NO ‘O’ STATE

By TODD PORTER

Buckeyes search for more scoring

Ohio State and QB Terrelle Pryor need to get much better.

COLUMBUS — It is one thing for a young offense to go through growing pains. It is quite another for the seventh-ranked Ohio State’s offense to look like an unmade bed week after week.

Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel feels your pain. The offense needs work and with Purdue, Minnesota and New Mexico State on the horizon, Tressel better get to tuning up.

Ohio State’s offense was, mostly, bystanders as the Buckeyes beat Wisconsin 31-13 Saturday.

Football, Tressel believes, is a game of pressure. The offense has been under heat most of the season. The Buckeyes are ranked 86th in the country in total offense.

“You’re either the guy getting pressured or you’re putting pressure on them,” Tressel said. “We didn’t do as good a job other than we scalded it down there that one drive real quickly. Outside of that, we didn’t put the pressure on their defense.”

In the first half, the Buckeyes never seemed to get out of their own way. Three straight three-and-outs started the game.

“You never like three-and-outs,” quarterback Terrelle Pryor said. “But that’s part of football.”

The flow of the second half didn’t help the offense Saturday, and it might have hurt Pryor’s development going forward. Pryor didn’t struggle in leading a two-minute, no-huddle touchdown drive right before halftime. But the offense waited about an hour from that score to getting back on the field.

An interception return for a touchdown and a kickoff return for a TD made for a boring day in the offensive huddle. The way the offense has been playing, though, fans might not complain about it not being on the field.

Tressel has one, though.

“We ended up with about 32 gradable plays [of offense],” Tressel said. “To me, the downside of that is, whereas [Wisconsin quarterback Scott Tolzien] had a chance to experience 47 throws and the line got to experience 47 pass protections against very, very good people, that was something we didn’t have a chance to do.”

Pryor sees OSU’s defense — ranked 11th in the country — about 18 snaps on Tuesday and Wednesday when it’s best vs. best. That’s 36 snaps every week that he experiences that no other QB in the country does.

Perhaps Pryor’s development was hindered by not being on the field against Wisconsin for almost all of the third quarter and for taking just 32 meaningful snaps. Another factor that hurt was the flow of the game.

“What is it you want to do? Practice or win the game?” Tressel said. “We’re always, I hope, going to err on the side of trying to win the game.”

But the highly regarded Buckeye sophomore is 95th in the country with 158 passing yards a game, one spot behind Kentucky QB Mike Hartline, and one spot in front of Tim Tebow.

With a three-score lead and a defense that was exhausted by being on the field too long, Tressel didn’t want to put the team in jeopardy.

But Wisconsin committed eight defenders in the box. The Badgers practically dared the Buckeyes to throw the ball. Tressel ran it, played it conservative because that’s what gave Ohio State the best chance to win.

It’s hard to argue with the logic. The Buckeyes are a one-loss team ranked seventh in both polls with a legitimate chance to be in the top five before facing Penn State, Iowa and Michigan.

“We probably would have thrown the ball down the field a great deal more had the game been a little bit different,” Tressel said. “Each time we got the ball back after a long lull, the last thing in your mind was, ‘Hey, why don’t we go three-and-out in 42 seconds?’ ’’

It would have rolled an unmade bed off the field quicker, likely to the delight of fans.