Ryan Day said the quiet part into a microphone. After Ohio State gave away a 20-point fourth-quarter lead at Texas, the head coach said his team would have to find a way to "get some momentum again." Two wins later, the Ohio State Buckeyes go looking for it at No. 14 Iowa, which is a little like going looking for your car keys in a dark alley.
I keep coming back to how that Austin fourth quarter must have felt from the sideline. Twenty points is not a lead you squeeze. Twenty points is a lead you are supposed to be able to sit on, drain the clock with, and get on the plane. Losing grip on it does something to a team that box scores never capture, and Day clearly knows it, or he would have answered that question with coachspeak instead of an admission. That's a tell. Coaches do not talk about momentum when they feel like they have it.
The two wins since are the part I would not oversell. Everybody wins games in September. What nobody knows yet is whether this group has rebuilt the thing that cracked in the fourth quarter in Texas, because you cannot test that in a comfortable home win. You test it on the road, late, when the crowd is loud and the margin is one score. Iowa City is exactly that laboratory.
checked the almanac: the last time a top-five Ohio State team walked into Kinnick Stadium expecting a routine afternoon, Iowa hung 55 on them in 2017. fifty-five. that is not a ghost story, that is a box score.
So what I am watching is simple and it is not about anything fancy. I want to see Ohio State with a lead in the fourth quarter in a hostile building, and I want to see what they do with it. Do they keep attacking, or do they get conservative and invite the crack back open? That is the whole question this team has to answer, and Iowa is a mean place to have to answer it.
A No. 14 team at home, a No. 1-caliber roster carrying a fresh scar. Should be a great one.