Ryan Day: Penn State game has been ‘circled on our schedule’

On Tuesday, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day spoke to the media for the first time this week ahead of Saturday’s matchup with Penn State football. The first top-five game in Beaver Stadium in a quarter-century, the magnitude of this weekend’s showdown between the No. 4 Buckeyes and No. 3 Nittany Lions isn’t lost on anyone in Columbus.

“I mean, for Will, he grew up in Pennsylvania, so I guess that’s a little bit different for him,” Day said of Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard, as captured by Bucknuts. “But for everybody else, I mean, again, just like the Oregon game was, this game’s been circled on our schedule.”

Day’s statement was in response to a question about Howard’s postgame comments following last week’s win over Nebraska. “I wanted to go there [Penn State] my whole life,” Howard said. “They didn’t think I was good enough, but I guess we’ll see next week if I was.”

“We know what’s at stake here,” Day continued. “So we’re going to have a great week of practice, great energy in practice, and we’re going to go into that environment and go finish the way that we didn’t have an opportunity or we didn’t do two weeks ago [at Oregon]. And so now we have another opportunity to go do that in this game.

“So now we’ve got to go finish and win the game in the fourth quarter. We know it’s going to take four quarters in this game. You know, it always does when you go play in this environment.

“It’s a very difficult environment to play in. But we’ve been in this situation before. Our guys have been in this situation before. So now it’s time to go win this game and get a top-five victory. And that’s what the guys are focused on right now, the coaching staff, everybody in the building is the focus on winning this game right here.”

Day facing key injury concerns ahead of battle with Penn State

© Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Ryan Day also provided updates on several injured Buckeyes of note during his media availability on Tuesday.

On defense, Ohio State faced Nebraska last week without starting safety Lathan Ransom. However, the Buckeyes appear to be planning to have the senior defensive back on the field Saturday in some capacity.

“We’re excited to get a full week of practice. We’ll kind of see how the week goes with him,” Day said. “Good to see we built some depth back there. That was good to see because the depth was a little bit of a concern. We’ll go into this game now with Lathan coming back, kind of figure out what that looks like going into it.”

Of more concern to Day is the offensive side of the ball, where the Buckeyes have already lost starting left tackle Josh Simmons to a season-ending injury against Oregon. Simmons’ replacement, Zen Michalski, suffered his own injury last week after taking his lumps in his first start against the Huskers.

“We’ll look at it today and see where we’re at. I think there is a chance,” Day said. “We’ll have to see if he can go and go from there. There were plays he got beat. But he was battling in there. Once he got injured, that changed there. We know what we see in practice, and we have to continue to support him and make sure he knows we have confidence in him.”

Kickoff between Penn State football and Ohio State is set for noon on FOX.

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