No. 11 Purdue at No. 4 Ohio State
A better conference matchup outside of Columbus, Ohio, this weekend will be hard to find.
No. 11 Purdue (8-2 overall, 5-1 Big Ten) is rolling into Saturday's game against No. 4 Ohio State (9-1, 5-1) to hash out the Big Ten title bottleneck. Both teams are tied for first place in the conference with No. 5 U-M, and both have Bowl Championship Series consideration, though slim in Purdue's case.
Last week, the Buckeyes dealt the Spartans a 33-23 loss via the arm of quarterback Craig Krenzel and the immovable defensive line. He threw three touchdowns last weekend while the defense limited MSU to just 5 yards rushing.
Not to be outdone, the Boilermakers also have been proving stalwart against the rush. Purdue limited Iowa's Fred Russell to only 35 yards in the team's 27-14 win over No. 20 Iowa last weekend.
With both defenses playing well, a repeat of last season's 10-6 thriller might be in the making. Krenzel threw a long-range touchdown in the game's final minutes last year to steal a victory away from Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind.
Then-No. 3 Ohio State went on to win the national championship. Purdue went on to defeat Washington in the Sun Bowl.
If the Boilermakers win, it would be just the sixth time in Columbus in school history. All time, Purdue is 11-34-2 against Ohio State, including a dismal 1-9 record in the teams' past 10 meetings.
Purdue head coach Joe Tiller, who has never missed a bowl game in his six years at Purdue, said his team was up to the challenge of going into Columbus as the underdog.
"For some reason, perhaps it's called the Big Ten conference, it never seems to get any easier," Tiller said. "We understand that we've got a real task ahead of us."
Purdue's key to upsetting Ohio State this Saturday will be to stop the Buckeyes' hot running back, Lydell Ross. Ross will be searching for his fourth consecutive 100-yard rushing performance Saturday after not reaching the 100-yard mark in the season's first seven games.
Patrick Walters
No. 5 Michigan at Northwestern
Has it been three years already?
No. 5 U-M hasn't played Northwestern since Nov. 4, 2000, a game that the Wolverines would like to forget. U-M lost the game 54-51, the most points a Michigan team has ever allowed since 1958 and the most yards (654) it had surrendered in school history.
That season, the Wolverines (8-2, 5-1) tied the Wildcats (5-5, 3-3) for the Big Ten title. This season, that will be nearly impossible.
After a series of early-season scares, U-M is a winner of four straight and will play Saturday in Evanston, Ill., for the first time since edging No. 21 MSU 27-20 on Nov. 1. BCS hopes are again afloat in Ann Arbor, and the Wolverines are feeling healthy after last week's bye.
History has the chance to repeat itself, though, if only for one game without conference-title implications. The last time the Wolverines lost coming out of a bye week was - appropriately enough - the 54-51 loss.
"Sometimes you come out of a bye week and you're not as sharp as you were before the bye week," U-M head coach Lloyd Carr said. "I think for the most part, we have not played as well after a bye week as I would have liked to, so certainly that's a challenge for us."
The Wolverines will have to beat themselves to lose to Northwestern, though. U-M's Chris Perry leads the Big Ten in rushing (131.3 yards per game) and the U-M defense is second in the conference, back on track after a slow start.
The Wildcats will be looking for their sixth win, a necessity to become the eighth Big Ten team eligible for a bowl game. Last week, the Wildcats came back from a 7-0 deficit to beat a struggling Penn State team.
"We're pleased with our victory," Northwestern head coach Randy Walker said. "It was a great win for our program, but every week in the Big Ten, you buckle up and go on.
"(U-M) answers at every position with no apparent weakness. You put some great athletes out there that execute that plan, and it makes them hard to beat."
Patrick Walters
No. 19 Minnesota at No. 20 Iowa
Last week, Minnesota (9-2, 5-2) defeated Wisconsin 37-34, reclaiming "Paul Bunyan's Axe" in the nation's longest-running football rivalry.
This week, the Golden Gophers look to claim another prize - a bronze statue of a pig named "Floyd of Rosedale" from Iowa (7-3, 3-3), which won "Floyd" last season to claim the Big Ten crown.
Trophies are commonplace in conference games for the Gophers. In any given year, the Gophers are up for as many as four trophies, not to mention the Big Ten title. Besides the axe and the pig, Minnesota plays for unique trophies against Michigan ("The Little Brown Jug") and Penn State ("Governors' Victory Bell").
"We don't play for more trophies than anyone in the conference, we play for more trophies than anyone in the country," Minnesota head coach Glen Mason said with a laugh.
Both the Gophers and Hawkeyes are run-happy teams with Minnesota handing the ball off to a troop of runners, including the conference's third-best runner in Marion Barber III, who has 103.1 yards per game. The Hawkeyes, on the other hand, rely on the small stature and speed of Fred Russell, who is the league's second-best running back with 104.5 yards per game.
The Gophers' freshman running back Laurence Maroney was named Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week after averaging 9 yards per rush with 231 all-purpose yards to defeat Wisconsin.
The Hawkeyes enter Saturday on the heels of a 27-14 loss to No. 11 Purdue. They rest tied fifth in the conference with Wisconsin and Northwestern. Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said he sees familiarity in the Gophers, who have bounced back after consecutive losses to Michigan and Michigan State to land a second-place spot in the conference. Ferentz said it reminds him of the Hawkeyes' season last year.
"We kind of got into a rhythm and really got into a roll the last half of the season," he said. "The missing pieces we had in the beginning kind of got answered and solidified in the second half of the year, and we really flew through it."
Paul Day
Indiana at Penn State
Is this Joe Paterno's last home game as Penn State's head coach at Beaver Stadium? There certainly has been talk in State College, Pa., and the rest of the country, that this could be Paterno's last season as the Nittany Lions' head coach.
The question will not be answered until the end of the season, and that is the least of Paterno's worries as Penn State (2-8, 0-6) is trying to avoid going winless in the conference.
"We went through a couple years where we had a lot of tough games, but we won those years," Paterno said. "I've never been in a situation like this as a head coach. There is nothing I can do about it except try to get better and see what I can do. It's been a tough season;0 there is no doubt about it."
With a tough game on the road at MSU on the last Big Ten weekend of the year, the Nittany Lions' best chance to get a win is this week against Indiana. Still, this will be, without question, Paterno's worst season.
Not only that, this season has been one of the worst in Penn State history. The last time Penn State lost six games in a row was 1931, when it lost seven in a row.
Indiana (2-8, 1-5) is coming off its first Big Ten win and first win over a Division IA opponent. The Hoosiers beat Illinois 17-14 last weekend.
Indiana head coach Gerry DiNardo said he is hoping his team won't be satisfied with just two wins and also hopes his team will not be in awe of Beaver Stadium.
"Penn State is a talented football team, but a young football team, like we are," DiNardo said. "Playing at Penn State is a tremendous challenge and really a reason to be excited. It's one of the great venues in all of college athletics."
Penn State leads the all-time series 8-0 over Indiana, the only team Penn State is undefeated against since joining the Big Ten in 1993. DiNardo said he refuses to look at past games with the Nittany Lions as an indicator of what will happen this season.
"I look at games as isolated games," DiNardo said. "We try to figure out the best way to be successful."
J. Ryan Mulcrone
