Poor Indiana. They’ve been the Big Ten’s doormat in football for a long time. OSU hasn’t lost to them in (now) the last thirteen attempts. That’s not an Indiana slump, it’s futility. Nevertheless, under first year coach Terry Hoeppner, they’re playing very un-Indiana-like. They were 4-2 going into Saturday’s game and were playing decent football. Honestly, though, no one gave them a snowball’s chance.
OSU was heavily favored and pretty much dominated the whole game. Sure, there were flashes of good play by Indiana (the stripping of Ted Ginn Jr. comes to mine), but they were just overmatched. The defense flexed its considerable muscles, holding IU to a paltry 113 yards offense. The Buckeyes offense had a usual Indiana-effort, racking up 464 yards. Not too shabby. Everyone looked good on both sides of the ball and the game was pretty ho-hum. The game was never in question.
But the officiating?! Holy crap on a stick, this is one of the worst officiated games I’ve witnessed in years. It’s unbelievable how many bad calls were made and how many obvious calls were missed. The aforementioned Ginn fumble was a bad no-call. His forward progress had obviously been stopped but the whistle was never blown. Bad mistake. On IU’s kick-off, D’Andrea called for a fair-catch and then muffed the kick-off, the whistle was blown entirely too early and IU was robbed of a turnover. Even when they went to instant-replay, Indiana was hosed on a nice shoe-string catch that was overturned. Huh? And the most egregious call? After Ted Ginn took a kick-off 95+ yards to the house a flag was thrown. The call? A personal foul, a hit to a “defenseless player”. That is the biggest joke of a call I’ve ever heard. If you are on the playing field and you are wearing PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT, you are not defenseless. And what are you doing to qualify being “defenseless”? Tieing your shoes? Picking up the tee? What a joke.
In the end, OSU wasn’t perfect but still laid the wood to an overmatched Indiana. Go Bucks!
I agree that this game had some suspect calls. The Indiana player caught the ball. There was ‘indisputable’ evidence of this yet the call was ‘incomplete.’ I will repeat what you said, huh?
As for beating up on defenseless players, couldn’t the entire OSU team be flagged for that? Indiana was pretty much a victim of a cruel and unfair whipping as they huddled defenseless in the corner.
Bobster, I’m sure the thought of flagging the whole OSU team for hitting defenseless players. As bad of a game as they called, I’m surprised they didn’t.
it’s just an aside, but the mich state game was kind of a shocker, huh?
Johnny- I thought Northwestern had a chance to beat MSU but I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. But yeah, it’s shocking how poorly they played. Hopefully they’ll bounce back this week.