COLUMBUS, Ohio — Put in a position to win last year’s Big Ten Championship game, Michigan State stopped Braxton Miller on a short fourth-down run late in the fourth quarter, setting the stage for the Spartans’ game-sealing touchdown. If put into a similar position next Saturday when Ohio State visits East Lansing for the Big Ten’s game of the year, has the Buckeyes defense shown enough to say they could come up with a similar game-saving stop? They think so. “Yeah, we’re confident,” Ohio State linebacker Curtis Grant said after the Buckeyes beat Illinois 55-14 on Saturday night. After handling the Illini in convincing fashion, the postgame talk had very little, if anything at all, to do with Illinois. Everything was about the Spartans. When it comes to Ohio State’s defense, the question is whether or not they could win that game if called upon. “Last weekend was a great gelling moment for our defense,” Grant said about the Buckeyes’ double overtime win over Penn State. “Just to put us in that situation, to see how we would respond. I think we responded very well and I think we’ll continue to respond very well.” The Buckeyes defense did eventually get the game-clinching stop in that game, but the reality is they also allowed a 19-play drive at the end of regulation that ended with Penn State making a throw to the end zone to win the game before ultimately settling for the game-tying field goal. There was no such letdown against Illinois on Saturday. That was never going to happen. No. 16 Ohio State (7-1, 3-0 Big Ten) held the Illini to 243 yards of total offense, more than 150 yards off their season average. The Buckeyes have shown they can stop bad offenses (See: Illinois, Kent State, Rutgers, Maryland and for 45 minutes, Penn State)…
Continue Reading: Ohio State football: Buckeyes’ defense throttles Illinois, but can they win Michigan State game?
