After a 51-14 pasting of Iowa Saturday afternoon, Minnesota head coach Jerry Kill danced with pure, childlike joy in the team’s locker room while his team clapped, hooted and howled in a circle around him.
The Golden Gophers had just notched their best win of the season, and Kill intended to celebrate in style that night.
“We come off a good win and then you go home," he said Tuesday. "And you're going to kickback and relax and get you a bowl of ice cream."
Only one problem.
"Then you put on the TV and then you watch Ohio State,” Kill said. “Then you don't sleep the rest of the night. You don't get a chance to enjoy the win. And now all you do is worry about what you're going to do."
 |
| MINNESOTA GOLDEN GOPHERS |
|
7–2, 4–1 BIG TEN ROSTER | SCHEDULE |
|
|
|
NOON – SATURDAY, NOV. 15 TCF BANK STADIUM MINNEAPOLIS, MN |
|
|
|
ABC |
Because like the rest of the nation, Kill watched the Buckeyes dismantle defending Big Ten champion Michigan State and make an emphatic statement in primetime. Since a stunning loss to Virginia Tech early in the season, a surging Ohio State teams finds itself in the thick of the playoff conversation. The Golden Gophers are the latest team to stand in the way.
To remain in the picture, of course, the Buckeyes have a somewhat unexpected challenge awaiting them in frigid and snowy Minneapolis this weekend.
OPPONENT BREAKDOWN
At 7-2, Minnesota is probably the Big Ten’s surprise team of the year. But it seems hard to get a grasp on a squad that crushed the Hawkeyes last week and lost to lowly Illinois before that.
The best barometer for who the Golden Gophers might actually be is a 30-7 loss to TCU in Week Three. Point being, Minnesota's probably not as bad as the team that inexplicably lost to the terrible Fighting Illini and lacks the firepower to push back against a crew like the Horned Frogs. For that reason, of course, it's intriguing as to whether or not the Golden Gophers have improved enough to hang with Ohio State.
After all, the Buckeyes and TCU are both top 10 teams in the latest College Football Playoff rankings.
"I got asked that million dollar question: Which one is better, all that kind of stuff, and I said, I don't know that. We'll play and so forth. I will tell you this is that Ohio State is playing a very high level right now and playing as good as anybody in the country," Kill said.
"But as far as us being more ready and so forth, you know, at TCU we turned the ball over five times, and you're not going to beat anybody turning the ball over five times, and they were tremendously athletic and did some good things, and we also did some good things except turn the ball over all the time.
"And evidently, they're pretty good because of what they're doing right now, but we didn't do ourselves any favors. Going into this game we're going to play the unbelievable athletes and if we turn the ball over five times, it's going to be a long, long, long, long, day. So are we better equipped to play these people better than we were our first year, I'd like to think so ... It's a deal where I think we all know we're going to have to play at a very high level, and our kids, they're fired up and, you know, they'll be ready to play. And I don't know how you can't be. So that's how we'll approach it."
On offense, Minnesota is an extremely run-heavy and mild team that averages 31 points and 365 yards a game. More than anyone else, it relies on running back David Cobb to do just about everything. The senior has 1,205 yards and eight touchdowns on 227 carries.
And for an idea of just how much Minnesota would prefer to keep the ball on the ground, it has 425 rushing attempts compared to 165 passes.
As a result, redshirt sophomore quarterback Mitch Leidner, who's completing 53 percent of his passes for 1,225 yards, 10 touchdowns and six interceptions, averages less than 155 yards a contest. He's asked to be more or a game-manager than anything else.
But when the Golden Gophers do throw the ball, Leidner has been fond of sophomore tight end Maxx Williams, who leads the team with 22 catches for 326 yards and seven touchdowns. He caught five balls for 46 yards and three touchdowns against Iowa.
"When you look at it, we should’ve threw it to him a lot more,” Kill said last weekend, laughing.
On defense, Minnesota gives up an average of 21 points and 335 yards. The unit is respectable and perhaps had its best outing of the year against Iowa last weekend.
"I think our kids are played with a great deal of confidence, with discipline on Saturday. And we tackled well, created some turnovers," Kill said.
But the Golden Gophers haven't faced an offense like Ohio State's since TCU. In fact, the two units, at least statistically, are rather comparable.
"Against Ohio State — with the athletes they have — you're going to be in some one‑on‑one situations and we're going to have to tackle very well and we're going to have to be disciplined," Kill said.
"The problem is with Ohio State they're double edged sword. You take the run game away from them and they're going to hit you over the top. They're difficult to defend, because their receivers and their skill people are as good as anybody in the country. I think that's pretty evident after Saturday night's performance."
After all, the Buckeyes dropped 49 points and 568 yards on Michigan State's top-ranked defense. And if Minnesota can't find a way to at least slow down redshirt freshman J.T. Barrett and Co., it's hard to imagine it having the horses on offense to keep this contest close.
Buckeye Breakdown
After toppling the Spartans last weekend, Ohio State's coaches and players celebrated like conquerers. And on this cold and camp night in East Lansing, they were exactly that.
They shrieked and hugged and danced and sung. Meyer and his wife, Shelley, shared a long, passionate embrace on the field. They bellowed the words to Carmen Ohio with the fans who traveled to see them. They galloped back to their locker room and bounced to music.
Beating Michigan State was a revenge and a pivotal, signature win all in one moment. There was reason to revel in it. But Meyer ended the team's festivities Monday morning.
“We're done with the celebration part,” he said. “Now we're learning from it. And the players will receive their directive tomorrow and we're moving forward.”
Of course, the first step on that journey is a trip to freezing Minneapolis where the Buckeyes will play their first game not under the lights in a month. When you couple that, the inevitable emotional high from last weekend's win, and a quality opponent like Minnesota, Saturday is being billed as the trap-est of trap games in the history of trap games. As such, Meyer's been grinding his crew as hard as ever.
"That's the thing that Lou Holtz would always say; and this is where I think coaches make a lot of mistakes. You don't just go blow the whole thing up when you lose a game. That's fragile. You coach them really hard when you win," he said.
“So you say how difficult, it's not difficult at all. You lose that game Saturday, it's really difficult. Now you've got problems. Now you've got motivation problems. So it's all the way we handle it and the good thing is I've got nine good coaches and — more importantly — I have players that understand we didn't play as well as we could on defense and we expect to play much better. Two weeks ago we didn't play as well on offense. There's plenty to work on.”
Sure, there's always things to work on; but the Buckeyes are playing pretty darn good right now. On a micro level: Barrett is playing out of his mind, an offensive line that had previously vexed Meyer all season is much improved and the skill players in the perimeter are emerging as reliable playmakers.
In the bigger picture: They're on the fast track back to the Big Ten title game, in the top 10 of every major set of rankings, and, perhaps most importantly, firmly back in the national conversation over what four teams deserve to be in the sport's first-ever playoff.
Things are coming together for Ohio State in a way few thought would ever happen after that humiliating loss to a Hokies team that's 4-5.
"That early in the season we were not a great team. We had a quarterback that was a quarterback for about two weeks and did not play very well. We had an offensive line that played horrible that game and a group of receivers that were not ready to play. The young guys were not," Meyer said.
"This is the most improved team that I've been a part of ... I've been fortunate to be around some championship level teams, they have a common characteristic and they're grinders. And they get better each week. Those are championship level teams."
But in today's world of college football where things change so swiftly sometimes, it could be all for none if Ohio State sleepwalks for even just an afternoon.
"Once again, this could all be gone if we don't go out and continue to do what we do."
How It'll Play Out
Is a trap game a trap game when the team supposed to get trapped knows it's going to be trapped? Who knows; probably depends on how you define it.
Regardless, Ohio State has proven it can get geeked up for for noon games and crush opponents (see: Kent State and, especially, Maryland).
While it's hard to completely disregard playing on the road, the start time (11 a.m. local) and temperatures in the mid-20s, the biggest thing at play here is Ohio State's actual opponent.
Minnesota's not Michigan State, but the Golden Gophers are a solid team that can take extraneous things like the weather and use them to their advantage — whether's it in psychological warfare, game-planning, or play-calling.
That said, Minnesota would appear to lack the offensive firepower to keep with the Buckeyes' surging offense. And it's equally hard to believe the defense is going to be able to slow Barrett, Ezekiel Elliott and an emerging corps of wide receivers.
ELEVEN WARRIORS STAFF PREDICTION: Ohio State 43, Minnesota 18
