OSU vs USC

Well it's a little over two and half days before this game gets rolling and everybody and their brother has something up about the game. So where should I start?

Let's start with the crazy rumour that has been floating around since Monday. The rumour is that Tress held the offense back in the OU game so USC would not be able to see how we would utilize our offense. In fact one columnist even tries to make it sound like Tress was using plays that were no longer in the playbook. Of course ESPN has their take stating the reason OSU was so flat was because Tress wanted USC to think we weren't ready to play them and have them become overconfident. All I can say is this is all BULLSH**!!! Do these idiots really think that Tress would do something like that??? It not only jeopardizes his job but it makes him look like a Bobby Bowden or Steve Spurrier. From what I know about Tress is that he is a stand up, no nonsense guy who cares about his players and he would NEVER do anything like that to jeopardize his players or OSU. The bottom line is we got outplayed the first half and we got lucky in the second half. We were a flat team that almost got beat by an upstart team. There is no conspiracy theory here, we were looking ahead to USC and almost got tripped up. Plus we fell to #5 in the polls, it's like I said in an earlier post, we now have the difficult challenge of moving back up and quite frankly we may never get to #1 or #2 this year because of how we played against OU.


So how's Beanie? Well according to Tress, Beanie wants to run the ball 45 times on Saturday and Tress told him it would be more like 20. It's also been plastered everywhere today that Beanie is not 100%. Well you idiots that's to be expected no one is ever 100%, but if Beanie told Tress he wants to run the ball 45 times then he must be at least 80%. I think Beanie learned his lesson last year after being challenged by Tress on his manhood, so it doesn't surprise me that Beanie wants to take this team on his shoulders and take care of business.


Well it looks like our secondary will be back to full strength with Washington coming back from his suspension. He will definitely make an impact for defense. As for the rest of our defense I really hope they are ready for this team because USC is that good and they will put some points on the board, so our defense needs to ready.


I really think Tress is going to utilize Pryor a lot more in this game than people think. Tress has something up his sleeve and I think Pryor is the surprise. USC has made it known that they expect something from Pryor so they are covering all their bases. I would be really surprised if Pryor wasn't used in this game. As for Todd, well he showed some steadiness last Saturday but if he thought OU's defense was tough he's in for a long night with USC's defense. He really needs to get in a rhythm and prove himself. If we lost this game because he has a bad night look for Pryor to start getting a lot more snaps this season.


So what do we have going for us? Well we have a few things, the first being this is going to be USC's second game of the year. They had a bye week last week and I'm sure they watched our game against OU and saw how we struggled so hopefully they will be a little overconfident and rusty enough for us to steal a win. The flip side for us is that this is our third game and we have hopefully shook off the cobwebs and will be in better form on Saturday. We also have Beanie back in the lineup so that helps us immensely. Plus our track record against Pac-10 teams is pretty decent which is stellar compared to the SEC.


With all that being said what's my prediction? Well first and foremost I am a Buckeye fan through and through and have been with them through the toughest of times but after watching the OU game last Saturday I saw a team that has had too much praise put on them and they have become too cocky and that's something I can't respect. I don't know if this team learned anything from the OU game. I would hope Tress would have drilled that home this week but honestly I think they are just going through the motions and our back to being a cocky team again. Don't get me wrong there are different levels of cockiness and that does help a team to a point but I think they are too overconfident and they need to be knocked down a peg to learn a lesson. So with that being said it pains me to say this but my final score prediction is USC 27 OSU 7. From what I've seen these last two games we are just not ready for a team like USC. Trust me I don't want us to lose but if we do lose it could turn out to be good thing. It will help them focus and become a better team.

So that's it for today. Man I really hate that I had to predict them to lose but I just don't see us winning. If we do I will be more than glad to eat some humble pie. MMMM pie!!!