Things were going the Penn State Nittany Lions’ way against the Ohio State Buckeyes throughout Saturday afternoon’s game, and they even had a 35-20 lead heading into the fourth quarter. But the Buckeyes responded with two touchdowns to pull within five at 38-33, and they got the ball back with 3:07 left. OSU quarterback J.T. Barrett then led a brilliant TD drive, capped by this beautiful throw to give his team the 39-38 win.
J.T. Barrett’s beautiful TD pass gives Ohio State the victory over Penn State
The Buckeyes get revenge.
Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images
The Buckeyes went for two and failed, but the touchdown was enough to give them the one-point lead.
Penn State got the ball back with less than two minutes left, but Ohio State’s defense forced the Lions to turn the ball over on downs, giving the offense the ball back with 1:22 left. That let OSU run the clock down to give them the comeback victory.
With the victory, the Buckeyes successfully got revenge for last year’s loss to Penn State, which ended up keeping them out of the Big Ten Championship game. The Bucks still made it into the College Football Playoff, but it has to be a nice feeling to get this winning feeling back against PSU.
As my colleague Bill Connelly pointed out earlier this week, the Bucks needed to win when it was under the spotlight this week:
It’s been pretty easy to make comparisons to 2014 since then. That year, the Buckeyes played poorly in an early home loss to Virginia Tech, then, with the nation’s attention elsewhere, wrecked shop.
By the time most of the nation realized, “Holy cow, this team’s really elite,” the Buckeyes had already humiliated Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game and vanquished title favorite Alabama in the CFP semifinals.
But if you were paying attention to the numbers, you could see the rise starting well before the conference championship. Ohio State was an S&P+ favorite in October that year.
For Penn State, the Lions still have games against Michigan State, Rutgers, Nebraska, and Maryland. For this team to have another appearance in Indianapolis on Championship Saturday, Ohio State will have to lose to either Michigan or one of the other three Big Ten teams it faces this season.
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