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