Ryan Day: 'We're not allowed to have a letdown'

Ryan Day and Ohio State had some pretty emotional wins already this season. The 7-0 record is no accident but now’s not the time for a letdown moment or game.

Day acknowledged coming off a big win over a team like Penn State can be challenging. But there’s no time to take a backseat since the Buckeyes have to head out to Madison to take on Wisconsin.

In what could be a Big Ten title game preview, Ohio State has to be ready for the challenge immediately, according to Day.

“It’s that competitive stamina that you mentioned,” Day said. I mean, that’s the term that we talked about in the preseason. When you look at the schedule, we talked about where we’re going to be and we knew we had to go on the road this year, Notre Dame early on was going to be a really difficult environment. We knew this was going to be the same way. 

“And so you know, we talked about it on Sunday as a team, that we’ve got to bring it this week. You know, they’re playing well. They’re a good football team there. They’ll get a really good opportunity to win their side (of the conference). And we can’t let last week affect this week.”

The championship mindset Day talks about is teams not taking a week off. You can’t expect to coast after beating a big opponent.

“Championship teams bring it every week, they don’t have ups and downs and let downs so we’re not allowed to have a let down,” Day said. “We gotta bring it and we know. It’ll be a night game, I think it’s Halloween weekend, I mean, it’s gonna be rocking. We know that. So it all starts with what kind of practice week we’re gonna have. And we’ve got to do a great job today of getting out there and putting it on the field.” 

Wiscnsni hasn’t beaten hip State since October 16, 2010, a game at Camp Randall Stadium. It’s been all Buckeyes since then, including three wins in the Big Ten Championship.

But just because history is on Ohio State’s side, in addition to the predictions, you can’t take any team lightly. 

“But you know, that’s something that we’ve talked about for a couple years now, you’ve heard me say that like, you know, we’re not allowed to have a bad day,” Day said. “We can’t do that. And this is an example of going on the road in the middle of the end of the season, against a really good team. This is always a big challenge for anybody in the conference. And so we got to do a great job this week.”