Page 4-The Michigan Daily- Sports Monday - November 4, 1991 t - x I I MICHIGAN I mJ - \ J-L I C H I 0 A 4 2 Rushing Player Att ds Back to basics for Michigan R. Powers 23 J. Johnson 8 Wheatley 7 McThomas 3 Grbac 2 Howard 1 Washinaton 1 118 5.1 12 23 32 1 -9 8 1 2.9 4.6 0.3 -4.5 8.0 1.0 Totals 45 174 3.8 18 Receiving Player No Yds Lg TD Howard 7 108 47 2 VanDyne 3 58 24 0 J. Johnson 2 25 20 0 W. Smith 1 9 9 0 R. Powers 1 9 9 0 Totals 14 209 47 2 Passing Player C-A Yds TD I n t Grbac 11-16 175 2 0 Collins 3-4 34 0 0 Totals 14-20 209 2 0 Gr bac Defense Player Tac Ast Tot Wal ker 9 3 12, Anderson 8 2 10 Eva ns 6 1 7 Hutchinson 3 1 4 Simpson 2 2 4 Ware 2 1 3 Brown 2 1 3 Holdren 1 2 3 Williams 2 0 2 Dottin 2 0 2 Henderson 2 0 2 Maloney 2 0 2 Townsend 2 0 2 C. Wallace 2 0 2 M/larshall 1 1 2 Burch 1 0 1 O. Johnson 1 0 1 Ritter 1 0 1 Stanley 1 0 1 Rekowski 1 0 1 Aghakhan 1 0 1 Peoples 1 0 1 Sta rk 1 0 1 Punting Player No Yds Avg La Azcona 2 61 30.5 34 Team 1 6 6.0 6 Totals 3 67 22.3 34 Punt Returns Player No Yds Ava Lg Howard 2 53 26.5 39 Kickoff Returns Player No Yds Avg L9 'M' Powers into by Matt Rennie Daily Football Writer For a while Saturday, Michigan football was looking like its old self. When the Wolverines drove within the opponents' 15-yard line, they ran the ball. No play-action fakes. No lob passes to the end zone. Just give it to the tailback and let him run it up the gut. In other words, Michigan foot- ball. In fact, Michigan scored four of its six touchdowns on the ground in its 42-0 victory over Purdue. Soph- omore Ricky Powers and rookie Tyrone Wheatley each tallied a pair of touchdowns, and Powers rushed for 100 yards for the ninth time in his career. While the exploits of quarter- back Elvis Grbac and wide receiver Desmond Howard have attracted na- tional headlines, Powers has estab- lished himself as the second-best runner in the Big Ten behind Indi- ana's Vaughn Dunbar. Saturday's game was typical for Powers, in that he broke the 100-yard mark without the benefit of a long, break- away run. He carried for 12 yards on his longest run of the day. "Powers is such a big guy," Pur- due coach Jim Colletto said. "He'll get six, seven yards and it may not look like he got that much." Jesse Johnson combines with Powers and Wheatley to give the Wolverines a three-pronged rushing attack. This depth has had its pros and cons for Powers, who occasion- ally feels he's getting too much rest. "Sometimes I feel like I'm hit- - - ...." -W s i r e'AI i the end zone against Boilermakers ting the holes too quick. That comes from being in the game off and on," Powers said. "When I'm in the game longer I can tell if I'm hitting them right." The success of the Howard-Grbac combination has certainly comple- mented the running game. pons, the Wolverines need someone to choose which fuse to light. Colletto believes Grbac fills that role to perfection. . "Their quarterback knows ex- actly what's going on all the time," Colletto said. "Nothing affects him; he plays like he's in a vacuum. 0 It's real difficult to take away everything they do. They just wear you down. Part of this game is mental. After a while, you just run out of gas' - Purdue coach Jim Colletto "Desmond's a lifesaver," Pow- ers said earlier this season. "With him out there, the defensive backs can't worry about the run at all." Purdue cornerback Jimmy Young believes the change in this year's Michigan team is a difference in per- sonnel, rather than in play-calling. "Their gameplan is still to run the ball 66 percent of the time," Young said. "They go to the pass when they need to, and when they need to, Howard's there for them." Colletto was also impressed with the Wolverines' offensive ver- satility. "It's real difficult to take away everything they do," Colletto said. "They just wear you down. Part of this game is mental. After a while, you just run out of gas." With so many explosive wea- He's like having a coach on thefil.y field." A luxury that all of Michigan's skill players have enjoyed is the play of the Wolverine offensive line, which has opened holes for the tailback trio and allowed Grbac enough time to find the open re- ceivers. Saturday, Michigan's line was a makeshift group with Matt Elliot filling in at center, where Steve Everitt and Marc Milia have already been injured. Colletto felt no sympathy for Michigan. "They're solid up front," he said. "They'll open up cracks early in the game, and as they wear you down, the cracks become bigger and big- ger." Michigan sophomore Ric Powers carried the ball Z .SHUTOUT Contiuned from page 1 more than 40 points for the fourth time this season. However, after establishing a 7-0 lead 3:01 into the game, Michigan struggled for much of the first half. Defensive back Deon Johnson recovered a fumbled punt snap on Purdue's 26, three plays after which tailback Ricky Powers rambled 11 yards for the score. But on its next three drives, Michigan punted, allowed another punt to be partially blocked, and fumbled. The Wol-verines' first-half time of possession was half that of Purdue's. "The offense sputtered in the first half; I was disappointed we didn't run better," Moeller said. "And I just hate to punt. Get- ting a punt blocked... I can just not stomach to think that someone can block a punt on us." However, split end Desmond Howard broke the Wolverines' slump on a 47-yard touchdown reception with 2:21 left in the half. The junior Heisman candidate caught Elvis Grbac's eight-yard toss on a slant over center, cut left, and raced past a host of de- fenders toward the end zone. Though the Wolverines again punted on their first drive of the second half, they reached the end zone on every ensuing posses- Sion. "The key is, did we get better today?" Moeller said. "Offensively, in the first half, INETH SMOLLER/Daiy no. In the second half, we might have." Powers initiated the second-half offensive burst with his own scoring drive. The sopho- ky Powers runs away from Purdue Saturday. 3 times for 118 yards. more back rushed for 44 of the drive's 46 yards on nine of its 11 plays, finishing with a seven- yard endzone sprint. Following free safety Corwin Brown's in- terception of Pike three plays later, Michigan went to the air. Grbac hit Howard on a 17-yard fade in the right of the end zone to give the Wolverines a 28-0 lead with 3:32 remaining in the third quarter. "He's as great in person as he is on film," Colletto said of Howard. "I looked at that and said 'Wow, we're out of our league.' After Howard almost broke a 39-yard punt return for a touchdown, Grbac went to Howard's counterpart, flanker Yale VanDyne. VanDyne flagged passes of 12 and 24 yards to set up Tyrone Wheatley's 1-yard endzone dive. Down, 35-0, Purdue drove to the Michigan 13, where it faced fourth down. After convert- ing once in three previous fourth-down at- tempts, the Boilermakers sent in Joe O'Leary, whose 31-yard field goal try sailed wide left. Colletto defended his decision to attempt the field goal after having declined to kick all game. "When you'd been sacked as many times as we had, you know you can't pass," Colletto said. "I guess we couldn't kick, either." Wheatley then added another 1-yard touch- down to round out the score at 42-0. "Our defense played hard for a while, but not throughout the game," Colletto said. "It gets to the point where you're not getting anything back, the offense isn't helping. It gets hard to play." "0 Frosh Tyrone "Superman" Wheatley comes back to earth for his first of two scores in Saturday's game with Purdue. Northwestern upsets MSU, 16-13 --------------------- McGee 1 6 6.0 6 Associated Press Northwestern 16, Michigan State 13 The Wildcats ran up 351 total yards on the hapless Spartan defense, and punctuated it with a late scoring drive to win the game. Northwestern won its second game in a row for the first time since 1986, when the Wildcats fin- ished with a 4-7 record, the last time they have won more than three games in a season. The Wildcats' Mark Benson, a senior flanker who led the Big Ten with a 22.3 yards-per-catch average entering the game, caught a seven- yard toss from Quarterback Len Williams with 1:48 left in the fourth quarter for the game-win- ning score. The rest of Northwestern's scor- ing came in the first quarter on a Brian Leahy 46-yard field goal and another Williams-Benson touch- down hookup, this time for 18 yards. The Spartans countered with a } -arrle..rnn a _ m _ . an Coach Hayden Fry and the Iowa Hawkeyes kept focused on Ohio State for 60 minutes Saturday. Then; after beating the Buckeyes ,16-9, it was again time to think about what had happened back on campus. On Friday, a graduate student killed three Iowa professors and a classmate before shooting himself to death. School officials had con- templated not playing the game at Ohio State, but decided since the team had already made -the trip to go ahead. The Iowa players wore all-black helmets in remembrance of the shooting. Iowa, which had beaten the Buck- eyes at Ohio Stadium only once since 1960, moved to 7-1 and remained tied for second place in the Big Ten with Indiana with a conference record of 4-1. OSIJ (3-2 in the Big Ten, 6-2 overall) fell out of the Rose Bowl picture. The Buckeyes have also lost to Illinois. Tnn,o tnnV rnanat thent in the third quarter. Ohio State, which came in averag- ing 255 yards rushing per game, was limited to 124 yards on the ground and 97 more passing. Meanwhile, Iowa totaled 443 yards, including 283 passing. Indiana 34, Minnesota 8 Vaughn Dunbar rushed for 153 yards and three touchdowns as Indi- ana greeted Coach Bill Mallory's return from a one-game suspension with a 34-8 victory. Indiana totaled 214 yards on the ground to Minnesota's 115, and Dunbar had the 13th 100-plus rush- ing game of his 20-game career. Indiana took advantage of four turnovers and nine penalties against the Gophers. Trent Green passed for 241 yards and rushed for one touch- down and Scott Bonnell added two field goals as the Hoosiers domi- nated Minnesota from the begin- ning. Illinois 22, Wirn £ For the first time in recent memory, the Michigan Marching Band was the best band on the field Saturday. This triumph was accomplished for several reason: 1. The MMB didn't have to compete with those out-of-shape 'we haven't touched our instru- ments since last year's Homecom- ing game' alumni 2. The annual Purdue Band-Sil- ver Twins World Tour cancelled its trip to Ann Arbor. 3. Coach Gary Moeller's squad scored so many times, band director Gary Lewis couldn't help but play a lot of music in the stands. 4. Either the blustering wind and frigid temperatures played tricks on spectators' ears, or this may actually be a good marching band. The only way to verify such a rash statement is to check the band's midterm grades: MUSIC - All season long Pasedena, the MMB will be capa- ble of kicking a tune written since the average undergrad finished el- ementary school. Improvement is measured in small steps. GRADE: C- MARCHING - Call me crazy, but shouldn't a marching band be able to march well? This is a grave assumption when speaking of sev- eral sections in the MMB. Gary Lewis loves the corps-step style band. He allows his troops to glide step across the field during most of every halftime. The famed Michigan high-step marching is alive and well only in the pregame show. Lewis asks his musicians to maintain the ability to high-step, but spends precious few hours on the style in drills. That is like training an army of soldiers with small water pistols, then tossing them into a war where they have to use uzis. Next week watch the trom- Anderson 9 Scoring Summary 1st Quarter: Powers 11-yd run, Carlson kick, 11:59, 7-0 Michigan 2nd Quarter: Grbac 47-yd pass to Howard, Carlson kick, I