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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Tressel Tales from Cus Words Sports.
This week 25 years ago, Ohio State was riding high off a rousing, prime-time win over defending Big Ten champion Northwestern.
The Buckeyes seemed to have found a winning formula over the previous couple of weeks: Run the ball, play great defense and get just enough from the passing game.
With unranked Wisconsin coming to town following an embarrassing loss, this looked like a chance for Tressel’s team to build some momentum.
Ron Dayne was not walking through that door… but it turned out the Badgers didn’t need him.
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Oct. 13, 2001
Wisconsin 20, Ohio State 17
Jim Tressel’s first season as head coach at Ohio State continued with a national TV audience on ABC getting to watch No. 21 Ohio State blow a 17-0 lead. The Buckeyes give up 13 unanswered points and lost to the Badgers in Ohio Stadium for the second straight time.
Wisconsin entered 3-3 overall and 1-1 in the Big Ten, having just been blown out 63-32 at Indiana.
Ohio State beat the Badgers in Madison in 2000, but the Buckeyes were still looking for some revenge after an embarrassing 42-17 setback at Ohio Stadium in 1999 that also saw the home team lead 17-0 early.
The game started well enough for Ohio State. The Buckeyes got the opening kickoff and went 32 yards in 11 plays, though they stalled at the Wisconsin 17 when Mike Echols sacked Steve Bellisari for a 10-yard loss. That led to a 44-yard field goal by Josh Huston.
After forcing a three-and-out, Ohio State got the ball near midfield and took advantage by driving 51 yards in nine plays for a touchdown.
Lydell Ross had a 25-yard run on a draw, and Steve Bellisari found Chris Vance for 17 yards to get the Buckeyes to the Wisconsin 4. Bellisari then ran it in from a yard out, and Huston’s PAT kick gave the Buckeyes a 10-0 lead with 4:28 left in the first quarter.
They stretched it to 17-0 when Ross scored from three yards out four minutes into the second quarter, but it was all downhill from there.
The Buckeye special teams helped jump-start the Badgers’ comeback when a punt long snap by Mike Jacobs (who is now the head coach at Toledo) led to punter Andy Groom being forced to run for his life instead of kick it away.
That gave the Badgers the ball at the Ohio State 23, and they only needed one play to take advantage.
Sprightly running back Anthony Davis went around right end for a 23-yard touchdown to pull the Badgers within 10 points with just 46 seconds left in the first half.
They got the ball to start the third quarter and quickly added another touchdown when Brooks Bollinger hit Nick Davis for a 42-yard score that made it a three-point game with nearly 12 minutes left in the third quarter.
Davis caught a slant pass, broke a tackle from Cie Grant then outran Dustin Fox to the end zone.
Wisconsin tied the game early in the fourth quarter on a 25-yard field goal by Mark Neuser that was set up by a 30-yard reception by Lee Evans.
Ohio State had a chance to regain the lead with five minutes left, but Huston missed a 48-yard field goal after Ross was thrown for a three-yard loss on a third-and-1 at the Wisconsin 30.
The Badgers struck back quickly with Bollinger hitting Evans, an Ohio native, for 30 yards to put them near field goal range.
They got there on runs of seven and eight yards by Davis then went in front with a 33-yard field goal with 2:10 to go.
The kick silenced the crowd at Ohio Stadium, but soon they were booing after the Ohio State offense produced a feeble four-and-out that featured three inaccurate incomplete passes by Bellisari.
After missing Wells in the flat on first down, Bellisari had to scramble for a 1-yard gain on second down. His third-down pass went deep to no one in particular, and he threw a ball over Chris Vance’s head on fourth down to extinguish the drive before it ever got going.
Buckeye Sports Bulletin
“We didn’t maintain what we needed to do early,” Tressel said via the Buckeye Sports Bulletin archives. “We needed to do that for four quarters against a team like Wisconsin. I thought Wisconsin battled it out hard against a very good Ohio State defense.”
Bellisari told reporters after the game, “You guys can point the finger at me if you want, but that’s not going to change the amount of pressure that I put on myself as a leader of this team. There’s not one person who isn’t as disappointed as I am.”
Tressel came to his defense, however.
“Sometimes, perhaps, we had opportunities and we didn’t take it. There were some other times when we had opportunities, but Steve had someone in his face. You’re going to have to go long and hard to find any of us to talk about any one particular individual being the culprit, if you will, because we are all part of it.”
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Game notes
After a low-key but effective night against Northwestern, Bellisari had a rough day. He completed 10 of 21 passes for 132 yards and was sacked five times. The quarterback also ran five times for 35 yards while Jonathan Wells and Lydell Ross combined to carry 38 times for 126 yards so the Buckeyes were hardly efficient on the ground.
Efforts to ground-and-pound the Badgers came up short as Ohio State averaged just 2.4 yards per carry.
Ohio State tackle Shane Olivea explained the running was tougher in the second half because the Badgers started slanting up front and brought both safeties down closer to the line of scrimmage: They brought more men into the box. They started slanting because they couldn’t handle us straight. They tried that in the first half and we kicked their butts up and down the field.”
Not surprisingly, the conservative game plan came under fire immediately after the game.
“You have to have an effective passing game in order to win. We reassess every play every day. We reassess what design we give our guys to do and we reassess personnel and protection. There were plenty of problems that contributed to us not winning this game.”
Also predictable: Tressel was asked after the game when he might consider pulling Bellisari in favor of sophomore backup Scott McMullen. “I don’t know the answer for that. My answer would be it wasn’t the right time (today). I really couldn’t answer what is the right time.”
Wisconsin was not much more efficient at 3.6 YPC, but the Badgers came up with timely stops and a handful of explosive plays to set up their scores.
Echols had 11 tackles, including three for loss, and forced a fumble. He also broke up a pass and had two sacks.
The 5-7, 190-pound Davis finished with 103 yards on 26 carries while Bollinger was 12 for 22 for 202 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
After the game, Wisconsin players angered some of the Buckeyes by dancing on the Block ‘O’ at midfield. The Badgers described it as payback because Ohio State had done the same in Madison the year before, but that in turn was a response to Wisconsin’s celebration in Ohio Stadium in ’99. Badgers coach Barry Alvarez said he did not see what happened after the game.
Today’s perspective
This is one of those games burned into my memory.
From the South Stands, I can still see those last Bellisari passes hitting the grass without ever looking like they were going to be caught. That really punctuated the plunge from the position of strength they held in the first half and the disappointment from the ecstasy of the week before when the Buckeyes pounded a ranked Northwestern team under the lights.
Just when it looked like the Buckeyes might take off under their new coach, they truly ground to a halt. Such a seesaw season hasn’t happened in a long time, and this would be far from the last wild turn in Tressel’s first campaign.
Next up for the Buckeyes
After falling to 3-2 overall and 2-1 in the Big Ten, Ohio State would play San Diego State in a game that was originally to be played Sept. 15 but postponed because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Aztecs were 2-4 and coming off a 31-3 loss to UNLV.
They featured a defense led by linebacker Kirk Morrison, safety Will Demps and defensive tackle Akbar Gbaja-Biamila.
Previous editions of the Tressel Tales:
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