PASADENA, Calif. – As time ticked away and the podium full of red roses rolled onto the field, Oregon experienced something it hadn’t experienced all season: a loss.

After going 13-0 in the regular season, beating Ohio State in October and winning the Big Ten championship nearly a month ago, the Ducks could only watch as the Buckeyes lined up in victory formation and sealed the result: a dominant 41 :21 victory in the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential, which ended Oregon’s season in a flash and raised questions about how the top team in the country could have been beaten in such a manner.

“It was right for them tonight, but not for us,” said coach Dan Lanning. “I didn’t prepare our team. When you play a great team like Ohio State, you can’t click on all cylinders, and they clicked on all cylinders.”

In 60 minutes, Oregon had a total yardage advantage of 500-276, jumped out to a 34-8 first-half lead and never seemed to have a chance of keeping the score close. From the first kickoff, Ohio State seemed to be playing at a different pace that Oregon couldn’t handle.

Despite the result, Lanning wasn’t interested in apologizing. As he explained after the game, his team couldn’t get going on offense (the Ducks had four three-and-outs in the first half) and couldn’t stop Ohio State’s explosive plays (the Buckeyes had four touchdowns out of 40). yards or more). for defense.

“We haven’t had moments like this often this year,” Lanning said. “Obviously (Ohio State) is a team that has the ability to win it all.”

Asked whether Oregon’s 25-day gap between its final Big Ten championship game and Wednesday contributed to Ohio State’s 34-0 lead, Lanning dismissed that notion.

“I think that’s an excuse. I thought our guys prepared well,” Lanning said. “(The layoff was) an opportunity that we needed to recharge. I thought our boys trained well. I would tell you if that wasn’t the case, I thought they had great focus. I just don’t think it was us. “The plan was good enough and I think they had a great plan to attack us, so kudos to those guys.”

Lanning also had no interest in using the current format and seeding of the College Football Playoff, which awards first-round byes to the top-ranked conference champions, as an excuse.

In its debut, the 12-team playoff rewarded undefeated conference champion Oregon with a path to the title game, starting in the quarterfinals with Ohio State. The Ducks were 2.5-point underdogs against the No. 6 team in the country, while Penn State, which lost to Oregon in the conference title game, was favored heading into the semifinals against No. 10 SMU and No. 9 Boise State.

“We had a chance. We didn’t take advantage of our chance. “I’m not going to excuse our opportunity,” Lanning said. “At the end of the day you had to beat great teams to be in the right position at the end of the year and we didn’t do that. That’s the way we had to go and they did it better than us tonight. So no complaints for us for having that opportunity and us not.”

Unlike Ohio State and every other top-ranked team this year, Oregon had no chance to recover from a loss. The Ducks’ unblemished record gave them the title of the best team in the country week after week, but also exposed them to the possibility that their first loss would end their season. Compiling 13 wins loses some of its luster if you fail to win the title.

Although Lanning repeatedly said Wednesday that he doesn’t want to take anything away from his program’s successes this year, he pointed out that the current playoff format places an emphasis on doing its best late in the season, something Ohio State is after did in its shocking loss to Michigan. When asked to explain how the Buckeyes, who had lost to the unranked Wolverines, had just dominated Oregon, Lanning shrugged.

“Sometimes it’s not your day,” Lanning said. “Today wasn’t our day.”