missed opportunity.
“It happens every year on every team that at least one player goes down,” said Pleasant, with a look of utter despair etched on his face. “The next guy in needs to step up.
“It wasn’t a let up, they just took advantage of the holes in our defense.”
To embody the latter part of the second half, the Badgers had miscommunication on an exchange and a fourth-down situation, and fumbled a second time just for good measure.
Punter Ken DeBauche didn’t get the memo on a fourth-and-3 from Wisconsin’s 27. He faked the punt and tried to run for a first down — UW was down seven points at the time — only to be met by All-American linebacker James Laurinaitis, who finished with 19 tackles.
“It was an alert against a look that they had run previously on a prior snap,” Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema said. “I thought it wasn’t there, so basically everybody got the alert that we were going to punt the ball except for Kenny.”
All in all, according to Bielema, the end result was misrepresentative of the final score.
“I’m disappointed that anyone who looks at the scoreboard and didn’t see the game, they don’t realize how much of a game this was,” Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema said. “I thought our guys definitely didn’t flinch in their preparation or anything that they did today on the football field [either].”
