4B — Monday, September 24, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Mason has career day in rout of Nebraska
Ben Mason’s objectives each
game are simple.
“Just come in, attack people
and do the best that I can,” the
sophomore fullback said after
the Michigan football team’s
56-10 whooping over Nebraska
on Saturday.
Mason, commonly referenced
as the Wolverines’ “toughest
player,” checked off those boxes
quickly. And then he added one
more to-do.
“About midweek, coach (Jim
Harbaugh) told me that they need
me to run the ball a little bit,”
Mason said. “There’s no problem
with that whatsoever. Just go in
there and run.”
Mason had six carries for 18
yards and three touchdowns
— in the first half. Prior to the
game, Mason’s career statline
in five previous appearances
was six carries, 10 yards and
three touchdowns. Rushing isn’t
necessarily the fullback’s bread
and butter, but he proved it to be
another weapon in his arsenal
separate from his run-blocking.
“Personally, I think I can do a
lot of things as a football player,”
Mason said. “Today was really
the first time you got to see me as
a single back.”
In front of the media on
Wednesday, running backs coach
Jay
Harbaugh
characterized
Mason’s mindset acerbically — he
wants to “smash everything” and
“bludgeon people.”
On his first and third scores,
that is exactly what Mason did,
barrelling up the middle of the
offensive line. But for his second
touchdown, Mason sauntered to
the endzone untouched from four
yards out — an unusual situation
for the team’s toughest player.
The scoring outburst garnered
praise from last year’s fullback
and touchdown vulture Khalid
Hill, who was crowdsourcing on
Twitter to tell Harbaugh to “give
the ball to Ben one more time” for
a fourth touchdown.
Mason’s emergence came in
part because Chris Evans was held
off the field — the junior running
back suffered an undisclosed
injury
in
last
week’s
game
against SMU. But Mason made
his presence known. His punch-
ins were what blew the doors off
against the Cornhuskers, and kept
himself, a massive fullback, in as
the
impromptu
No. 2 running
back.
“Inertia
was
the main factor
in the decision,”
Jim
Harbaugh
said. “When he
gets going — I
think he’s 258
pounds — he gets
moving fast. He’s
running
hard.
He’s got a talent and ability.
“Like having Ben Mason in
the game. Talk about physical
player, he’s known as that on our
team already, and we’re taking
advantage of his skillset.”
Mason’s
touchdowns
stole
the show, but he continued to
excel in what he knows best in
run protection. At the Nebraska
44-yard line, Mason sealed off
a right-side edge rusher while
Karan Higdon — who toted the
ball 12 times for 136 yards —
charged left through a wide gap
for the Wolverines’ only other
rushing touchdown.
“Competitiveness,
hard
work,”
Higdon
said on what he
admires
about
Mason. “He’s a
hard runner. He
definitely
has
that
hard-hat
mindset, and you
can see it when he
runs or when he’s
blocking. I love
running
behind
him.”
Mason’s blocking and all-
around, hard-nosed play was
emblematic
of
Michigan’s
most
impressive
blocking
performance
this
season.
Mason was not a spark plug
— he was another cog in an
unusually cohesive offensive
line.
“As an offensive line, they
were pushing people off the
ball and making enormous
holes for the backs to run
through,” Mason said. “It was
a great thing to see for the
offense.
“I think today that was a
great statement for the team
as far as being a tough physical
football team.”
Mason’s performance even
captured
the
attention
of
SportsCenter, which tweeted a
comparison of Mason’s statline
to all of Nebraska’s offense —
21 total yards to Mason’s 18 at
the time of his third score.
Mason, of course, didn’t
chime in on the attention that
his
performance
received
online. It wasn’t a part of his
typical game regimen.
“As a team, we just did a very
good job of doing what was
asked of us,” Mason said.
Whether it was his running
or
blocking,
the
team’s
toughest player can tip his cap
to something.
And this time, silence
There
were
probably
several
different
ways
Nebraska
coach Scott
Frost
saw
Saturday’s
game going.
Maybe he
expected a hefty loss. Perhaps
he still expected his team
to “out-hit” Michigan, as he
infamously
told
reporters
after a 51-14 loss to Michigan
in 2016, when he was still
coaching at UCF. Who knows,
maybe
he
even
thought
Nebraska would win.
I’m fairly certain getting
lambasted by a hamburger
chain on Twitter by the third
quarter didn’t cross his mind.
And
yet,
it’s
the
most
succinct summation of the
utter
drubbing
that
was
Saturday’s contest — a 56-10
loss to the Wolverines that
somehow felt like it should’ve
been worse. The very epitome
of rock bottom.
Scott Frost likes to talk. It’s
a personality trait Michigan
fans know all too well.
In 1997, some would argue
his
impassioned
plea
on
television
robbed
the
Wolverines
of
a solo national
championship.
After
winning
the
Orange
Bowl,
Frost
made his plea
for the then-No.
2 Cornhuskers
to claim a share
of the National
Title.
“You
know,
if
all
the
pollsters
honestly
think,
after watching the Rose Bowl
and
watching
the
Orange
Bowl, that Michigan could
beat Nebraska,” Frost said at
the time, “go ahead and vote
Michigan, by all means.”
Count
fifth-year
senior
Chase Winovich — less than
two years old in 1997 —
among
those
who remembers
Frost’s
antics.
After the game,
Winovich
unequivocally
said
Frost’s
comments
were
used
as
motivation this
week.
“It’s
been
all week. Like
everyone
finds
something
to cling to — locker room
banter
almost,”
Winovich
said. “For us, it was that for
this week I’d say. It goes back,
historically, look back at the
’97 year, where we had the
national
championship
and
all the drama that went down
there. There’s been a lot of
motivation for us.”
He then added, “Yeah, I
think we out-
hit them today.”
For
Frost
and
Nebraska,
though,
today
had little to do
with the past.
Not while the
avalanche
of
the
present
came tumbling
down into an
unwieldy mess.
This was supposed to be
the game to lay a foundation
for the Frost era. Sure, an
0-2 start was rocky. But this
was a chance to show at least
glimpses of the promise of
national
prominence
that
came with the Frost era.
That foundation is nowhere
to
be
seen.
Instead,
the
existent
hole
just
keeps
getting deeper.
It
wasn’t
just
that
the
Cornhuskers
lost, to extend
their FBS-high
seven-game
losing streak. It
wasn’t even just
that they lost by
46. Or that their
quarterback
Adrian
Martinez had 10
total yards.
It
was
the
lifelessness,
the sheer incompetence, the
demoralization of a once-elite
program
discovering
what
rock bottom looks like. And
a coach left to try his best to
plug every hole just to keep
the ship afloat.
Saturday when Frost spoke,
he spoke with a malaise. This
wasn’t the Scott Frost of his
boisterous past.
He pleaded for
trust
—
that
he could turn
things
around
for a program
now 0-3 for the
first time since
1945.
When
he
answered
questions,
he
looked
like
a deer in the
headlights.
He didn’t dare take any
silver-linings from this one —
no subtle jabs at Michigan as
he did after losing by 37 points
in 2016. I suppose the 46-point
margin this time around was
just a bit too large. He said
things that sounded nice, but
really didn’t mean much.
For example: “We’re not
ready to beat a team like this
yet. The key word to me is
yet. Because I know where
it’s going. That’s not going as
quickly as I would like, but
I’m kinda excited because it’s
not going to get worse than
this, it’s only up from here.”
For another: “I think our
whole team needs to see what
it looks like now to play at
that level. We weren’t ready
to play at that level today.
Adrian is going to be a great
player
at
Nebraska
for
a
long time. I hope he never
experiences a day as rough as
this one.”
And a third: “If there was
something I could snap my
fingers and fix, I would.”
And so on, and so forth. It’s
possible Scott Frost turns into
the wunderkind that he was
touted after self-declaring his
UCF team national champions
last year; it would be unwise
to write anything off after
three games. Michigan fans
probably don’t care right now.
Despite
Michigan
coach
Jim Harbaugh claiming he
didn’t know about Frost’s 2016
comment (one Winovich all-
but debunked minutes later),
the players made it clear
there’s
extra
satisfaction
from
this
one. That lays
squarely
at
the feet of one
Scott Frost.
“I think he
can he eat his
words,”
said
junior running
back
Karan
Higdon.
Maybe he could wash them
down with a Wendy’s burger
and fries, too.
Marcovitch can be reached
at maxmarco@umich.edu or on
Twitter at @Max_Marcovitch.
RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily
Nebraska coach Scott Frost said his team is “not ready to beat a team like (Michigan) yet” after Nebraska fell to the Wolverines, 56-10 at Michigan Stadium.
After the controversy around the 1997 national championship, the Michigan football did everything to silence Nebraska Saturday.
MAX
MARCOVITCH
“There’s
been a lot of
motivation for
us.”
“We weren’t
ready to play
at that level
today.”
ETHAN WOLFE
Daily Sports Writer
RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily
Sophomore fullback Ben Mason scored three touchdowns in Michigan’s 56-10 win over the Cornhuskers on Saturday.
“Just come in,
attack people
and do the best
that I can.”
“We’re not
ready to beat a
team like this
yet.”
The Michigan Daily Top 10 Poll
Each week, Daily sports staffers fill out ballots, with first-place votes receiving 10
points, second-place votes receiving nine and so on.
1. Alabama: *Disturbed voice* TU-
WAH-AH-AH-AH Tagovailoa
2. Georgia: More like Kirby Dumb. Ooo
ooooooooh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. Ohio State: I bet Urban Meyer got a
lot of text messages after his big re-
turn!
4. Clemson: Hold that Tiger!
5. LSU: Heauxld dat Tigah!
6. Auburn: Heauwoldt dt Tyyyygaaaaa!
7. Oklahoma: It cost $54.95 to read
this joke
8. Stanford: Did Stanford win? Or did
Oregon lose?
9. Wisconsin: Alright this poll may be
rigged. I don’t know how the Badgers
made the top 10. This isn’t a joke, this
is Mike Persak scolding his section.
(Laney loves her section so she doesn’t
care.)
10. Penn State: The Nittany Lions
dominated Illinois and its coach Wooly
Willy this week.