- Saturday, September 29, 2012

- Spartan Stadium - East Lansing, MI

- Ohio State at Michigan State

- 3:30 p.m. (ET)

- TV: ABC -

The No. 14 Ohio State Buckeyes hit the road for the first time this year for a battle against the No. 20 Michigan State Spartans. ESPN’s college gameday will also invade East Lansing as this Big Ten opener features the conference’s highest ranked teams.

The Buckeyes have dominated Sparty recently winning seven of the last eight matchups, but Michigan State got the best of Ohio State last year in an ugly 10-7 loss in Columbus.

Ohio State comes into the game a perfect 4-0 after defeating a surprisingly plucky UAB team 29-15 last week. Michigan State’s lone blemish came two weeks ago with a 21-3 loss to Notre Dame, and the Spartans hold a 3-1 record entering conference play.

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Is there such thing as an unimpressive 4-0 record? If you don’t think so, apparently you haven’t watched Ohio State for the first part of the season. The Buckeyes moved to an imperfectly perfect 4-0 with a 29-15 victory over Alabama-Birmingham at the Horseshoe on Saturday afternoon, capping off a month’s worth of sloppy, stumbling  performances that all happened to end in victories.

Thank God for the Scoreboard: If you just looked at the box score of Saturday’s game, you might think UAB pulled the upset. The Blazers outgained Ohio State 403-347, picked up 22 first downs to Ohio State’s 20 and controlled the ball for nearly 34 minutes. For the majority of the afternoon they were the better, more efficient team. The only thing UAB didn’t do- aside from win, of course- was turn its copious yardage into touchdowns. Despite moving up and down the field almost the entire game the Blazer offense couldn’t get the ball into the end zone, settling for three field goals off the powerful leg of kicker Ty Long.

Special-Teams Breakdown: UAB did score a touchdown, however- just not on offense. With 9:21 left in a scoreless first quarter, Blazer safety Calvin Jones came through clean and took a punt practically off the foot of Ben Buchanan. Nick Adams scooped up the loose ball and cruised into the end zone to give UAB a 6-0 lead. The Buckeyes blocked the extra point; however, their return unit would later be caught napping on the second-half kickoff as the Blazers recovered their own onside kick (they wound up punting on the possession.)

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Conference play begins this weekend in the Big Ten, and that may be the only thing that can put an end to the entirely legitimate critique of the league’s non-conference performance. Big Ten teams were 7-3 this past weekend (Indiana and Purdue were idle) and in the only contest against a ranked team, Michigan was outclassed by No. 11 Notre Dame in South Bend.

In other action, B1G teams were able to get by Idaho State, South Dakota, Eastern Michigan and Louisiana Tech...oh wait...scratch that last one.

This week there are five conference matchups on the schedule (Purdue hosts Marshall, and Michigan is idle), and beginning October 6, all teams will be in conference play. If nothing else, that will allow for a shorter Recap for the rest of the season. To the games...

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Ohio State remained unbeaten Saturday with a 29-15 victory over the Blazers from UAB, but OSU fans looking for signs of progress had little else to celebrate. Braxton Miller continued to carry the offensive load for the Buckeyes with two rushing touchdowns, but it was an otherwise lackluster performance for the Scarlet and Gray on both sides of the ball, and on special teams.

The Blazers (0-3) came into Columbus a 36-point underdog, and proceeded to out-play and out-coach the 16th-ranked and heavily favored Buckeyes for most of the afternoon. They gained more total yards than Ohio State (403-347), got more first downs (22-20), and dominated time of possession (33:55 - 26:05)

The Blazers blocked an OSU punt for a touchdown, pulled off a successful onside kick to start the second half, and shocked the assembled 105,019 by taking a 9-0 lead over the home team early in the second quarter. Urban Meyer, perhaps understating the case in his postgame comments, remarked, “It's glaringly obvious we've got to get a lot better or we won't win next week.”

Next week is the start of the Big Ten schedule with a crucial game in East Lansing against Michigan State, and at this point, only the decrepit overall state of the conference is cause for reassurance for these Buckeyes. They won unimpressively last week against Cal, and the pollsters dropped them from No. 12 to No. 16 for their trouble. There’s no telling how they might be punished for the way they looked in victory this week.

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