COLUMBUS – The College Football Playoff rankings were unchanged at the top this week, with LSU first followed by Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia.
The selection committee’s third weekly rankings had little movement in the top 10, with Alabama fifth followed by Oregon, Utah, Penn State, Oklahoma and Minnesota.
Stop us if you’ve heard this before (remember Cincinnati, Nebraska, Michigan State, Wisconsin…?) but the Buckeyes may finally be tested in the final two weeks of the regular season.
After winning 10 straight games by an average margin of 41.7 points, Ohio State will host No. 8 Penn State on Saturday (Noon/Fox) and then end the season in Ann Arbor against No. 12 Michigan.
With the Big Ten East Division title and a trip to the conference championship game on the line Saturday and pride on Nov. 30, coach Ryan Day and his staff have been reminding their players that, in close games, against good teams, mistakes can be disastrous.
“We just have to be mature enough to understand just how important every series, every play, is and that it might be just one play that changes the game and I can’t really say that maybe we’ve been in a game where that’s been the case this year,” Day told reporters at his weekly news conference Tuesday.
The Buckeyes bring the best defense in the country into those games, with sack master Chase Young returning from suspension for the stretch run.