Ryan Day explains Ohio State's late touchdown

Does every point matter in a blowout-game?

Ryan Day showed Indiana -- and the rest of college football -- that he believes that to be the case.

With his No. 2 Ohio State squad up 31-15 and the game inside its final 40 seconds, Day had his offense in a formation that looked extremely similar to a 'Victory' formation in which the quarterback receives the snap, kneels down and the clock does the rest.

Not this time. The Buckeyes got a strong push off the left side of the offensive line and quarterback Will Howard easily bulled into the end zone.

Final: OSU 38, previously undefeated Indiana 15. 

Is that dramatically different than 31-15? It's certainly more reflective of Ohio State's dominance on this day in which they led by two or more touchdowns for the game's final 28 minutes.

Day explained his decision to notch the extra touchdown after TreVeyon Henderson had rushed for 39 yards down to the 1 on the first play after Indiana's failed onside-kick attempt.

"Well, at the end of the game we're in a four-minute drill, like you saw at Penn State," Day said in his postgame press conference. "Which means once we get the first down in that moment, we feel like the game is probably over.

"(Henderson) squirted free and brought it all the way down to the 1-yard line and triggered at the last second like, 'Oh, boy. I gotta get down here, we don't want to have to put our defense back on the field.' Then we decided to milk at least 45 seconds off the clock and we're on the 1-yard line, we just felt like we wanted to put an exclamation point on the win by going ahead and sneaking it in."

Day said his team approached the contest with a deliberate purpose that it has possessed now for several weeks.

"There's probably a lot that goes into it, but that's the way you've got to play the game of football," Day said. "That's the mentality that we have to have. We know we want to be playing our best football and we also know what was at stake.

"We don't win this game, we have no chance to go to Indianapolis and play in the Big Ten Championship. That's real. We've had that approach for a few weeks now or more than that."

Now, with a win against heated rival Michigan next week, the Buckeyes get their rematch with Oregon -- which handed them their only loss this season.