Ohio State's machine sputtered

The Buckeyes may have been looking past Northwestern to Wisconsin.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- After losing to Northwestern for the first time in 33 years, there is plenty of blame to go around for Ohio State.
"Northwestern can be a very, very good football team," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said Tuesday. "They proved that Saturday night. I'm not sure I did as good a job getting that point across."
The 18th-ranked Buckeyes (3-1, 0-1 Big Ten) were outplayed in almost every facet of the game.
The already moribund running game mustered just 97 yards. For the third time in four starts, quarterback Justin Zwick had at least two turnovers. And a defense that was thought to be among the best in the country was beaten for big plays and 444 yards.
"If you put together all of the parts of what you need to do to win the game, we didn't do those, so it's not a mystery to me why we didn't win," Tressel said.
Still, Ohio State lost even though it was favored by two touchdowns, hadn't lost to Northwestern in Evanston in 46 years and hadn't been beaten by the Wildcats anywhere since 1971.
May have lacked focus
Defensive tackle Quinn Pitcock said the Buckeyes did not look past Northwestern to this week's showdown with No. 15 Wisconsin (5-0, 2-0). At the same time, he acknowledged he and his teammates may not have been focused on the job at hand.
"Maybe there wasn't as much heart as they (the Wildcats) may have put into it," he said.
The Buckeyes now face the prospect of falling to 0-2 in the conference for the first time since 1992.
"It will be a great challenge for us to see if we can understand the difficulty of the task," Tressel said of the Wisconsin game. "(We have to) understand what needs to be done if we're going to win the football game and climb back in the race in the Big Ten."
Need total improvement
To do that, the Buckeyes must improve in all phases.
Zwick finished 18 of 38 for 211 yards with an interception and a touchdown. He led the rally that forced overtime, but his mistakes were costly.
"That is definitely not good enough," Zwick said. "It's something that's going to happen and it's something you have to learn from. That's life. You're not going to be perfect all the time. But I definitely feel bad about putting our team in that situation in the game."
The defense appeared to be confused at times as Northwestern mixed a variety of misdirection and counter plays with straight-ahead runs that netted Noah Herron 113 yards on 33 carries and two touchdowns.
"It was a shock all Saturday and into Sunday, but we've moved on," Pitcock said. "There's nothing you can do about it. There's another game this week for us to worry about."