Ryan Day discusses Ohio State's young core, urgency to win

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day has a lot to prove in his third season at the helm of the Buckeyes, and after a 1-1 start — highlighted by a 35-28 loss to Oregon last week — Day and the Buckeyes feel a sense of urgency with having immediate success.

“We can’t have patience, we have to have urgency,” Day said in his Thursday press conference. “And there are going to be growing pains along the way, but we have to manage that as coaches and figure that out and not expose them.”

Day and the Buckeyes don’t quite have the makeup of the 2014 Ohio State team. That year, the Buckeyes lost to Virginia Tech in Week 2, then never looked back — they cruised through the rest of their schedule, never lost a game and went on to win the national championship. The only similarity between the 2014 team and the current Ohio State roster is a freshman quarterback, as the Buckeyes had J.T. Barrett in 2014 and a second-year freshman in C.J. Stroud now.

However, there remains one substantial difference in the makeup of the rest of their rosters: this Ohio State team is extremely young at more positions than just quarterback. With such a young roster, Day said that he will opt to play the best available option — regardless of their class standing or previous experience.

“Nobody cares whether we’re young or not, that’s just the way it goes,” Day said.

With some of Ohio State’s youngest players making college debuts — and having a sustained impact on both sides of the ball — Day said that this season could provide invaluable experiences for the players moving forward.

“I think that some of these guys are getting some really valuable experience,” Day said. “Valuable experience that they didn’t get last year, and for a lot of these young guys, it’s gonna pay off big down the road here.”

Even with young players getting burn, Day reiterated that sense of urgency. There’s simply no time to be complacent, he said. The Buckeyes must win now — even if they’re young.

“Along the way, we can’t be losing games, so we’ve got to get that figured out and have some urgency to get those guys on the field and keep learning from it,” Day said. “Really talk about three things: you prepare for the game, you compete during the game and then you learn from the game. And we learned a lot from last week, and now we’re preparing for this Saturday, and the new test will be this week.”