COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State Football has played six of its first seven games of the season at Ohio Stadium. Now, the Buckeyes are preparing to face a Big Ten rival on the road.
"This is part of that competitive excellence and competitive stamina - bringing it every single week. Going on the road and winning a game like this is gonna be huge," says Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day.
The Buckeyes will play the Nittany Lions at Beaver Stadium on Saturday.
"We knew when we saw the schedule, going into State College is gonna be a huge challenge. It always is," says Day.
Saturday will mark the 38th meeting between Ohio State and Penn State - two of the top ten winningest programs in the country.
"The combination of quarterback and wide receiver will be the biggest challenge so far," says Day.
Penn State is led by redshirt senior quarterback Sean Clifford, who earned Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week honors for the second time this season, after leading the Nittany Lions to a 45-17 win over the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Clifford threw for 295 yards and 4 touchdowns in the win, while setting a new program record for career completions. He leads Penn State with 722 career completions, passing Trace McSorley for the all-time record.
"He's good at reading what you're doing, delivering the ball. He's tough, hangs in there. He can scramble," says Ohio State Defensive Coordinator Jim Knowles.
"He's really good at throwing the ball. He's accurate. He's made a lot of plays in his career with his feet and with his arm," says Day.
Along with their own high-powered offense, Ohio State will look to protect a perfect 7-0 behind its second-ranked defense - a unit that forced six turnovers last week against Iowa.
"I loved the fact that we were getting turnovers and winning on third-down," says Knowles.
"They identified the areas where we felt like we had advantages and were opportunistic early on, got our hands on balls, created turnovers. When you can create that many turnovers, certainly, your chances of winning go way up," says Day.
Kickoff is at noon on Saturday.
Carly Mascitti is a sports anchor at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on Twitter @carlymascitti.
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