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Bucket talk is about to begin.

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Welcome back to Bucketalk.

I'm Stephen Christink, and that is Andrew Gillis.

Ohio State's season has come to an end after a 24 to 14 lost to Miami in the Cotton Bowl. The Hurricanes will play the winners between Georgia and Ole Miss and the Fiesta Bowl next weekend and the Buckeyes won't play like another college football game until next August or September, whatever the way the calendar kind of falls there. So there's almost like two ways to look at this stuff on.

There's like the, okay, but within the season, and then there's like the bigger picture

conversation about where this program maybe is headed.

And you've been talking about some of this stuff.

It feels like every issue that we have maybe had with this Ohio State football team for 13 games finally bit them in game 14 and now their season is over because of those things. Yeah, it's so funny. Like if you looked at this game and I wrote about it at the buzzer, just, okay, what's things that hurt them? Okay, issues on the right side of the offensive line. We've been saying that for a while. Kicker, we've been saying that for a while.

Red zone issue.

Like the first pick, that pick six came in their first red zone drive. That's an issue. You know, one thing that like varies kind of tongue in cheek we talked about as an issue was like Jeremiah Smith's blocking. That ended up being crucial on that pick six. everything that went wrong for Ohio State, it kind of feels like to some extent we had mentioned it this year and maybe it was viewed. I don't know. I'm saying like fans viewed it this way. I'm like, I think we probably viewed it ourselves as like, yeah, we're probably nitpicking this team a little bit. But I just kept thinking about after that Penn State game when Ryan Day had his weekly presser and he talked about how they had had a team discussion about how it was a stone that killed

goliath and all that. And it just stuck with me where it was like, I think Ryan Day knows that some of these issues could end up costing them. And it all happened in the same time. And frankly, it happened against Indiana, too. Like, a lot of those issues are why they lost against indiana as well and you kind of sit here and you look back at this season you say yeah i guess we kind of knew that this would be how they would lose right because i think another thing too is like we have spent so much as a season saying when they need to step on it they can step on it offensively maybe that was a stone as well of like i don't know are we certain that when it ain't to step on it, they can step on it? So you kind of look at this game, it kind of feels like a microcosm of everything that, you know, has gone wrong in spurts this season. And it's a shot. It's a weird way for the season end because it was, there was much promise and after that michigan game you're

thinking to yourself this team is is so good they're undefeated and they just finally got over the

hump of beating their rival and then they lose their next two games and the season's over and it's a

it feels like it feels just very incomplete when you look at what this team did this year and like you said it

it makes for

some interesting conversations going forward about what, what's next for the program. And when you say like, what's next for the program, I don't think any of us worry about like a bottoming out type of thing, but it's like, okay, how do you get back to the mountain top winning a national championship, right? Because we can talk about how great Ohio State has been over the course of the last 50 years, but their national championships usually come, you know, 10 years apart.

This is not a team that was... can talk about how great Ohio State has been over the course of the last 50 years,

but their national championships usually come, you know, 10 years apart. This is not a team that was like Georgia winning back to backs or Bama, you know, winning one every other year. This is a

great program that has kind of these gaps and gap being a relative term because there's programs

like the team that just beat them or Nebraska where the gaps are a lot, a wider. But it's an interesting spot for the program and what's next in terms of trying it back to a consistent level. It starts with addressing a lot of those things that have been an issue throughout the season. And maybe like when you look at kicker and right guard, maybe you go back even to next season. It's like these were stones that we season, too, that carried into this year and wound up costing you. So it's a very interesting spot and a very weird ending to the season that has so much promise. Because it's like, like, to that point, Andrew, because it's like, it's one thing to go, like, oh, how does Ohio State lose a football game? It's another thing for it to actually play out that way. Is there any part of you that's like, because we, how many times did we ask this year?

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