BACK FROM THE BRINK Down 2-0 heading into is third game, the Michigan volleyball team came back to beat Purdue 3-2. PAGE 8B GENNARO FILICE: A scary look into the future reveals what's in store for football in Ann Arbor. PAGE 3B The SportsMonday Column :)RTS D AlY November 8, 2004 lB At AVWt tt Badi v I i li - 1. INEM INNIN Stickers winBig Ter. By James V. Dowd Daily Sports Writer EVANSTON - Having played a grueling regular season during which any secret weapons were forced out into the open, the Big Ten Tournament is a time when teams are forced to rely purely on heart and talent. All seven teams had played each other by the time they reached the Leonard B. 'wA2 Thomas Sports Complex this weekend, so there were no dark horses to be revealed. In the end, top-seeded Michi- gan prevailed, using lessons learned from its sole conference loss at Iowa City to defeat the second- seeded Hawkeyes 3-2 in the tournament final. "There weren't too many surprises out there," Iowa coach Tracey Griesbaum said. "It was just a matter of who would capitalize on them. In the first game of the year there might be surprises, but at this point we have played them once and seen them play other times. It's just a matter of execution." Iowa capitalized early, taking a lead when Deb- bie Birrell put one past Michigan goalkeeper Beth Riley. Hawkeyes forward Sarah Dawson worked the ball deep into the circle and shot. Birrell found the rebound amongst heavy traffic in front of the Michi- gan goal and tipped it past Riley. Though her team fell behind early, Riley had confidence that her defense would help her keep the game within reach. "I've got the best defender in the Big Ten (junior Lori Hillman) right in front of me," Riley said of Hillman, the tournament's most valuable player. "I'm pretty confident with her, and everyone else on the team, that it's not even going to get back to me." The teams continued to battle in the midfield and Michigan caught a break when it was awarded a pen- alty corner 27 minutes into the match. After sopho- more Kara Lentz put the ball into play, Jessica Blake tourney took a shot from the left side, but Iowa goalkeeper Barb Weinberg turned it aside. Lentz was waiting in the corner and tried again to put it in, but Weinberg again got a piece of it. This time, however, Wolver- ines' forward Katie Morris was waiting on the door- step and lifted the ball into the top right corner of the net - her third goal of the weekend - tying the game at one. Just before halftime, Michigan took its first lead when sophomore Mary Fox tapped in another rebound. Lentz again took a shot from the corner, but after the ball made it past Weinberg, it clipped the post and bounced out to a wide-open Fox. While Michigan's defense continued to hold strong in the early parts of the second half, the offense became stagnant. Once again, a penalty corner was the spark Michigan needed, and Blake bounced a shot off of an Iowa defender and into the net. Though Iowa managed to pull within one just five See STICKERS, Page 6B JOEL FRIEDMAN/Daily The Wolverines celebrate their 3-2 win over Iowa and Big Ten Tournament victory. Goal Rush Friday: MICHIGAN 5, Miami (OhIo) 2, Saturday: MICHIGAN 5, Miami (Ohio) 3 le~er duo teams upfor six goals: By Ian Herbert Daily Sports Writer Moss to Tambellini. Moss to Tambellini. Moss to Tambellini. Tambellini to Moss. Moss to Tambellini. The duo of junior Jeff Tambellini and senior David Moss didn't feel like sharing with others this weekend and teamed up for five goals against Miami (Ohio). Tambellini added one more empty-netter by himself at the end of Saturday's game, and Michigan came away with a weekend sweep -5-2, 5-3. At 17:20 of the third period on Saturday, Tambellini scored what turned out to be the game winner offa faceoff from - guess who - Moss. Tam- bellini got the puck at the top of the right circle and fired. The shot just made it over the glove of Miami goalie Brandon Crawford-West to give Michigan a 4-2 lead. "To look back at it now - I know I made some pretty good saves - but I would like to have the fourth goal back," Crawford-West said. "And that ended up making the difference in the game." The goal put No. 2 Michigan (5-1-0 CCHA, 7-2-1 overall) up by two with less than three minutes to go. But with just over one minute left in the game, and the two teams facing off in Michigan's zone, No. 16 Miami (2-4- 0, 4-6-0) pulled its goalie to get an extra skater out on the ice. Forward Matt Christie - who leads the nation in scoring with 17 points - found junior Chris Michael right in front of the net. Michael capitalized and narrowed the lead to 4-3. But 18 seconds later Tambellini scored an open-netter. Skating with an extra man with less then 30 seconds left Saturday night, Miami lost control of the puck. Tambellini grabbed it and shot it off the boards. As the puck drifted toward the open net, both Tambellini and senior Jason Ryznar skated hard after it. But Tambellini beat his teammate to the puck and put it into the back of the net. "I feel terrible right now," Tambellini said. "I thought I had a guy on my back, and I should have just given it to Ryznar. So I think I'm going to be sending him sorry cards all week." The goal was Tambellini's second of the game and fifth of the weekend. He led the team in shots even before this weekend's series with 47 - 19 more than the next Wolverine - but had just one goal on the season. "There's nothing like scoring to get a goal-scorer scoring," Michigan coach Red Berenson said. "And you could just see him. He really had his nose to the grindstone." Tambellini - who led the team in points during his freshman year with 45 - credited his breakout performance to an added bit of confidence. A scorer by nature, Tambellini tallied 41 goals in his first two seasons at Michigan. "You get a couple in the net, and you really start to get an extra bit of patience and see the net better," Tambellini said."I'm just trying to put shots away, and right now, they're going in." The first goal of the night was also scored by the Tambellini-Moss pair- ing. But this time, it was Moss taking the shot. Tambellini skated with the puck down the left side of the ice through the neutral zone. At the top of the circle, he saw his teammate alone in the right slot. The two-on-one break- away paid off, and Moss managed to push the puck past Crawford-West. "He played unbelievable this whole weekend," said Tambellini of Moss. "He made passes that were just phenomenal. He sees the ice so well, so he deserves to score some, as well." Michigan took a 2-0 lead less than one minute later on a goal by sopho- more David Rohlfs. Senior defenseman Nick Martens got the puck at the point and fired a slapshot. Rohlfs, standing in front of the net, got his stick on the puck and deflected it past Crawford-West. Freshman Chad Kolarik also added a power play goal 6:18 into the sec- ond period that gave Michigan a 3-0 lead. The goal was Kolarik's third power play goal of the season. JASON COOPER/Daily Jeff Tambellini found his scoring touch this weekend, notching a hat trick on Friday and adding two more goals on Saturday. He's now the team's leading scorer, with six on the season. Blue shuts down Hawks' leadingline By Jake Rosenwasser Daily Sports Writer The CCHA's leading scorer came to Yost and con- tinued his torrid point-scoring pace by registering a point in each game of the weekend series. The only problem was that each time he was credited with a point, the game was all but over. Miami sophomore forward Matt Christie - who came into the weekend series with five goals and 10 assists in just eight games - was limited to a garbage- time goal on Friday night and an assist on Saturday that also came too late. On Friday, with Michigan leading 5-1 in the final minute and Miami down a man, Christie managed to pull away from the Michigan defense for a break- away. The Mighty Duck draft pick beat junior goalie Al Montoya glove side and notched his sixth goal of the season. "(The gameplan) was definitely to shut down their top line, and him in particular," senior defen- seman Brandon Rogers said. "It's frustrating he got two points right at the end of both games when we had him in check all night both games. But I think for the most part we did a good job of keeping him' off the scoreboard." Christie had nothing but praise for the stout Michi- gan defense. "They played solid as a team," Christie said. "When you play against good teams, they don't usually worry about individuals. We had a gameplan, and they had a gameplan. And they just outplayed us this weekend." The breakaway was not the first showdown of the night between Christie and Montoya. On two occa- sions Christie and Montoya collided on the ice. On the second occurrence, Christie was whistled for a two- minute goalie interference penalty. "The two of us battled a little bit last year," Christie said. "Sometimes I play down low on the power play so I'm in front of the net. He's a competitor, and so an I. So things like that happen." Overall, Michigan was happy about the way it defended the top CCHA scorer and one of the top offensive lines in the conference. "We knew that if Christie and (Chris Michael) had good weekends then we probably wouldn't win because they win when those guys score," Michigan coach Red Berenson said. "I'm disappointed with the shorthanded goal last night, but we did a pretty good job, and it wasn't just by playing defense. It was by playing offense and good forechecking, as well." 'M' tames Huskies in exhibition ' By Megan Kolodgy Daily Sports Writer Nearly midway through the sec- ond half, sophomore Brent Petway r used his jaw-dropping vertical leap to here or there." Prior to yesterday's matchup, one of the Wolverines' primary concerns was neutralizing Division II preseason Player of the Year Josh Buettner in the paint. Michigan junior Graham Brown "They really defended us," Luke said. "We have two very good bas- ketball players for our level in Jason Marcotte and Josh Buettner, and they just bottled those guys right up - and that's a credit to their start of the game when the Wolver- ines held just a single-digit lead. But Horton quickly heaved a shot from behind the arc and put Michigan up by a more comfortable 12 points. Hor- ton notched three triples in the game, ..