Ohio State holds Spring Game

By JASON BOSTIC

Ohio State’s Scar­let team was vic­to­ri­ous over the Gray on Sat­ur­day at the LiFE Sports Spring Game in Ohio Sta­dium in a 20–14 final.

In front of a crowd of 81,112 ded­i­cated fans, the pads and hel­mets crashed in cool, wet, fall like weather that they will see later this year.

While it may not get as much atten­tion from every­one, the die-hard Buck­eye fans were out in sup­port of their team and to see just what head coach Urban Meyer had been up to since arriv­ing to Colum­bus. While he may have referred to the game as “not pretty,” it was very clear by the end of the day just who was step­ping up and that there was clearly going to be com­pe­ti­tion for posi­tions on the field.

Part of the com­pet­i­tive side was shown before the offi­cial clock began run­ning for the game. Ohio State coaches set up their “cir­cle drill” at mid­field where two play­ers square off in a one-on-one bat­tle of strength and dom­i­nance. John Simon and Jack Mewhort opened the drill and some of the addi­tional bat­tles were between Jake Stoneb­urner and Zach Boren, and Brax­ton Miller vs. Kenny Guiton.

Notable leader at the quar­ter­back posi­tion, sopho­more Miller was 24-for-31 with one inter­cep­tion for 258 yards. Gun­ning for that backup posi­tion to Miller was Gui­ton who was 17 for 26 for 191-yards with a 28-yard touch­down recep­tion to Devin Smith. He threw an inter­cep­tion on the Gray’s last drive of the day — Chris­t­ian Bryant pick­ing the ball off in the red zone with the Scar­let hold­ing on to a 20–14 lead.

Scar­let led, 13–7, at half­time as Miller threw for 197 yards in the half, com­plet­ing 16-of-22 passes Thomas, the nephew of USC great and for­mer pro Keyshawn John­son, caught eight passes in the half for 78 yards. Chris Fields had three catches for 50 yards.

A Car­los Hyde one-yard run staked Scar­let to a 7–0 lead less than 3 min­utes into the con­test. Drew Basil hit a 41-yard field goal for a 10–0 lead but Gray scored inside of a minute to go in the first half as Gui­ton found Smith over the mid­dle with a laser of a throw that Smith hauled in and then sprinted untouched into the end zone.

Basil kicked a 32-yard field goal to end the half.

Gui­ton scored on a 4-yard run late in the third quar­ter and Smith capped a 65-yard drive with less than five min­utes to play for the final points of the day.

Despite the results from the quar­ter­back duo, Meyer still had his reservations.

“We know we can run at quar­ter­back. We didn’t run it one time today. What we don’t know — and, unfor­tu­nately, even after the spring game I still don’t know — is if we can throw the ball. That was the objec­tive today. I have a bet­ter opin­ion of some guys now.”

Rod Smith of the Scar­let capped off his 47-yard rush­ing day with a seven-yard win­ning touch­down run with 5:29 left in the fourth quarter.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Apr 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.