Saturday Night Disappointment

I didn't expect Purdue to win the anticipated football game against #4 Ohio State, but after watching the game from the student section on Saturday night, I'm convinced we definitely could have won the game, if at the very least given Ohio State a better game. I know, I know, we got killed 23-7 and at no point did we threaten Ohio State's lead, but with the Big Ten's highest powered offense; an offense that averages 495 yards and 45 points per game, we only managed to score 7 points?
Almost as surprising was the play of our defense which forced three huge turnovers and managed to hold back the Buckeyes offense to only 23 points. If before the game you told me that we would hold Ohio State to 23 points I would have been ecstatic, because I expected our offense to put up at least 23. I think what the game boiled down to was that our two biggest stars, Dorien Bryant and Curtis Painter, just didn't show up to play. Throughout the game, Dorien Bryan had "alligator arms" and was afraid to get hit. One pass even went straight through his arms. He ended the night with two catches for -4 yards. Painter was just as bad. Painter completed only 31 of 60 passes, most of them easy, short-yard passes. However, what killed us was on the numerous third down plays where he completely missed our receievers. One third down play that sticks out in my mind was a pass he made with no pressure on him to a wide open reciever near the first down marker on the sideline. Painter's pass landed about 10 yards short. If we could have kept some of these crucial drives going, we could have gotten some points on the board and kept ourselves in the game.
The last thing I'm ticked about was Tiller's coaching. In the fourth quarter we are down 23 points and on fourth down Tiller decides we should punt the ball. You can't score when you don't have the football. We are already losing so it doesn't matter if we give the ball away in bad field position. Going for those fourth down plays would at least give us a chance to keep our drives going and score some points. Punting on fourth down is like saying we know we are going to lose, we just don't want to lose too bad. Anyway, I'm done ranting. The rest of the football season looks promising and hopefully we can leave the Big House next week with a win.