Ohio State 20, Wisconsin 17. Make no mistake: Ohio State is still Beanie Wells' team. There's no way to calculate what No. 28's presence would have meant in the Coliseum last month, if anything, but for a clue, see what it meant tonight in the Buckeyes' most critical Big Ten game of the season: Wells ran 22 times for 168 yards, turned in by far the biggest play of the game on an early 54-yard touchdown and paced Ohio State as expected. There was no hint of the foot injury, and OSU's not back in the Big Ten race without him or the defense.

When it came down to the clutch, though, 6:30 left and suddenly down four, the Buckeyes turned not to their Herculean star but a true freshman on his first road start, and Terrelle Pryor was the Ice Man with the game on the line. Or at least the Ice Kid: he hit Brian Hartline for 19 yards to convert a critical third down, then for 27 yards from a 2nd-and-15 hole, and looped in a prayer to Ray Small for another big gain on another second-and-long. He converted the subsequent 3rd-and-1 himself, then galloped into the end zone for the winning touchdown, no sweat. Pryor handled the ball on eight of twelve plays on the winning drive, accounted for 68 yards and looked like he didn't think twice about it. He's supposed to be the next Vince Young, but it took Young almost three full years to look as composed as Pryor did in a critical game, on the road. If nothing else, he goes from here as a fully for-real quarterback, and not some desperate novelty who's just good at running around out of the shotgun -- not that there's anything wrong with that, in a pinch. It did provide the winning points.

Wisconsin is 0-2 in the Big Ten, and it's the heartbreaking kind of 0-2, the we're-right-there 0-2 that eliminates you from consideration for anything serious even though the two losses together only proved that the Badgers are nearly identically as good as Michigan and Ohio State. Only without the ambition for the rest of the season. I'm sure the Outback Bowl or whatever they're calling the Citrus Bowl these days will be glad to welcome back their northern neighbors, for the fifth year in a row.

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Photo of Pryor via the Associated Press.