"We averaged more yards per carry until Touissant broke that 40 yarder at the end and Michigan still only averaged 3.8 for the game. We stopped the run and forced Gardner to beat us and he did somehow. It had nothing to do with recruiting "star ratings", It had to do with a hobbled, inexperienced wr's vs a veteran secondary."
True. The sad part is the first 20 plus minutes when the Gophers had the edge in nearly every category and only could get 7 points out of it! Hell, they were in the damn game until 5 minutes to go in the 3rd Quarter. Not sure what game all the "Michigan beat them up all day" comments are coming from. The Gophers deserve a lot more credit than they are getting on this, a Gopher Board. It's almost as if everybody who said that they were going to get "blown-out" by Michigan are trying to justify their pessimism.
The books had it right. The teams that were put on the field were much closer than most people wanted to admit.
The Gophers got beat to be sure. Even the "bad calls" looked to be mainly right IMO. The stat to remember though, was that the Gophers got 8 of 10 drives into the Michigan end of the field. They got 4 or 5 of them into the Red Zone or at least the "Field Goal" Zone didn't they? Quit trying to rip their performance. Criticize their execution or decision making by the Coaches or the DB's, but those same guys made a lot of good decisions too. Particularly on Defense and Special Teams.
Just quit trying to make it seem as if the Wolverines were ready to run the Gophers off the field. If you saw the game only the fans in the stands and some of the cockier Michigan players were thinking that. The players didn't start thinking that way until WAY into the game.
Now THAT'S a good sign of progress around here.
