ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP)—The Michigan Wolverines still aren’t exactly sure how
they stormed back to win Saturday’s game against Wisconsin.
They just know that, not only did their second-half comeback make up for a
first-half embarrassment, it might have saved their season.
Michigan (2-2, 1-0 Big Ten) trailed the ninth-ranked Badgers 19-0 at the
intermission, and the score doesn’t properly express how bad the half had been.
The Wolverines, still struggling to pick up Rich Rodriguez’s spread attack, had
turned the ball over five times and managed just 21 yards of offense.
But Michigan scored 27 straight points in the second half, then stopped a
two-point conversion after a late Badgers touchdown to post an improbable 27-25
victory.
“I think our conditioning played a big part in it,” Rodriguez said Monday,
trying to explain the comeback. “I don’t think that was the only factor, but it
did play a part. I think another part is that we were not executing on offense
in the first half. That’s the frustrating thing about our offense, because you
need to get into a rhythm. We were only able to do that in the second half.”
Rodriguez understands that those problems aren’t going to go away overnight,
especially with an inexperienced quarterback like sophomore Steven Threet.
“I’d like to say we’re not going to have any more moments like that first
half, but we still may have them,” Rodriguez said. “We’re still in the middle
of the process, and we’re grinding away. It’s not a lot of fun, and you’d rather
just have everything go smoothly, but that’s not where we are at right now.”
Threet said that he’s encouraged by the progress the offense made in the
second half.
“There were obviously some plays in the first half that didn’t go the way
they were supposed to go, and some decisions that weren’t made the right way,”
he said. “But we kept on working and kept on trying to get the yards, and
things started to get moving in the second half.”
Threet said that he was able to ignore the boos raining down from over
100,000 disappointed fans at the half, a noise loud enough that Rodriguez joked
it could be heard all over the city of Ann Arbor.
“You just have to put all that out of your head,” he said. “You come out
for the first drive of the second half and you have to treat it like it is the
first half of the game.”
Senior nose tackle Terrance Taylor gave the team a pep talk at the half, and
his teammates said it certainly worked.
“He came over and talked about how the offensive and defensive lines needed
to control the game,” said offensive tackle Stephen Schilling. “He told us
that we needed to win this one for the seniors, and he was pretty upset, so it
was definitely some motivation for us.”
The offensive players also credited a defense that held Wisconsin to just 19
points while they were floundering in the first half—an effort that middle
linebacker Obi Ezeh was proud to have helped.
“I thought we did a great job,” he said. “We came out for the first half
with the mind-set that we would play as hard as the team needed us to play, and
it turned out that we had to be out there for a very long time, but we stood
tall for the whole game.”
The Michigan Wolverines still aren’t exactly sure how they stormed back to win Saturday’s game against Wisconsin.
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