Dan Lanning was so excited you couldn't tell if he was looking for someone to hug or tackle after No. 3 Oregon beat No. 2 Ohio State 32-31 on Saturday night.

As Oregon fans rushed the field to celebrate perhaps the biggest Ducks victory the 57-year-old Autzen Stadium has ever hosted, their third-year head coach looked like he would have preferred to be there flipping the revelers around instead of allowing a police escort through the sea of ​​humanity.

When he arrived at his postgame press conference, Lanning was still fired up.

“Does anyone have a heart rate monitor?” said the 38-year-old.

The Big Ten's game of the year between the league's most talented perennial favorite and its brightest newcomer was convincing in every respect. The lead changed hands seven times as the Buckeyes and Ducks traded points in the final 40 minutes.

“We all knew what we were getting into, you know, a dog fight with two heavyweights going at each other,” said Ducks quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who passed for 321 yards and ran for a 27-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter .

Oregon (6-0) defeated Ohio State in the simplest and most straightforward way: with a loaded roster that could compete with the most talented team in its new conference, a testament to modern team building.

The Ducks played without their best defensive player (edge ​​rusher Jordan Burch, who was the team's sacks leader through five games) and simply let former blue-chip recruit Matayo Uiagalelei slide into Burch's role.

“Did you catch me tonight?” Uiagalelei said Burch asked him before the game.

“I got you,” Uiagalelei told the senior transfer from South Carolina. He ever did. Uiagalelei delivered a sack in the fourth quarter, a tackle for loss on third down that stopped an Ohio State drive in the second quarter and two more quarterback pressures.

Then there was Texas A&M transfer Evan Stewart, the former five-star prospect who entered the game as the Ducks' fourth-best receiver. Stewart came to Eugene knowing he would be a complement to Tez Johnson, Oregon's top target, who had seven catches for 75 yards and a touchdown against the Buckeyes.

“Like I said, before this season I was really just trying to play my role,” Stewart said. “Because, you know, A&M, we’ve never really been able to win that much. So I just started the season, we have wide receiver one and I respect him. I didn’t want to come in and step on those people’s toes, but I wanted to come in and contribute.”

Stewart was Oregon's best offensive player against the Buckeyes, catching seven passes for 149 yards and a touchdown. His performance became even more critical when Ducks receiver Traeshon Holden was ejected from the game in the second quarter after spitting on Ohio State cornerback Davison Igbinosun.

Stewart and Johnson took turns poking fun at Ohio State's top cornerback, Denzel Burke, one of several Buckeyes defensive backs who missed out on a chance at a high-round draft pick in the NFL draft last April for another run at Michigan, a Big Ten championship and a national title. The Buckeyes allowed less than one touchdown per game and only one completion of at least 30 yards.

“(The coaches) told us this week that (the Buckeyes) haven’t really seen anyone like us,” Stewart said. “And you know, if you look at the film of their past games, that's the truth. So we just went into this game knowing that we are who we are and they haven’t seen us yet, so we want to give them a show.”

When Oregon tapped Lanning to replace Mario Cristobal as coach after the 2021 season, it was looking for someone who understood what a championship roster looks like. Handing a program like Oregon to a head coach who was only 30 years old was a move that even Ducks fans wondered about. But Lanning had spent time as a graduate assistant under Nick Saban at Alabama and three years as an assistant under Kirby Smart at Georgia.

When Oregon was beaten 49-3 by Georgia in Lanning's first game as coach early in the 2022 season, there was no secret what the problem was.

“They will bounce back from this and he knows we have better players. He’ll never say that, but he knows we have better players,” Smart said at the time.

Picking up where Cristobal left off, Lanning went to work building a better roster, albeit with some new tools: the transfer portal and money for names, images and likenesses.

Based on geography alone, Oregon will have a hard time keeping up with SEC powerhouses and Ohio State when recruiting high school students. But Lanning's connections and tireless approach have paired with Oregon's well-run Division Street collective to allow his program to match talent with the best.

“I can’t say enough great things about the team we just played. This is an elite football team that we just played against. They are really, really talented. They don’t have any weaknesses, but our guys did just enough to come through tonight,” Lanning said.

As the questions wound down at a 15-minute news conference, Lanning couldn't hide his relief: “That's good because I have to recruit here.”

Oregon's supporting staff was full of prospects during Saturday night's visits, so there was no doubt that Lanning's work was far from over. These visitors saw one of the best games of the year in one of the best atmospheres in college football. With a record 60,129 attendees, Autzen watched Oregon beat the team that has set the standard in the Big Ten for more than two decades.

The Ducks looked like a worthy new rival in every way. And this looked like a matchup we'll see again in December in Indianapolis for the conference championship.

As Lanning came to a close, he had a message for everyone listening.

“When you see good players,” he said, “tell them to come here.”

(Photo: Ali Gradischer / Getty Images)