Football
Sun Sets On Wolverine Dreams of Coveted Win Over Buckeyes
By John PorentasAs days go, it wasn't one that was going to produce a great sunset.
On a dreary, gray, drizzly day in Ann Arbor the sun never really shone, and you could barely tell when it finally did set. About the time it went down, the OSU Buckeyes had put 14 points on the board in a game that looked like something out of the Woody and Bo era, 11 more than Michigan, to claim their fourth straight win over the Wolverines.
It was a game that saw the sun set on the careers of Michigan senior offensive lineman Jake Long, senior tailback Mike Hart and senior quarterback Chad Henne, all of whom came back for their senior seasons specifically to beat the Buckeyes, and rumors have been rampant that it was also the sunset game for Michigan Head Coach Lloyd Carr who will reportedly retire.
"They were supposed to go off into the sunset with a win. Something happened on the way to the sunset," quipped OSU right tackle Kirk Barton.
In fairness to both Hart and Henne, neither was at full strength in their sunset game, Hart hobbled a by bad ankle and Henne by a bad shoulder. Henne was further hobbled by so many dropped balls by Michigan receivers, many of them by Ohio native Mario Manningham, that Henne must have thought it was raining miscues, not water. In fairness to Manningham, the water that was falling from the sky made the passing game iffy at best for both teams. The Wolverines finished the day with 13 completions on 37 attempts for 76 yards, the Buckeyes seven of 12 for 50 yards.
All those things hobbled the Wolverines, but nothing hobbled them more than a thoroughly dominating performance by an OSU defense that was humbled a week ago by Illinois, but played with a vengeance against Michigan, limiting them to an embarrassing 91 total yards of offense and just three points.Most of those yards came on Michigan's only scoring drive of the day, a 49-yard drive to a field goal with 1:37 remaining in the first period. For the remaining 46:37 the Wolverines managed 42 total yards and no points. They had 14 net yards in the second half.
Hart had ripped through the Buckeyes for 142 yards and three touchdown in a losing effort in 2006, and has been vocal in his assertions that the OSU defense was not all that good ever since. When the game ended in 2007, the OSU defense had taken those words and given them back to Hart, presenting them to him in a place where the sun wasn't shining. Hart finished the game with 44 net yards on 18 carries, an average of 2.4 yards per try.
As for Henne, the cloud that hung over him much of the day was wearing an Ohio State uniform with a number 50 on it.
Buckeye defensive end Vernon Gholston lived in the Michigan backfield and registered four tackles for loss that included three sacks. The last one must have seemed like a solar eclipse to Henne. Gholston burst up the middle against the Michigan offensive line. The last thing in Henne's vision as the sun got blotted out was Gholston bearing down on him and crashing straight into him with his chest. He never laid a hand on him, but just demolished him with a chest bump that must have had Henne seeing sun spots as he laid on the turf.
OSU's passing game never really got going in the wet, dreary weather, but for the second straight season Buckeye running back Chris "Beanie" Wells brought both thunder and lighting crashing onto the Wolverine defense. Wells' signature bolt was a 62 yard jaunt for a touchdown on OSU's first play of the third quarter. He also rumbled for an additional 160 yards in the game for a total of 222 and an average of 5.7 yards per carry. Wells also scored OSU's other touchdown on a one-yard plunge with 10:08 remaining in the second quarter to put his team up 7-3.
Wells' second TD put the Buckeyes up 14-3, and from that point on OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel put the game in the capable hands of his defense. Boeckman attempted just two passes in the second half, both of them incompletions. The rest of the half Tressel was content to run at the Wolverines to eat clock, punt the ball, and let his defense play.
"All three," Tressel said when asked if was the weather, the way the game was playing out, or Boeckman's lack of sharpness that caused him to button it up in the second half.
The Buckeyes were able to do just enough on offense to keep the field position neutral, got good enough punting from A. J. Trapasso, and got an incredible performance from their defense to claim the win in a way that Woody Hayes would have loved. They out-blocked, out-tackled, and out-hit the Wolverines.
At game's end, the Buckeye offense was at the Michigan five-yard line, poised to score, when Tressel called for Boeckman to kneel for the last play of the game. He called off his dogs rather than needlessly humiliate the Wolverines further, but not before they had done to Michigan what Hart had so loudly proclaimed he wanted to do to the Buckeyes. One of the lead-dogs for the Buckeyes, senior offensive tackle Kirk Barton, summed it up after the game.
"I'd rather be a dog that bites than one that barks," said Barton.
As the sun set on Barton's regular-season career as a Buckeye, he and his teammates had indeed done the biting.
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