COLUMBUS: When an Ohio State player takes over a game late in a double-overtime win, his name bears repeating.
Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer thought as much Saturday after Curtis Samuel willed No. 2 Ohio State to a 30-27 instant classic victory over No. 3 Michigan, referencing his star H-back six times in his postgame news conference.
Meyer, a three-time national champion, doesn’t remember much from the time after the final play that sealed his fifth consecutive win over the Wolverines to the time he opened up for questions from the media.
He does remember Samuel’s 15-yard run around the left end to keep Ohio State (11-1, 8-1) in playoff talks despite not winning the Big Ten.
“Yeah, Curtis scored,” Meyer said. “I remember that Neil Diamond song. That was great. Weird life, man.”
Weird life indeed as a stadium-record crowd of 110,045 that included all the Cavaliers basked in the afterglow of the win.
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh can blast the refs — and he did in his postgame news conference — and the Buckeyes can manage just 81 yards of offense at halftime, but when Ohio State needed him most, Samuel came to the rescue.
His 18-yard rush to start the first overtime came one play before J.T. Barrett (30 carries, 125 yards) rumbled in from 7 yards out. His Tasmanian devil-like run on third-and-9 from the Michigan 24 set up a key fourth-down conversion.
On the play, Samuel caught a screen to the right, broke back to the middle, tried to go to the right and then broke back left to set up fourth-and-1.
Barrett converted. Samuel scored after that and one of the single greatest games — and the only one to go into overtime — in the 113-year rivalry was won by the Buckeyes.
“It makes my life easy,” Ohio State guard Billy Price said of Samuel. “You continue to block until the whistle, take care of your guy and he’ll do the rest.”
In a game full of warts in which a stout Michigan defense had eight sacks and 13 tackles for loss and one in which the Wolverines pressured Ohio State into two missed field goals, it still came up Buckeyes.
Much will be made about Michigan squandering a sure score on a fumbled snap at the 2-yard line in the third quarter, but Samuel rose above it all.
He finished with 54 yards rushing and another 32 receiving, but was the heart and soul of an Ohio State team that never quit against Michigan (10-2, 7-2) even though the Wolverines arguably played better most of the afternoon.
“Coaches give me the ball to make plays,” Samuel said. “They didn’t give me the ball to go 3 yards, 2 yards, 4 yards. They gave me the ball to go out there and score.”
Samuel and Barrett stuck around long enough to lift the Buckeyes to a win after the defense intercepted two passes from Wolverines quarterback Wilton Speight (23-of-36, 219 yards, two touchdowns) and held a team that averaged 451.1 yards on offense to 310. The first interception was returned for a touchdown by safety Malik Hooker for OSU’s only score of the first half.
All that’s left now is to sit back and watch the chaos unfold after Penn State earned the right to play Wisconsin in next week’s Big Ten Championship.
Whether it comes with a College Football Playoff berth is now in the hands of the committee.
“It’s really out of our hands,” Barrett said. “At this time, I think we are one of the top four teams in the country, personally. Like I said, it’s up to the committee to do their thing. Hopefully it works out in our favor.”