Michigan Hangs On To Beat Ball State 34-26

By Sean · Monday, November 6, 2006 · 7:22 PM |  Share | 1 Comment 

In a game that was supposed to be a blowout, things ended up much closer than anyone would’ve expected. The Wolverines had some problems early on due to mistakes, but eventually re-gained the lead and started to pull away from the Ball State Cardinals. However, some coaching miscues, such as taking out many of the starters too early, and also bad play by those backups led to Ball State getting within two yards of having a chance to tie the game. Although the Wolverines did end up winning by a score of 34-26, the game shouldn’t have been that close, and many people are growing skeptical, but I say lets look at the facts first.

For senior day 2006 it was very unusual to be playing a team out of the Big Ten. Due to the added 12th game this season, Ball State had to fill in the empty spot and come to Ann Arbor late in the season. The hope before the game started was that Michigan would jump out to an early lead and allow some of the backups, especially those that are seniors, to get some playing time.

The start of this game did look promising. Michigan moved the ball down the field easily and got into the endzone thanks to a Jerome Jackson run. His run was only from a yard out, but on the previous play he had a much longer one marked down on the 1 yard line after a review overturned the touchdown. Still, Michigan led 7-0. That’s where things started to go downhill. Steve Breaston decided not to field a punt and because of that, it was downed right by the 1 yard line, putting UM in a tough spot to power out of. On the next play, the Wolverines handed it off to Mike Hart on a stretch play, but since things took so long to develop, Hart was stuck to the outside and had the ball knocked out of his hands. The ball rolled out of the side of the endzone and resulted in a safety. At first I thought this was Hart’s first fumble in 666 carries (weird huh?), but due to a rule by the NCAA, fumbles lost only count if the other team recovers it (more on this in a separate post later).

Now that the score was 7-2 I was feeling a little uneasy, but the defense came up with another stop, so things were looking better. That is, until Chad Henne threw a really ugly pass into coverage. The ball was picked off and taken back untouched into the endzone for a Ball State touchdown. The score was now 9-7 Cardinals after the first quarter, and frankly I was in shock. But if you thought that was bad, then just wait until the second half.

Before an even bigger shock, Michigan first scored a few times to build up a pretty good-sized lead. Carson Butler was on the receiving end of a 7 yard touchdown pass from Chad Henne in the endzone to give the Maize and Blue the lead back. The catch was made in a congestion of defenders, and was done greatly by Butler to haul in his first career TD. Next, Brandon Minor began what would turn out to be a great day for the true freshman after Garrett Rivas kicked a field goal. After fumbling last week against Northwestern, Minor turned it on this past weekend and helped Michigan get things going. A 40 yard touchdown run that was scored on a dive over the pylon gave UM a convincing 24-9 lead and put the team at where they should’ve been a long time ago. The lead at the half however, was only 24-12 as Ball State kicked a long field goal prior to the break.

To get the second half started, Michigan came out on a good note as Mike Hart got into the endzone for 1 yard out, and got the UM lead up to 31-12. At this point, Lloyd Carr started putting in many backups, even though the score was only 19 points. I think one more score would’ve been a big enough margin to put the second stringers in, but three possessions is just not a safe cushion in my opinion. Nonetheless, that’s the decision Coach Carr made, and it would turn out to be a bad one.

The secondary that hadn’t had all that much expereince was shredded by Ball State’s quarterback and led to a comeback that had the entire stadium in shock. First, the Cardinals got a 54 yard touchdown pass after a Michigan defensive back didn’t look back at the ball. Then, a long pass over Charles Stewart’s head set up a 2 yard touchdown run by Larry Bostic. Garrett Rivas did get a field goal in between the scores to give Michigan 3 more points, but the score was only 34-26 Michigan leads. An added tidbit to Garrett Rivas’ field goal is that it got him the number one spot on Michigan’s list of all-time scorers.

With the lead only at 8 points, the starters came back in, but Ball State still got down inside the Michigan 10 yard line and had 7 shots at scoring a touchdown to possibly get things all tied up. Every time though, Michigan’s defense rose to the occasion and kept Ball State out of the endzone. At one point, the Cards were actually just 2 yards away on 4th and goal, but because of a false start (thank you student section), BSU was backed up 5 yards. After the failure to convert, Michigan got the ball back but still wound up punting it away. Ball State had one last hail mary to the endzone, but it was intercepted by Ryan Mundy. The final score, Michigan wins 34-26.

It may not have been pretty but thankfully Michigan got the win. I’m not gonna go into what went wrong because quite frankly at this point in the season it’s just a pain to talk about it. I will, briefly discuss a few things I noticed that caused such a close score. The obvious is that the starters were pulled way too early in my mind, making for players that aren’t that familiar to the field being forced to defend a quarterback just airing it out. Secondly, I don’t think most of the players took this game very seriously. Late in the year with only a couple of games to go before the big one that everyone’s talking about has to be hard to concentrate. Even a few of the players said they weren’t “pumped up” very much either.

Even with the close game, Michigan’s record is now up to a whopping 10-0. The Wolverines travel south to Bloomington this Saturday for a matchup with the Indiana Hoosiers, who have been looking ahead to this game for too long. They had a countdown to it on their athletic website last week, and in turn got blown out by Minnesota. Maybe they were overlooking their opponent as well. Michigan will have to be focused on the Hoosiers as an upset can happen at any time, and with Ohio State just over a week away, it can’t be easy to stay completely focused on Indiana. Check back here next week for a recap of what will hopefully be the 11-0 Wolverines.