Buckeyes hope to run table, like 2005 team

COLUMBUS - James Laurinaitis didn't sleep on Ohio State's overnight flight home after absorbing a 35-3 loss from Southern California last Saturday night in Los Angeles.

There would be no dreaming for the Buckeyes' All-American linebacker after the dream of returning to the BCS national championship game ended so abruptly on the floor of the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Of course, that is nothing new. "I can't sleep on a plane," Laurinaitis said earlier this week.

Regardless of the reason for his sleeplessness at 35,000 feet, Laurinaitis and his teammates are faced with bouncing back from the end of a dream and not sleep walking through the rest of the football season.

For seniors like Laurinaitis, they can look back to an example of how to deal with the situation from earlier in their career.

In 2005, when this year's seniors were freshmen, Ohio State had its national championship hopes crushed by losses to Texas and Penn State early in the season. But it went on to win its last seven games, including a Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame.

"That team never gave up," Laurinaitis said, looking back to the 2005 team. "They kept trying to get better and better, and by the end of the year, people were saying that team was playing as well as the top teams in the country.

"We have to handle it a lot like those guys did. They came back and were focused in practice and were intense. A lot of us were young then and saw how those guys handled it," he said.

No. 13 Ohio State (2-1) plays Troy (2-0) at noon Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

Senior cornerback Malcolm Jenkins also pulled out the 2005 card and played it when he talked about how OSU will approach the rest of the season.

"We lost two games and when we beat Notre Dame, all that was pretty much forgotten," he said. "It was still a great time, we still enjoyed the whole season."

Maybe the big difference between those two years, though, is that this year's team entered the season with huge expectations with 20 returning starters after back-to-back losses in the last two BCS national championship games. The 2005 team was following an 8-4 season.

Senior punter A.J. Trapasso said, "I think it's going to be tough for some of the younger guys to see past losing the USC game. But I think this is a class of seniors that wants to be at the front of the pack, leading the younger guys and showing them how it's supposed to be."

Is part of leading the younger guys letting them know just how intense the focus on Ohio State football is around Ohio? And telling them how deep the disappointment runs about the national title chances slipping away?

"I think, coming into it, a lot of these guys know that. They see it on their recruiting trip. We do a good job of exposing the interest of people around here. It doesn't take a lot of explaining," Trapasso said.