June 19, 2016
May 25, 2017
March 5, 2018

2B — Monday, January 29, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsMonday

Plagued by season-long problems, Wolverines swept at No. 6 Ohio State

COLUMBUS — The No. 6 Ohio 

State hockey team can do it all.

On offense, it scored 3.62 

goals per game in its last eight 
coming into this past weekend. 
Unsurprisingly, the Buckeyes are 
the only team with three of the Big 
Ten’s top-10 scorers.

Their defense ranks fourth in the 

country, allowing just 2.04 goals 
per game and two or fewer goals in 
17 of 26 contests.

And Ohio State’s special teams 

are as well-rounded as any in 
collegiate hockey. Its penalty kill 
stops 90.82 percent of power plays 
to rank first in the NCAA — the only 
team over 90 percent.

After starting the season 0-for-

20 on the power play through their 
first four games, the Buckeyes now 
have the fifth-best power-play 
unit since Oct. 19, converting 25.58 
percent on the man advantage. In 
its previous five games before the 
weekend, Ohio State was 9-for-47 
— a whopping 40.1 percent.

So when No. 17 Michigan 

traveled to Columbus to face 
its archrival, the problems that 
plagued the Wolverines throughout 
the season played right to the 
Buckeyes’ strengths. For Michigan, 
turnovers in the defensive zone, an 
inability to create quality scoring 
chances and a failure to execute 
on special teams were all on 
display Friday and Saturday night, 
resulting in an Ohio State sweep for 

the second time this season.

The Buckeyes jumped on every 

opportunity to exploit holes in the 
Wolverines’ game that had largely 
been forgotten during Michigan’s 
four-game winning streak entering 
the weekend.

“It was a little bit of a wake-up 

call for us,” said Michigan coach 
Mel Pearson after Saturday’s 5-3 
loss. “We may have been getting by 
and as coaches, we knew that we 
had to clean some things up. We 
got a little bit of a reality check this 
weekend.”

Atop the list were mental lapses 

on defense, as the Wolverines 
continuously failed to clear the 

puck from their zone. Michigan 
currently ranks 41 out of 60 schools 
in 
team 
defense. 
Meanwhile, 

the Buckeyes aren’t prone to 
squandering 
scoring 
chances 

handed to them off miscues.

Friday night, turnovers allowed 

for considerable Ohio State odd-
man rushes — more than Pearson 
says he had seen in the previous four 
games combined — and subsequent 
goals. Twenty-four hours later, 
more errant passes near the 
blueline contributed to Michigan’s 
downfall. The most glaring was 
an 
obvious 
miscommunication 

between freshman forward Josh 
Norris and his teammates, resulting 

in a two-on-one advantage and the 
Buckeyes’ third goal of the night.

“We have to get back to our game 

and we have to manage the puck 
better,” Pearson said. “We talk 
about it all the time — and you’re 
probably tired of me saying it — but 
you can on see the goals that they 
got this weekend, we got caught out 
of position, we’re thinking too much 
on the offense, turned the puck over 
in some bad spots that led to some of 
their goals.”

Michigan was also caught out of 

position on the penalty kill, where 
it ranks sixth-worst in the country 
with a meager 76.24 percent success 
rate. Though the Wolverines held 
Ohio State 0-for-5 Saturday on the 
power play, the Buckeyes’ 2-for-3 
performance the night before gave 
them their second and fourth goals 
— insurance that solidified a home-
team win in the series opener.

All the while, the Wolverines 

struggled on the power play, going 
0-for-7 for the weekend. Ohio State 
consistently outmuscled Michigan 
for possession, easily clearing the 
puck and creating shorthanded 
rushes.

Saturday night, the Buckeyes 

notched a shorthanded tally on the 
penalty kill when forward Mason 
Jobst split the Wolverine defenders 
and beat sophomore goaltender 
Hayden Lavigne for his team’s fifth 
goal of the game, all but sealing the 
sweep.

Michigan 
is 
the 
nation’s 

13th-worst team on the power play 
— converting a dismal 15 percent 
of its chances — and it showed the 
entire series. In the third period 
Saturday, the Wolverines found 
themselves 
on 
a 
five-on-three 

advantage for 1:20 following two 
Ohio State penalties. But against 
the best penalty kill unit around, 
the puck never found the back of the 
net.

“You’re not going to get many 

‘grade-A chances,’ ” Pearson said. 
“We did have a few on that five-on-
three, but that was the difference. 
They capitalized on their scoring 
chances and we couldn’t. We’ve got 
to get a little hungrier around the 
net, especially in those situations.”

These problems carried over to 

even strength, where Michigan 
was continuously limited with 
quality shots on goal, coupled 
with impressive saves by Buckeye 
goaltender Sean Romero.

“We just have to get back to the 

basics, keep everything simple,” said 
sophomore forward Jake Slaker, 
who scored the Wolverines’ third 
goal with 2:30 left in Saturday’s 
contest. “Get pucks deep, get in a 
forecheck and get back to the game 
we know we can play. It was one 
of those weekends where bounces 
weren’t going our way and we 
weren’t playing the way we need to 
play.”

As 
Saturday 
night’s 
game 

progressed, it looked more and more 
unlikely Michigan would salvage a 
series split. With frustration boiling 
over for the visitors, pushing and 
shoving ensued after seemingly 
every 
whistle. 
Five 
roughing 

penalties were assessed to the 
Wolverines en route to a season-
high nine trips to the box.

Despite Pearson stressing the 

importance of managing the game 
and controlling emotions, Michigan 
was far past listening to either.

“I was pretty frustrated, it was a 

tough night and tough weekend for 
myself,” Slaker, an assistant captain, 
said. “It starts with the leadership, 
and you know, I’m one of the leaders 
on this team, and I didn’t bring it 
this weekend.”

Following Saturday night’s loss, 

the consistent media questions 
about the Wolverines’ sore spots 
continued. And Pearson’s answers 
remained the same, as they have 
for most of the season — a lack of 

defensive smarts, inconsistencies 
on special teams and not scoring 
when favorable shots presented 
themselves. Pearson heavily focuses 
on reversing weaknesses in practice, 
which doesn’t always pay off when 
the lights shine brightest against the 
best of the best like Ohio State.

Maybe Pearson didn’t have to 

address those issues as much the 
previous two weekends, when 
Michigan looked like a viable NCAA 
Tournament contender. It may have 
gotten away with the mistakes 
against then-No. 9 Minnesota and 
then-No. 12 Penn State during its 
most recent hot streak, but the 
Buckeyes made sure to punish the 
Wolverines.

And Pearson’s metaphor from 

the first series between the teams 
this season — when Ohio State 
handed Michigan its first sweep on 
the year — stood true the second 
time around, too.

“The makeup came off and 

we saw a lot of the blemishes this 
weekend,” Pearson said Nov. 25. 
“We were able to cover some things 
up, (but) this weekend we saw a 
little bit of some of the issues that 
we’re going to have going forward.”

The makeup from the last two 

weekends have finally been washed 
off, and the blemishes shown 
through in spades.

Pearson partially chalks the 

setbacks up to youth and Ohio 
State’s plethora of talented veterans, 
a group that makes him believe the 
Buckeyes may be one of the nation’s 
two best teams.

“They’ve got juniors and seniors 

sprinkled through their lineup 
and they play like that,” Pearson 
said. “They play with that patience 
and a little bit of confidence that a 
young team like us didn’t have this 
weekend.”

However, players believe the 

weekend was within their grasp — 
youth be damned — but got away.

“It’s one of those things where 

any night any team can win,” 
Slaker said. “Tonight and last night 
weren’t our games, but they could 
have easily been our games. We 
could have come out of here with 
six points and two wins, but that 
just didn’t happen that way this 
weekend.

“We don’t think about how good 

they are, we just think about how 
bad we played.”

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Junior forward Cooper Marody and the Michigan hockey team had their season-long issues exposed this weekend.

BENJAMIN KATZ

Daily Sports Writer

Time’s up

M

y journalistic scope 
is usually limited to 
Michigan athletics, 

but the most important sports 
story of the 
week didn’t 
happen in 
Ann Arbor.

It happened 

in East 
Lansing.

There have 

been plenty 
of voices 
speaking out 
about the 
devastating 
events of the past week, but I 
want to add mine to the chorus. I 
am a woman in a male-dominated 
field, and as much as this has been 
treated as a news story, it is also a 
sports story about female athletes 
in a male-dominated sphere. A 
story about sexual assault run 
rampant and a culture of silence 
that enabled its existence.

Unfortunately, it is not the 

first such story. But it is arguably 
the biggest sports scandal in the 
history of collegiate athletics. And 
as such, it has made it clear that 
this is a reality we have accepted 
for far too long. We cannot afford 
to continue to do so any longer.

After a year in which histories 

of sexual abuse throughout 
the entertainment and media 
industries entered public 
consciousness in harrowing 
fashion, the sports landscape 
seemed to escape relatively 
unscathed. But what is done in 
the dark always eventually comes 
out into the light.

It has been a week of reckoning 

for the Michigan State athletic 
department.

Last Wednesday, former USA 

Gymnastics and Michigan State 
University doctor Larry Nassar 
was sentenced to 40 to 175 
years in prison for first-degree 
sexual misconduct — on top of 
his 60-year federal sentence on 
charges of child pornography. In 
an Ingham County courthouse, 
upon the order of Judge 
Rosemarie Aquilina, justice was 

served. But that shouldn’t be the 
only repercussion.

One hundred and fifty-six 

women, survivors of sexual abuse 
at the hands of the formerly 
famed physician and their 
families, dug deep and delivered 
detailed accounts of the pain they 
have suffered over the past three 
decades. Those women shed light 
on medical appointments that 
turned into sites of molestation, 
traumatic memories that haunt 
them to this very day and a flawed 
athletic system that kept them 
silent until now.

Their testimonies were called 

impact statements inside the 
courthouse. They have certainly 
lived up to that billing outside of 
it as well.

Branding themselves as an 

army of survivors, those women 
put the country on notice to 
a dangerous mentality that 
circulates throughout the sports 

landscape. As one of the most 
popular structures in our society, 
sports have frequently been given 
a pass when defamatory incidents 
garner national attention, 
whether in regard to domestic 
violence, drunk driving or sexual 
assault. And that is just the tip of 
the iceberg.

Stories are written and soon 

forgotten. Cases are reported 
and later discarded. Realities are 
acknowledged and then ignored. 
As much as institutions shoulder 
the blame, we should share in it.

The truth is that we all have 

turned a blind eye, pretending 
that those faults don’t exist or that 
they don’t matter. After all, it is 
easier to stomach a heartbreaking 
loss in a championship game 
than a star player raping a fellow 
student the night before.

In the case of the team doctor 

who molested young girls under 
the guise of medical treatment, 

the army of survivors once had 
their voices stripped away from 
them as well. Their innocence 
was masked as ignorance in order 
to manipulate them.

In a highly competitive sport 

where one misstep can be the 
difference between a gold medal 
around a neck or a red target 
on a back, they fell victim to the 
culture of silence. Hidden in 
the locked rooms of the arena 
is a fertile breeding ground for 
powerful men to take advantage 
of vulnerable girls.

After the moving accounts 

delivered in that courthouse, it is 
now nearly impossible to brush 
off the gravity of the situation. 
Michigan State learned that the 
hard way. 

Longtime university president 

Lou Anna Simon stepped down 
Wednesday night after the state’s 
House of Representatives put 
pressure on the school’s Board 

of Trustees. Athletic director 
Mark Hollis did the same Friday 
morning, after he learned of a 
forthcoming report from ESPN’s 
Outside the Lines that uncovered 
a disturbing pattern of sexual 
abuse and insidious denial in his 
athletic department. Based on 
its contents, football coach Mark 
Dantonio and men’s basketball 
coach Tom Izzo could also 
potentially be implicated in the 
far-reaching scandal.

That might not even be the 

end of the ramifications for the 
university, particularly after its 
Board of Trustees’ insultingly 
brazen response to Nassar’s 
sentencing hearing. Last Tuesday, 
vice chairman Joel Ferguson 
claimed that, “There’s so many 
more things going on at the 
university than just this Nassar 
thing,” before the whole board 
apologized for its “collective 
inaction” Friday.

Due to rising public outrage 

over its part in enabling Nassar, 
the United States Olympic 
Committee demanded that the 
entire board of directors of USA 
Gymnastics resign. Friday, they 
complied. Michigan State’s board 
may yet be forced to follow suit.

As encouraging as those 

developments are, there is still 
much work to be done to combat 
one of the most sinister epidemics 
in our society. If we are serious 
about addressing the havoc that 
sexual assault has wreaked across 
the country, then it’s time for the 
punishment to fit the crime.

Nassar isn’t the only one who 

deserves jail time. It’s time for his 
accomplices to face the same fate.

Michigan State covered up 

allegations of sexual abuse for 
three decades, the extent of which 
still isn’t fully known. University 
officials protected a criminal, and 
those individuals need to be held 
accountable for their actions.

Someday, they — whoever 

they are and however many there 
are — need to sit in that Ingham 
County courthouse and receive 
a sentence for the crimes they 
allowed to happen. That is the 
only way to send a message that 
this behavior will not be tolerated.

Because this isn’t just about 

Michigan State.

Aly Raisman, who won two 

Olympic gold medals for the 
United States as part of the 
“Fierce Five” in 2012 and the 
“Final Five” in 2016, said it best in 
her impact statement.

“My dream is that one day, 

everyone will know what the 
words ‘me too’ signify,” she said. 
“But they will be educated and 
able to protect themselves from 
predators like (Nassar), so that 
they will never, ever, ever have to 
say the words, ‘me too.’ ”

The culture of silence in sports 

has gone on for far too long.

Time’s up.

Ashame can be reached at 

ashabete@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @betelhem_ashame.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

The Michigan State athletic program has been implicated in a massive cover-up scandal after a report from Outside the Lines was released on Friday.

BETELHEM 
ASHAME

