Troy could traumatize fragile Buckeye nation

Today’s visitor from Alabama fancies itself a giant-killer.

COLUMBUS (AP) — It’s a game that could cause Ohio State fans to say ‘Uh-oh,’ merely because of its placement on the schedule.

A week after that 35-3 beatdown at top-ranked Southern California, and a week before the Buckeyes begin their quest for an unprecedented third straight outright Big Ten title, in comes Troy.

It’s the perfect scenario for an ambush: Troy fancies itself a giant-killer, travels the country looking for big-name teams to play and has the talent to play with them. The Buckeyes are a bit fragile after getting humiliated on national TV, and are in flux at the two most important positions on offense.

No wonder the Trojans (2-0) — the ones from Troy, Ala., not the ones from USC — are feeling pretty good.

“It makes us real confident,” Troy cornerback Jorrick Calvin said. “We had a big game this week and the offense put up some pretty good numbers. Going up there and them just losing a big game like that, I think they’ll be hurting and they could get beat again.”

The 13th-ranked Buckeyes (2-1) aren’t angered by that evaluation. On the contrary, they’re doing their best to prod themselves to not be “hurting.”

“Everyone that looked from a broad perspective would have told you that this is the most dangerous game on our schedule,” Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. “It’s before [the] league. It’s after your national-stage game. And the fact that they’re very, very good.”

The Buckeyes have had to hear every columnist, commentator and blogger in the land call them overrated and a joke in the days since their Coliseum collapse. Then again, they’ve grown used to hearing disparaging comments after getting run out of the stadium in the last two national championship games.

“People are going to say or feel a certain way. We can’t do anything to change that except to just play better football,” linebacker James Laurinaitis said.

Ohio State’s fans, fed up with humiliating losses, want changes everywhere. There are calls for the offensive and defensive coordinators to be fired and for just about every current starter to be replaced.

The Buckeyes have tried to seal themselves off from all of that.

“What’s important to us is that we make sure inside these walls that we’re talking about what needs to be done to play our best against Troy,” Tressel said. “Because outside these walls, I just spent 50 minutes on the radio and you’d have thought it was an open week and we were going back to trying to fix everything and [weren’t playing] anybody. The reality is we’re playing somebody, and they’re good.”