Head Coach Ryan Day and Will Howard of the Ohio State Buckeyes share a moment during Saturday’s game against Michigan State at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
COLUMBUS – A long flight and changing time zones are not among Ryan Day’s concerns as No. 2 Ohio State (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) prepares for its game against No. 3 Oregon (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) on Saturday night in the biggest college football game of the week.
“I don’t really see it as much of a challenge. It’s a 4 ½ hour flight, it’s a couple hours farther than Nebraska. We’re going to stay on East Coast time. I think we’ve got a good plan. We’re going to stay on our time schedule. The time of the game kind of fits our practice schedule,” Day said.
“It’s only a couple hours more than Nebraska. That’s kind of how we’re looking at it. We’re not making it a bigger deal than it is,” he said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
OSU’s football coach didn’t point to the result of the last match-up between the two teams as evidence those things don’t matter but he could have done that.
Oregon was a 35-28 winner over the Buckeyes in 2021 at Ohio Stadium when it was the team taking the long flight into an unfamiliar time zone.
“It was C.J.’s s (C.J. Stroud) second start. He played his tail off in that game we just didn’t play well on defense, didn’t run the ball and didn’t convert on fourth downs. That’s how you lose games,” Day said.
Some other thoughts from Day:
OFFENSIVE LINE IMPROVEMENT: Ohio State’s offensive line has shown week-to-week improvement but is not a finished product, according to Day.
“I think there has been improvement but we’re nowhere near where we need to be or in a situation where we’re evaluating their progress other than I feel they are getting better every week,” he said.
NOT QUITE A LOCK: Tegra Tshabola played 95 percent of the snaps at right guard in a 35-7 win over Iowa but Day is not quite ready to name him the undisputed owner of that spot in the lineup.
Asked if that division of playing time would continue this week, he said, “Probably, but we will keep evaluating on a week-to-week basis. He is getting better. We felt like he could handle those guys inside (Iowa’s defensive linemen) and give us the best chance to win.
“We’ll evaluate it again this week but if he continues to improve and continues to do what he’s doing then it will look the same.”
WILLIAMS RETURNS: Day said defensive tackle Tyleik Williams was “solid” in his return against Iowa after missing two games because of an injury.
“He was getting his hands on people, knocking people back. It was good to get him back and obviously, you could feel his presence in there. He can rush the passer as well as anybody in the country on the inside,” he said.
