die A ibiguun ?iilg S PORTSii; Monday November 18,2002 SECTIONB i ENNNAWAIRWMM uoqgwo Do i9m IN IN M.q 'M' kickers moving on inNCAAs WOMEN'S SOCCER ANN ARBOR By Michael Nilson Daily Sports Writer MICHIGAN 21, WSCONSIN Die anot er Michigan survives Badgers; eyes bucking Ohio State ay The Michigan women's soccer team put forth one of its best efforts of the year yesterday in a 4-0 win over Miami (Ohio) in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Michigan coach Debbie Rademacher was relieved to move on. " F o r some rea- MIAMI (OHIO) 0 son, we always seem MICHIGAN 4 to get stalled in the second round," Rademacher said. "It's a huge monkey to have off our backs." Rademacher was not kidding. Michigan has failed to get by the sec- ond round of the NCAA Tournament in each of its last four attempts. Michigan freshman Therese Heaton began the scoring for the Wolverines early with a goal at the 39:39 mark in the first half. On a feed from Abby Crumpton, Heaton beat Miami goalkeeper Leigh Terry with a strike to the lower left corner of the net. "Most of the Miami defenders were on my side," Crumpton said. "It did not make sense for me to keep the ball, and she made a great run. She got herself in really good position in front of the goal, so I saw that and just put it through and she put it away." Midway through the first half, Michigan junior forward Stephanie Chavez pulled up lame and left for the remainder of the game. "She's been battling a bad ankle ever since the Michigan State game," Rademacher said. "She twisted it, and so for her, it's just going to be getting through the week every week now." Following the goal, Michigan (7-2- 1 Big Ten, 15-6-1 overall) continued to keep Miami (12-1, 19-3-2) on its heels. The Wolverines were relentless in their pursuit of lose balls and played extremely tough defensively. All the hard work paid off again when Heaton netted her second goal of the game with 11:28 left in the first half. Heaton pounced on a lose ball in Miami's box and punched it off the left post into the goal. The half ended with Michigan leading 2-0. Rademacher said that there were no feelings that the game was over during the team's halftime discussion. "We always tell them that 2-0 is the scary lead," Rademacher said. "We made sure that we focused and that 2- 0 was not good enough. We needed to have an insurance goal." The Wolverines got just that. Three minutes into the second half, senior See KICKERS, Page 7B3 Field hockey By David Horn Daily Sports Editor Next Saturday's game against Ohio State was going to happen one way or the other; few games over the course of a season are dependent on the teams' performance the pre- vious weekend. But the luster of the annual Michigan-Ohio State regular season finale would have been tarnished had either the Wolverines or the Buckeyes failed to collect a win this past weekend. Ohio State squeaked by Illinois in overtime - its second close game against an inferior conference opponent in as many weeks. Michigan triumphed, in a mistake-riddled game, and cleared a hurdle that many thought it would not in defeating Wisconsin 21-14 at Michigan Stadium on Saturday. "Our team is really focused on the task at hand." junior quarterback John Navarre said after the game, dismissing questions of the team overlooking the Badgers. "We were very focused on Wisconsin because they're a dan- gerous ball club, which you saw out there today. We knew how to play." They certainly did early on. Michigan established a 14-0 lead 4:19 minutes into the game. The first touchdown came on the Wolverines' first possession, on the strength of a 27-yard run by junior tailback Chris Perry and a 28-yard run by senior fullback B.J. Askew. The latter ended in the north end zone. On Wisconsin's subsequent possession - it's first of the game - tailback Anthony Davis was stripped from behind by Michigan cornerback Marlin Jackson. The ball tumbled to the ground, bounced five yards downfield, and was apprehended by senior linebacker Victor Hobson. An 11-yard Perry run put Michigan up 14-0, and the game looked well DAVID KATZ/Daily Michigan running back Chris Perry rushed for a career-high 175 yards and had one touchdown in the Wolverines' 21-14 win over the Badgers on Saturday. in hand, even at such an early stage. But from there the Wolverines got sloppy, committing two turnovers and stalling out on offense multiple times. Defensively the most telling first half statistic is Davis' 106 rush- ing yards. His touchdown run in the second quarter from two yards out tied the game at See BADGERS, Page 4B Varsity s seniors can make Buckeyes feel their pain For 19 Michigan players - whether they want to believe it or not - Saturday was the last time they will run out of the Michigan Stadi- um tunnel in front of 110,000 fans. Some players cried, some held back. Some said that the reality had set in during the week, whilen others predicted they wouldn't J. BRADY think about it MCCOLLOUGH until after the sea- son's finish. But All about no matter what, the cause when the 14 fifth- year seniors and five fourth-year seniors look back on their Michigan career, there will be extremely mixed emotions. The fifth-year seniors came to Michi- gan in the fall of 1998 riding the hype created by the Wolverines' epic run to the national championship in 1997. They were as talented as any recruiting class in the country, boasting such high-pro- file names as Drew Henson, David Ter- rell, Marquise Walker, Justin Fargas and Larry Foote. Michigan coach Lloyd Carr brought in a crop of athletes that was expected to keep the Wolverines at the top of college football for years to come. But thanks to Michigan's blowout loss to Iowa three weeks ago, no matter what the Wolverines do in Columbus this weekend, it would take an act of God for Michigan to play in the Rose Bowl. This class, along with the small group of true seniors that is leaving, has competed for the Big Ten title every year. But for some reason, they have been unable to equal the feats of that magical team in '97. And it kills them. They came to Michigan with the expectation to play in at least one Rose Bowl during their careers, and instead, they have spent New Year's Day in Florida every season, and it is likely that this New Year's will be no different. If you're keeping score at home, the Wolverines have gone to just one Rose Bowl in the past nine years. It hurts every one of their teammates, who know that a win against Iowa at home would have given the seniors a chance to make that elusive trip to Pasadena. "Yeah, you try not to think about it, but that's the goal when you come to Michigan," said redshirt junior Court- ney Morgan, who came to Michigan in 1999 along with the fourth-year seniors. "The national championship is good, the Fiesta Bowl is good, but you come to Michigan to play in that Rose Bowl. And it's sad." It's also inexplicable that a group that came in with so much talent couldn't turn the corner. There is no doubt in my mind that Michigan should have won at least one outright Big Ten title in the past five years. The early departures of Henson to the New York Yankees and Terrell to the Chicago Bears, along with Fargas' transfer to Southern California, have turned this departing group's lega- cy into a giant "What if?" Every Michigan fan in his or her right mind has used the phrase "If Hen- son and Terrell had been here," and there's always the standby of "If only Carr hadn't played so conservatively against Purdue in 2000." The newest addition is "How can Tom Brady lead the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, yet fail to take Michigan to the Rose?" The list goes on for this group, and odds are, most Michigan fans will look at these past five years as an absolute disappointment - and the sen- iors as underachievers. But there's still hope. While this Michigan senior class has not continued the grand tradition of smelling the roses, it still has a chance See MCCOLLOUGH, Page 4B DAVID KATZ/Daily Michigan defensive lineman Dan Rumishek can't hold his emotions in as he and the rest of the Wolverines' seniors played their final game in the Big House. fails to defend national crown against Tigers FIELD HOCKEY STATE COLLEGE By Brian Steere Daily Sports Writer STATE COLLEGE - The season wasn't sup- posed to end this way for the Michigan field hockey team. Filled with tremen- PRINCETON 4 dous expectations, the Wolverines entered MICHIGAN 3 this year's NCAA tour- nament poised to defend their national champi- onship. But instead of beginning its run for a second- straight Final Four, No. 4 Michigan went out in the first round after suffering a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to Princeton Saturday in State College. Playing through increasing rain and brisk winds, the Tigers rallied from a one-goal deficit in the second half and notched three goals in just over 12 minutes to put the Wolverines away. Princeton forward Rachael Becker deflected a shot over the shoulder of Michigan goalkeeper Michigan coach Marcia Pankratz said. "Prince- ton was exceptionally dangerous. I think right until the very end in the last 30 seconds we still felt we could tie it up, but they were just too tough." Despite leading 2-1 for most of the game thanks to freshman Lori Hillman's first career goals, Michigan never delivered the knockout punch to Princeton. For a second straight game, Michigan's top scoring tandem of senior Molly Powers and jun- ior April Fronzoni was held without a point. The Tigers' defense thwarted many odd-man rushes by the Wolverines with strong containment and aggressive stick play. "I think a part of that was their speed match- ing ours," Pankratz said. "They played nice defense. There were a couple of chances we had, and their defenders came up with the play." The momentum significantly turned with 12:10 remaining in the game, when Princeton knotted the score at 2-2 on an odd-man rush goal Third-year soccer team falls short at Big Tens By Kevin Maratea Daily Sports Writer STATE COLLEGE - Michigan entered the Big Ten Tournament seeded No. 2 and accordingly t MICHIGAN 1 left the tour- nament as PENN STATE 2 runner-up. During yesterday's championship match, in a light rain upon a soft and muddy field, Michigan was unable to surmount a comeback against No. 4 seed Penn State as it lost 2-1. "We took a great step (at this tourna- ment) to get to the championship game," Michigan coach Steve Burns JESSICA YURASEK/Daily Members of the Michigan field hockey team console each other after their 4-3 ioss to Princeton. "When we came out after their timeout and scored, I knew that we weren't going to lose," Becker said. "That was great for our confidence." penalty corner. The Wolverines were able to redeem them- selves less than two minutes later on another penalty-corner attempt. This time, senior mid- I