2B — December 5, 2016
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

This seemed like the year for Michigan football

I

t’s not often the Orange 
Bowl seems like a 
consolation prize.

It’s one 

of the most 
storied bowls 
in college 
football, 
guarantees a 
trip to Miami 
and has a 
prestige few 
others can 
match. But 
it feels like a 
consolation, 
doesn’t it? After everything the 
Michigan football team looked 
like it could be a month ago, 
this isn’t the big game in Florida 
the Wolverines looked like they 
might be headed for.

But that’s the reality now. Four 

points between two games kept 
Michigan from Indianapolis, 
which left the Wolverines with 
no recourse when the teams 
above them won on the final 
weekend of the season.

Michigan fans tuned into the 

Pac-12 Championship on Friday 
night to cheer on Colorado, a 
team the Wolverines beat in 
Spetember. They needed the 
Buffaloes to win to have a shot. 
When Colorado made a big play, 
the hope started to creep in. 
But the big payoff never came. 
Washington controlled its own 
fate, and it didn’t squander its 
chance. That’s what makes the 
Huskies a playoff team.

They may not actually be 

better than the Wolverines — nor 
might Clemson, which won six 
of its games by seven points or 
fewer — but both did what they 
had to, when they had to. And 
that’s the difference.

Michigan had a special team 

this year. One of its best ever. 
The Wolverines started the 
season on a nearly point-a-
minute pace, and their defense 
was the rare unit that was 

actually as good as advertised. 
To know that, you could look 
at Jabrill Peppers’ scoop and 
score against Michigan State 
or Jourdan Lewis’ interception 
against Wisconsin. But perhaps 
the best way to understand how 
unrelenting this defense was 
would be to look at one time it 
actually gave up a first down.

As J.T. Barrett fell forward 

toward the 15-yard line in double 
overtime, something stopped 
him. It was Chris Wormley’s 
arm. Barrett still ended up 
getting the first-down call, but 
without Wormley, there would 
have been no doubt. Even being 
blocked to the ground by a 
Buckeye, Wormley reached out 
and shoved Barrett back. The 
strength it takes to generate 
enough force in that motion 
must be astounding, but nothing 
compared to the will it demands.

When the season was on the 

line, Wormley found a way to do 
more than seemed possible. He 
didn’t get the call. But damned 
if it didn’t tell you everything 
you needed to know about the 
Wolverines.

That’s the way the unit played 

all year, with just a couple of 
quarters excepted. The first 
against Colorado and the fourth 
against Michigan State both 
could have gone better. But the 
Wolverines still won.

For the offense, the tough 

quarters proved more costly. 
Five yards against Ohio State 
simply wasn’t enough to hold off 
the Buckeyes. A road game at 
Kinnick Stadium was the wrong 
time for the offense to catch the 
yips. And yes, penalties factored 
heavily into both games. But 
as the Wolverines themselves 
would tell you, when you control 
your destiny, you have to actually 
control it. Leaving your fate up to 
referees and other teams is not a 
fun way to live.

“We take care of business, 

we’re in,” Jabrill Peppers 
tweeted Sunday. “We don’t, we’re 
not.. & we didn’t. Can’t knock the 
teams that did.”

It’s a sage attitude from a 

player who may not have another 
chance at this in college.

But the part that must cause 

the most heartbreak is that, 
deserved or not, this was a team 
that could have won it all. It’s 
not so much that the Wolverines 
looked like one of the nation’s 
four best teams, but that they 

were a team that looked good 
enough to win it all in most years.

Yes, Alabama exists. It was 

no guarantee. But Michigan 
had the look, the feel, the talent 
and the moxie of a team that 
wins it all. That’s why Sunday’s 
announcement feels so odd. The 
fact that the Wolverines didn’t 
get in is not a surprise given their 
resume. It’s that, for as dominant 
as they were, they still couldn’t 
do enough. It makes you wonder 
what it really takes to win a 

national title. 

But that’s what college football 

is. It’s a sport that allows teams 
like Colorado and Washington 
to surge forward at any given 
time and plant a flag in a season. 
It lets the Clemsons of the world 
rise to dominance in just a couple 
of years. You control your own 
destiny until the minute you 
relinquish it.

Michigan relinquished it.
That’s why, standing in an 

unusually subdued press room 

Sunday afternoon, senior tight 
end Jake Butt was left trying 
to explain his acceptance of an 
obviously disappointing fate.

“Do I feel like we’re one of the 

best four teams in the country?” 
Butt asked, “Absolutely I do. But 
that’s on us. We had chances to 
prove that. And we didn’t.”

Max Bultman can be reached 

by email at bultmanm@

umich.edu or on Twitter 

@m_bultman. Please @ him.

SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN

GRANT HARDY/Daily

The 2016 Michigan football team had all the makings of a special team, but with a pair of losses in November, the Wolverines missed out on a chance to prove it.

MAX
BULTMAN

Hungry Wolverines ready to turn the page

Chris Wormley was asleep 

when the Michigan football 
team learned its postseason fate 
Sunday afternoon.

The fifth-year senior defensive 

end was awake to watch the 
College Football Playoff selection 
show a few hours earlier, clinging 
to a shred of hope that the two-
loss Wolverines would sneak into 
the playoff.

Then Michigan flashed up 

as No. 6, and the dream of a 
national 
championship 
was 

gone. So Wormley went back 
to sleep, and he missed the 
initial announcement that the 
Wolverines 
would 
travel 
to 

Miami to face No. 11 Florida State 
in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30.

But by the time Michigan 

players spoke to the media 
Sunday night, Wormley was 
refreshed and refocused. There 
was no point in moping around, 
he said — it was time to make a 
statement.

“I think we’re gonna be 

hungry, we’re gonna be angry 
and we’re gonna want to take it 
out on a team,” Wormley said. 
“Florida State’s just that next 
team up, so we’re excited for the 
challenge. … This game’s gonna 
prove a lot. I hope that it shows 
that we should be in that top 
four.”

Of course, after road losses 

to Iowa and No. 3 Ohio State, 
Michigan has itself to blame for 
coming up short of the playoff.

The Wolverines were ranked 

fifth heading into this weekend, 
with 
an 
outside 
chance 
of 

jumping into the top four if 
Clemson or Washington lost their 
conference championship games. 
But the Tigers and Huskies came 
out victorious, slamming that 
door shut.

“We can’t blame that on 

anyone 
but 
ourselves,” 
said 

senior tight end Jake Butt. “We 
left our fate in the hands of 
other teams, and we understand 
that. With that being said, we’re 
excited about this game. It’s a big 

game, a great opportunity for us 
to compete against a really good 
team.”

Michigan is a better and 

more accomplished team than 
it was a season ago, but it finds 
itself in a similar place as it did 
the end of the season. In 2015, 
the Wolverines finished 9-3 — 
ending their regular season with 
a disappointing loss to Ohio State 
— and felt they had something 
to prove in their Citrus Bowl 
matchup with Florida.

That feeling manifested itself 

in a 41-7 victory for Michigan, 
one that ended the season on 
a high note and kept the team 
trending upward.

The stage is a little bit bigger 

this year — the Wolverines will 
be playing in their first top-tier 
bowl game since the 2011 season 
— but the mindset remains the 
same.

“When we played (Florida) 

last year, we proved to a lot of 
people that we’re a very good 
team,” Wormley said. “That’s 
what we’re gonna do this game, 

too. … That’s our mindset for the 
next three and a half weeks.”

Last year, Michigan got into 

that mindset by running what 
many of the players called a 
“Christmas camp” — essentially 
a shortened version of spring or 
fall camp intended to push the 
players and get them in the best 
possible shape to play one more 
game.

The 
prospect 
of 
putting 

yourself through the wringer 
one last time might not sound 
appealing to a fifth-year senior, 
but Wormley is looking forward 
to taking on the challenge. Not 
only will it give the younger 
members of the roster a chance 
to further their development, 
but it also gives the seniors a 
chance to put an exclamation 
point on their season and 
career.

“This game in Miami is gonna 

be a statement game,” said fifth-
year senior defensive tackle Ryan 
Glasgow. “I want to leave this 
program on top, with a step in 
the right direction.”

GRANT HARDY/Daily

Fifth-year senior defensive tackle Chris Wormley and the Michigan football team are out to make a statement against Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

JACOB GASE

Daily Sports Writer

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Wolverines head back 
on road to play Xavier

The 
Michigan 
women’s 

basketball team (7-1) is on a quest 
to earn a spot in the top-25 poll, 
and if the Wolverines can repeat 
last year’s victory over Xavier 
(5-0) in their Monday night 
matchup, they may have a shot.

Michigan 
figures 
to 
test 

Xavier’s defense, as well as 
its 
undefeated 
record. 
The 

Wolverines possess one weapon 
the Musketeers do not — junior 
guard Katelynn Flaherty. As 
Michigan’s leading scorer, she 
has racked up 159 points in eight 
games.

Already, Flaherty has been 

named to the Big Ten Player of the 
Week Honor Roll and the watch 
list for three awards: the Wade 
Trophy, the Naismith Trophy and 
the Nancy Lieberman Award.

With her consistency, it’s no 

surprise that she’s garnered this 
much attention. Flaherty has 
scored double digits in every game, 
despite efforts to double-team her. 
It will take an impressive effort 
from Xavier to shut her down, 
and without accomplishing that, 
Michigan is likely to continue 
tallying up points.

Scoring shouldn’t be a problem 

for Michigan. On paper, the 
Wolverines score more and shoot 
better 
than 
the 
Musketeers. 

Xavier comes out ahead in a 
few categories, though, as the 
Musketeers average 45.8 rebounds 
a game, whereas Michigan has 
42.1. Xavier also averages 4.6 
blocks to the Wolverines’ 3.9.

Though 
Michigan 
has 

poorer defensive numbers, the 
Wolverines have compensated 
offensively. 
Their 
only 
real 

competition this season was 
Florida State — the top-10 team 
they lost to on Nov. 26 — and 
their offense has been the 
deciding factor in the other 
seven games, averaging a plus-
34.9 margin of victory.

But Xavier could present a 

problem for the Wolverines, if 
Michigan’s defense isn’t up to par.

“Our defense is getting better, 

and that’s really great to see,” said 
Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. 
“We really have emphasized that 
in the offseason and the preseason 
and have really wanted to become 
a better defensive team, and I 
think we are. We are still a work 
in progress, and we practice every 
day on our defensive stuff.

“We talk about our starting 

group a lot. But (sophomore 
guards Nicole Munger and Boogie 
Brozoski), I mean, they come 
in, and they just lift our defense 
and really give us a spark on the 
defensive end.”

Munger and Brozoski have 

also been known for their scoring 
prowess. The Wolverines will 
need both to come in strong off 
the bench to beat the Musketeers.

In a tight 78-66 game against 

then-No. 25 Gonzaga, Munger 
scored eight points and Brozoski 
added nine of her own, together 
ensuring a Michigan win. They 
have been a factor in almost every 
game, even if it does not appear in 
the box score.

The Wolverines have also been 

struggling with lowering their 
turnover percentage throughout 
the season, and have only recently 
started to limit their giveaways. 
Against Western Michigan two 
weeks ago, Michigan had 24.

“They forced us into a lot of 

turnovers,” Barnes Arico said. 
“And we lost possessions off of 
our turnovers, and that hurt our 
opportunity to score.”

In its last game of the Paradise 

Jam and its sole loss of the season, 
Michigan gave up 17 turnovers, 
but in the next contest, against 
Georgia Tech, it shrunk that 
number down to just nine.

“We kicked their butt,” Barnes 

Arico said. “I didn’t think that 
we were going to come in here 
and do that on somebody else’s 
home court, especially against a 
team that is 6-0 and has some real 
quality wins.”

If Michigan continues their 

trend of reducing turnovers, 
it should continue its winning 
streak into this week.

MAGGIE KOLCON

Daily Sports Writer