2B - September 21, 2009

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

2B - September 21, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom

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BEAVERS
From page 1B
holes in the Michigan defense was
Oregon State senior Rachel Rourke.
Rourke, who is a member of the Aus-
tralian National Team, tallied 25 kills
in the win and took home Tourna-
ment MVP honors.
The Wolverines went down a set
early for only the second time all
season, and that's when the team
needed to rebound against the Bea-
vers (10-3).
But they didn't.
"(The team) is a very highly mo-
tivated group," Rosen said. "They
want to be good, and they want to be
successful in whatthey do but some-
times that success puts pressure on
"It just sucks you
have to learn
from a loss."
you and we didn't manage that well
today.
"Our players got a little panicked
and once that happened, we started
doingthings we don't normally train
to do - trust starts breaking down,
then communication starts breaking
down - it's this spiral that you can't
get out off, and that's very common
in sports."
The loss ended the Wolverines'
bid to begin a'fourth-straight season
13-0.
"We see every match as a learn-
ing experience," junior setter Lexi
Zimmerman said, who dished out
40 assists in the losing effort. "It
just sucks to have to learn from a
loss, but we know what we need to
work on and what we need to do to
get better."
And they'll have to do that fast. Big
Ten play starts next weekend with
two road matches against Indiana
and Purdue in arguably one of the
toughest conferences in the country.
"The way teams respond to these
types of games defines them," Bower
said. "It's a loss, and it doesn't define
our season, but the way we respond
will"

Save the last chant

0

n Jan. 1, 2008, I exited the
Citrus Bowl, home of the
Capital One Bowl, feeling
a high you can only get from aclas-
sic college football game.
After hear-
ingnothing
but incessant
"Appalachian
State" chants
and bad Tim
Tebow jokes
from the
thousands of
Florida fans ANDY
in attendance, REID
I witnessed
one of the best
Michigan football wins in the last
10 years.
Lloyd Carr retired a winner.
After struggling with spread-of-
fense quarterbacks, the Wolverines
dumped the best of them all, the
Heisman winner Tebow. And it
was a bowl game, which, as Michi-
gan fans found out last year, you
can never take for granted.
So, I walked out of the stadium
wearing my Mike Hart jersey
proudly. And then, spiraling down
the ramp to the main concourse,
I leaned over the rail and heard it
faintly waftingup to me:
"It's Great. To Be. A Michigan
Wol-ver-ine."
My family has had season tickets
to Michigan football games since
I was two years old, and despite
the myriad games I have attended,
I've only heard that chant a select
handful of times. Not coinciden-
tally, all of those games are among
the best I've ever seen.
Iconic Michigan games that
deserve an extra bit of special cel-
ebration -1997 Ohio State, 2004
Michigan State, 2005 Penn State.
And that's the way it should be.
I was pretty surprised when I
heard the chant surface during the
post-game celebration after Satur-
day's 45-17 shellacking of Eastern
Michigan. Sure, it's cool when the

I

1

MAX COLLINS/Daily

Michigan fans in the student section chanted "It's Great To Be A Michigan Wolverine" after the game Saturday. Really? C'monguys.

Wolverines head over to the stu-
dent section after each win. But the
crowd should sing the fight song,
chant "Let's Go Blue" or something
- instead of busting out the big
guns for nothing.
That's like buying your friend a
sheet cake on his half-birthday. I
guess it kind of makes a little sense,
but seriously? C'mon.
After a so-so win over East-
ern Michigan is not the time to
be chanting "It's Great, To Be, A
Michigan Wolverine." Save that for

Penn State or Ohio State, who are
both comingto the Big House this
season.
A lot of people might say that
I'm makinga bigstink out of noth-
ing, that it's just a chant and the
students who hollered it after the
Wolverines beat the Eagles were
just trying to have fun.,
But you're diluting the greatness
of the simple chant.
In 2007, I took a road trip to Illi-
nois to watch Michigan play. After
both Mike Hart and Chad Henne

battled severe injuries and Adrian
Arrington threw a pass to fellow-
wideout Mario Manningham, the
Wolverines toppled the eventual-
Rose Bowl-bound Fighting Illini,
27-17.
In the bowels of the stadium
after the game, Michigan fans took
over, cheering "It's Great. To Be. A
Michigan Wol-ver-ine" louder and
louder. Everyone knew the chant,
even though it's such a rare entity.
That makes it so much more
special. What would the chant be if

every maize-clad fan yells it after
Michigan dumps Delaware State
by 40 points?
Students, I encourage you to get
rowdy, get loud and have fun on
State St. before the game. You only
have four years - live it up.
But, respect "It's Great. To Be. A
Michigan Wol-ver-ine."
- Reid thinks you should chant
it all night after rushing the field
on Nov. 21. He can be reached
at andyreid@umich.edu.

'M' places three in
top 10 at invitational

Tauro leads
Wolverines at
non-scoring event
By MARTY LAROUERE
Daily Sports Writer
Injuries and inexperience
couldn't stop the Michigan wom-
en's cross country team from plac-
ing three runners in the top 10 in
the non-scoring Spartan Invita-
tional on Friday.
Junior Danielle Tauro was the
team's top finisher at Forest Akers
East Golf Course, placing second
overall with a time of 21:19.
"I felt really good at 3K," Tauro
said. "At 4K, Michigan State start-
ed to pick up the pace. I just tried
to keep the gap within reasonable
distance."
While the veteran Tauro led
the Wolverines, true freshmen
Kaitlyn Patterson and Rebecca
Addison started their careers off
strong in their first-ever six-kilo-
meter race.
Patterson finished ninth at
21:56 and Addison came in 12th
at 22:07.
"Kaitlyn is improving leaps and
bounds since high school," Tauro
said. "She's surprising us with
how fast she's running, oniy being
with the team for a few months."
Michigan head coach Mike
McGuire was pleased with the
results from the Spartan Invita-
tional.
"Our first three ran a step
up from the Michigan Open,"
McGuire said of the Sept. 4 meet.
"Today was like my stocks- a few
up, a few down. We are moving
forward and progressing with
several of them."
The biggest challenge of the day
was runningwithoutjunior Jenny
Morgan and freshman Jill Smith.
They pulled out of the lineup due
HURRICANES
From page 1B
She finished the day with eight
saves.
Kopmeyer was tested again with
less than a minute left to play. Two
Miami players charged a ball that
bounced into the box, and Kop-
meyer saw the ball come in behind
the defense. She tried to beat them
to the ball and punch it away, and
got just enough of it to get it away
from the offense. The ball rolled
towards the goal, but Carron was

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Junior Adam Keller scores a goal in Michigan's 5-1 rout of Western Michigan on Saturday.
Five Wolverines

Junior DanielleTauro placed second in the non-scoring Spartan Invitational this
Friday. The Wolverines placed three runners in the top10.
to a cold and calf injury, respec- good."
tively, but are both expected to Tauro feels that by executing
return to full strength soon. the team's strategy of moving
"We have a solid team," .in packs, the Wolverines will be
McGuire said. "It was nice to see tcompetitive this season.
some improvement. "As long as we continue to move
"But with the addition of Jenny forward, times get faster, and we
and Jill later on, we will be strong feed off of each other's energy, we
through the first four and looking will be ready to go," Tauro said.

in the right place to coddle it away
from the net.
The game was also dictated by
very physical play. Michigan and
Miami combined for 25 fouls. Hein
said that physical games earlier in
the season allowed the Wolverines
to adapt and be prepared for games
like yesterday's.
The Hurricanes even had to play
a man down for the last 12 minutes
of the game when junior Miami
defender Brittney Macdonald was
given her second yellow card of the
game.
But Ryan knows Michigan beat a

very good Miami team.
"This is a teamthat (Miami coach
Tricia Taliaferro) has been recruit-
ing for years and years," Ryan said.
"It's a very talented team. They're
very tall. They're very athletic and
fast and skillftl. They're smart. And
I've got a team that's being rebuilt."
Even though the Hurricanes
were talented, Michigan beat them
with help from each other.
"That was the difference all day,"
Ryan said. "If somebody was mak-
ing mistakes somebody was cover-
ing up for it. And that allowed us to
have the shutout."

notch
Shooting practice on
Friday pays off
during victory over
winless WMU
By JAKE FELDMAN
Daily Sports Writer
Michigan's defense has been
stingy, its offense explosive, and
its goalkeeping impeccable.
But the team's glaring weakness
has been finishing, so in practice
on Friday, the Wolverines focused
extensively on shooting. On Sat-
urday, they reaped the benefits in
Kalamazoo.
Five Wolverines scored in
Michigan's 5-1 thrashing of West-
ern Michigan at the WMU Soc-
cer Complex. Junior defender
Adam Keller opened the scoring
extravaganza in the 33rd minute,
netting Michigan's first opening-

goals ii
half goal of the season. Michigan
coach Steve Burns called the play a
nominee for the top-10 goals of the
year, as Keller blasted a one-timer
into the bottom left corner.
"Keller gotthe first goal and that
kind of set the tone for the rest of
the game," senior captain Julian
Robles said. "Once you get that
first one against certain teams, it
builds our confidence up. We were
just continuing to create chances."
Star forward Mauro Fuzetti
was sidelined with a hyperextend-
ed knee, but Michigan's offense
appeared unfazed. The Wolver-
ines (6-1) sent long balls down
the flanks, watched their speedy
forwards blaze by defenders, and
ended the half with a 2-0 lead.
Michigan's backline dictated
the game's tempo as the Wol-
verines found themselves with
enough time to reverse the point of
attack and catch the Broncos (0-6)
out of position. The Wolverines
outshot Western Michigan 10-1 in

the period.
With a sizeable lead in the sec-
ond half, Burns rested his starters
and watched his reserves ice the
game assertively. Redshirt fresh-
man midfielder Alex Klein and
junior midfielder Alex Wood con-
tinued the rout, with each tallying
their first career goals.
"We brought in a couple guys
off the bench to hopefully main-
tain the level of play and they did
a great job of not having a drop off
of levels," Robles said. "We kept on
attacking, we kept creating chanc-
es and we probably could have had
a couple more."
The Wolverines controlled play
from start to finish for the first
time all season, raiding the attack-
ing box for much of the game.
But most importantly, they fin-
ished.
"This was the first game where ,
we came out and there was never a
question who would win the game,"
Keller said. "We dominated."

n rout

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