Gray defeats Scarlet 17-14 in hard fought Spring Game

The Gray squad led by Redshirt Freshman quarterback Kenny Guiton escaped a trap set up by the Scarlet team and managed to pull out a victory in the spring game by a score of 17-14.  The trap was set when Scarlet scored a touchdown with 5 minutes left to take a 14-10 lead and proceeded to recover an onside kick.  A key interception from Nate Oliver gave Gray the ball and the chance to move down the field for the go-ahead score on a 45 yard pass to a suddenly confident looking Taurian Washington from Guiton.

Take note that the stats should be taken with a grain of salt.  For the most part they’re vague recollections and fuzzy math.

As with other Spring Games, the Quarterbacks rotated their playingtime depending on the quarter.  Terrelle Pryor played only the first quarter for Scarlet and sat the rest as Bauserman took over for the rest of the game.  On gray, Guiton played the first quarter and the second half while Justin Siems played the 2^nd.  Pryor had a very good day passing hitting 8/12 for over 100 yards and a touchdown in his one quarter of play.  Particularly impressive was how easy he made it look despite the fact that he wasn’t allowed to run.  Also impressive on the day was Kenny Guiton’s approximately 10/18 for about 170 yards and 2 touchdowns and an interception.  Guiton had a scare late in the game as the Gray squad decided to run up the score rather than kill the clock while holding on to the slim 3 point margin.  One of the Buckeye defenders got a shoulder into Guiton’s right knee and bent it backwards slightly.  Luckily, Kenny managed to walk off the field under his own power and seemed to be ok.  Also worth mentioning was Bauserman’s rough outing, throwing 2 interceptions and 1 touchdown.  For a while he had also had more rushing yards than passing yards, but he managed to make up for that eventually.

Players from the offense that particularly stood out today were:

• Jake Stoneburner – he had several passes thrown his way and made the most of them.
• Taurian Washington – Made a couple of good plays and looked better than he did all last year.  Recall, however, that he often has good spring outings.
• Carlos Hyde had his first few carries in a Buckeye uniform and looked tough to stop.
• Zack Boren was almost impossible to bring down, including a great play where he slipped through an almost sure tackle and tight-rope walked the sidelines for a 20 yard gain.
• Chris Fields – He didn’t find himself open often, but he did make one excellent play to save an interception and turn it into a reception.
• The Offensive Line – None of the big guys in the trenches really got much love today, but the line in general seemed to pass-block fairly well.  The run blocking was ok, but not spectacular though it also seemed like the coaches were focusing more on the pass than the run.  The lack of mention of the line should be taken as a good thing, since they seemed to do their job.

The defense was generally solid all day long and it was tough to distinguish any individual effort as exceptional, however a couple of players had good outings.

• Cameron Heyward looks to be his typical self.  He did have a couple of QB hits and hurries and may have also had a sack on the day.  He may not have seen much playing time during the game.
• Donnie Evege was a blanket in coverage and didn’t have his named called much.  In fact, I only saw one pass thrown to his man all day, a testament to his coverage skills.
• Nate Oliver grabbed that interception to stop an almost certain Scarlet scoring drive and gave Gray enough time to get the ball down the field.  It was a big play exactly when his team needed it most.
• Passing coverage as a whole looked a little flaky all day, but that may have had more to do with the Buckeye receivers than any weakness from the secondary.

The Buckeyes look like they’re going to be pretty solid this season, but don’t take too much away from the Spring Game.  It’s very hard to make any kind of definitive statement about the quality of one unit versus another based on the intermixing of the first teamers with the backups, and even more difficult since the team is playing itself.  That said, there are a lot of things to be excited about, including Terrelle Pryor’s performance against a strong Gray defensive squad.

The big boss will be posting his own recap of the game with quotes and interviews a little later today.  We’ll post the link as soon as he has it up.