Doing it the old-fashioned way

It wasn't always pretty, but Penn State survived in a slugfest Saturday. AP Stewart Mandel's Mailbag Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Stewart Mandel on Twitter

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A rare scene broke out Saturday night at Ohio Stadium -- rare, at least, for the 2008 college football season. Two highly ranked teams played a football game, and it was decided by defense.

There were no 400-yard Big 12 passers on the field. There were no 50-point SEC scoring outbursts. For more than three quarters, No. 3 Penn State and No. 10 Ohio State kept each other out of the end zone entirely. When the Nittany Lions finally broke the drought, they did so only after making the biggest defensive play of the game.

After Penn State eventually improved to 9-0 with a hard-earned 13-6 victory -- ending it, quite fittingly, by intercepting a Terrelle Pryor pass in the end zone -- Joe Paterno was asked an inevitable question at his postgame news conference. A writer suggested that fans in other parts of the country who watched Saturday night's game might describe it as "dreary football." He wanted the venerable coach's reaction.

"I can't do anything about it," the 81-year-old said with his trademark sneer. "I've been around a lot of football. I've seen a few football games. That was a good, tough football game."

It was a game in which two previously proven offensive commodities couldn't come close to matching their recent production.

Ohio State tailback Beanie Wells, who came in averaging 123.8 yards per game, could only manage 55 yards on 22 carries against Penn State's eighth-ranked defense. Time and again, Penn State defenders like Mark Rubin or Navorro Bowman wrapped the one-time Heisman favorite nearly as soon as he crossed the line of scrimmage. An 8-yard gain early in the fourth quarter marked his longest of the night.

Meanwhile, the Nittany Lions' vaunted "Spread HD" offense - a unit that came in averaging 45.5 points per game -- found itself forced to punt on four of its first five possessions.

Time and again, Buckeyes pass-rushers like Thaddeus Gibson, Canero Heyward and Marcus Freeman came flying at Penn State QB Daryll Clark, allowing him no time to pass. (He managed just 121 yards on 20 attempts before leaving in the fourth quarter with an apparent head injury.) Evan Royster, the nation's 14th-leading rusher, found few holes to run through, gaining just 34 yards on 10 carries over the first three quarters.

So it was that the teams found themselves locked in a battle of field goals, one the 6-2 Buckeyes appeared on the verge of winning when Penn State's Kevin Kelly missed a 45-yard attempt early in the fourth quarter that kept the score at 6-3 in Ohio State's favor. But that's when the Nittany Lions' defense came up with the "game-changing performance" that opened the door to victory, a single play that may one day be remembered as the defining moment of a championship season.

Pryor, the touted freshman quarterback who passed up Penn State last winter to play for the Buckeyes, did his best all night to keep the Nittany Lions' defense off balance and remind coordinator Tom Bradley why he once spent hundreds of hours wooing the Jeanette, Pa., native. (He went 16-of-23 for 226 yards.) Bradley even complimented Pryor for making the right read on a play that ultimately blew up on him.

On a third and 1 at the 50 with just over 10 minutes remaining, Pryor attempted a sneak through the right side of Penn State's defense only to have Rubin streak up from his safety position and punch the ball free. It ended up rolling backward for more than 10 yards, eluding the hands of numerous players from both sides, before Bowman ultimately recovered it at the OSU 38.

"I knew that was the break we needed to turn the tide around," said Bradley.

Sure enough, Penn State's offense -- even with backup QB Pat Devlin now in the game -- seemed to come to life. On the first play after the fumble, Royster broke free for 9 yards, his longest gain to that point. Aided by a pass interference penalty, Penn State finally got in the end zone on a Devlin sneak with 6:25 remaining. After forcing Ohio State to punt two minutes later, Royster went to work again, gaining 22 yards on his first three carries of a drive that ended in a Kelly 35-yard field goal with just 1:07 remaining.

The Nittany Lions finally dashed the Buckeyes' last remaining hopes when cornerback Lydell Sargeant jumped high in the end zone to intercept a 43-yard Pryor pass attempt with 40 seconds remaining.

When the clock finally ran out (after the officials insisted on reviewing Sargeant's game-sealing play), Penn State's players raced to the corner of the Horseshoe where its small, white-clad contingent of fans celebrated their school's first victory here in 30 years -- a win that puts their team squarely in the driver's seat for the Big Ten championship and, quite possibly, a BCS title berth.

On a day when three ranked Big 12 teams (Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Missouri) and two ranked SEC teams (Florida and Georgia) put up 50-plus points, the Nittany Lions did it the old fashioned way: By shutting down the run (allowing just 61 yards on 31 attempts) and winning the turnover battle (two to zero).

"We have a good, sound team right now," said senior tackle Gerald Cadogan. "Even though we didn't get the 30 points or 50 points some other teams did today, we got a win, and that's what counts."

A less partisan observer might not share Cadogan's opinion. With Penn State having played an admittedly light schedule over its first eight games, Saturday night's contest served as their first true national litmus test -- but it came with an asterisk. With Ohio State still carrying a colossal stigma from their recent big-game blowouts on the national stage, many skeptics likely wanted to see the Nittany Lions throttle the Buckeyes the same way USC did earlier this season.

Instead they saw Paterno's team struggle to move the ball on the same defense that Mark Sanchez and Joe McKnight torched so seamlessly on Sept. 13. How, one might ask, could a team like that possibly keep pace with a high-flying outfit like Texas or Florida?

Maybe they can't.

But to rule out the Nittany Lions based solely on perceived "ugliness" might not be wise if you know anything about Paterno's history.

Twenty-two years ago, fans across the country gave the no-frills Nittany Lions almost no chance to knock off the flashy Vinny Testaverde/Michael Irvin-led Miami Hurricanes in the then-unofficial national title game. What did they do? Pick off Testaverde five times, including on a last-second heave into the end zone -- a la Sargeant's play Saturday night.

Paterno wasn't thinking of 1986 when he prepared his team for this game. He was thinking of 1994, the last time a team of his went undefeated. Much like this team, that group went virtually untested its first eight games, before running into a potential roadblock at Illinois. Penn State fell behind 21-0 before rallying to win 35-31.

While the Nittany Lions faced no such deficit Saturday night, they did deal with the stiffest circumstances they've seen all season.

"We needed to face some adversity," said Paterno. "I was pleased that they kept their poise."

Poise is a familiar refrain when you speak to members of this Penn State team. What they lack in star power, they make up for in leadership -- seniors like receivers Derrick Williams and Deon Butler, linemen Cadogan, Rich Ohrnberger and A.Q. Shipley and defenders Sargeant, Rubin and Josh Gaines have been around the block.

Quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno said that on the bus to the airport Friday, Williams told him: "We've got this one. Don't worry about it, coach."

"There was no doubt in my mind we were going to win this game," said the younger Paterno. "They were so calm."

Surely a little bit of doubt must have crept in when his previously potent offense had six points to its name in the fourth quarter, no?

"No, because we were so close to breaking some plays early in the game," he said.

"We're rolling right now," said Jay Paterno. "We feel like we can play with anybody."

There might be a few folks in Texas and Alabama who don't share his sentiment. With just three more wins -- at Iowa and home against Indiana and Michigan State -- we may well get to find out for ourselves.