The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsMonday
November 12, 2018 — 3B

Teammates make Gary proud in homecoming

PISCATAWAY — With a 
loosened brace draped over his 
right shoulder, Rashan Gary 
peered at the stat sheet on the 
podium in front of him. 
“Pssst,” Gary muttered to no 
one in particular. “It’s great to 
be a Michigan Wolverine.”
The junior defensive end, 
in fact, repeated that phrase 
four times throughout his 
postgame press conference. 
On Saturday, it must have been 
“great” indeed.
The Michigan football team 
bludgeoned Rutgers for the 
fourth time in as many years 
under coach Jim Harbaugh, 
this time winning, 42-7. It was 
a celebratory homecoming for 
numerous New Jersey natives 
on the Wolverines’ roster, 
including Gary — an alumnus 
of Paramus Catholic High 
School. 
But just a month ago, Gary’s 
return 
to 
his 
home 
state 
was in question. He missed 
three October games with an 
AC joint injury in his right 
shoulder, and rumors swirled 
that he might end his collegiate 
career before the season’s end.
After all, the former No. 1 
overall recruit’s talent had 
never been in question. Gary 
could have been a high pick in 
the 2019 NFL Draft without 
playing 
another 
snap 
for 
Michigan — in the same vein 
as Ohio State defensive end 
Joey Bosa.
But 
tucked 
inside 
the 
underbelly of Highpoint.com 
Stadium on Saturday, it became 
clear why Gary did not take 
that route.
Gary’s reaction to the stat 
sheet in front of him was 
not 
some 
self-aggrandizing 
remark. Four tackles and one 
quarterback hit against the 
Scarlet Knights, though a solid 
performance, is not going to 
make his name jump on NFL 
Draft boards.

So why was Gary so elated?
“I 
just 
like 
seeing 
my 
brothers, man, just seeing what 
my brothers are able to do,” 
Gary said. “It’s ridiculous. I’m 
just happy to 
see my brothers 
eat. That just 
shows us as a 
team — looking 
at the stat sheet 
— 
that 
we’re 
improving 
individually 
and as a team.”
The 
most 
noteworthy 
of those stats 
was Karan Higdon’s 44 yards, 
which put the senior running 
back 
over 
the 
1000-yard 
mark just nine games into his 
season.
When that was brought to 
Gary’s attention, he pumped 
his fist repeatedly. It was a 
benchmark Higdon had been 
hankering to eclipse, and Gary 

certainly knew it.
Minutes 
later, 
junior 
quarterback Shea Patterson 
uttered a statement he has not 
been coy to share.
“I 
don’t 
think I’ve ever 
been a part of 
a 
team 
that’s 
been this close,” 
Patterson said.
Yeah, 
that 
is as cliché as 
it gets — the 
types of things 
Michigan 
coaches 
would 
want Patterson 
to say publicly.
But it feels genuine because 
Gary is exhibit A.
Insurance 
policies 
are 
an inevitability these days, 
but Gary is literally risking 
millions 
of 
dollars 
by 
continuing to play for the 
Wolverines. He has ground 
to gain in mock drafts, sure, 

but all it takes is one play for 
things to go really south.
But Gary said he never 
considered leaving.
“I’m out there with my 
brothers,” 
Gary 
said. 
“I’m 
having 
fun 
flying 
around. 
Being around these guys, they 
give me energy.
“Tell me how (my shoulder) 
looks.”
Gary then moved his arms 
around rapidly, from side to 
side and up and down, like 
he was practicing some faux-
karate moves.
The shoulder looked fine — 
both then and during the game 
he chose to play in.
“That’s a testament to his 
character,” 
Patterson 
said. 
“He could have easily sat the 
rest of the season out and kept 
his goals and dreams for a few 
months, but it’s all about the 
team.
“That’s just what makes 
Rashan, Rashan.”

Higdon finally gets his coveted 1,000 yards

PISCATAWAY 
— 
Karan 
Higdon knew how close he was 
to the 1,000-yard mark for the 
season.
After all, just this summer 
he sat at Big Ten Media Days 
and said he would have entered 
the NFL Draft had he crossed 
the 1,000-yard threshold in 
2017-18. So the senior running 
back had to have known that 
his two-yard carry late in 
the second quarter against 
Rutgers on Saturday got him 
over the milestone. 
Yet, for the most part, 
Higdon kept it to himself.
When 
asked 
about 
the 
milestone after the Michigan 
football team dominated the 
Scarlet Knights, 42-7, junior 
defensive end Rashan Gary 
said he hadn’t heard Higdon 
mention it this season.
“I feel like Karan, he had a 
goal in his head,” Gary said. 
“He said it last year. There’s 
no reason to keep talking 
about it. You know, the season 
went on, he kept getting better 
and 
better 
— 
progressing, 
progressing. You know, he 
attacked his goal, and we knew 
it was coming by the way he 
worked and by the way he 
leads the team. So, you know, 
I’m happy for him.”
Gary’s statement is a team-
wide response. Well, almost all 
of it.
The 
team-
wide 
part: 
Anybody 
can 
see 
the 
improvements 
Higdon 
has 
made 
this 
season. 
Until 
Saturday, he had 
seven-straight 
100-yard games. 
His 
teammates 
clearly respect him, or they 
wouldn’t have named him one 
of four captains before the 
season.
The 
other 
part 
— 
that 
Higdon kept his yearning for 
the milestone a secret — isn’t 
entirely true. At the very least, 

he mentioned his quest for 
1,000 yards to redshirt junior 
tight end Zach Gentry, one of 
his close friends on the team 
and one of the players who 
would be blocking for Higdon 
on Saturday.
“He 
was 
talking 
about 
it 
before 
today’s game,” 
Gentry 
said. 
“He was like, 
‘We’ve 
gotta 
get 
me 
over 
that 
1,000-
yards 
mark.’ 
And that was 
a big, kind of, 
incentive for the offensive line 
to go out there and make sure 
we’re getting all of our blocks, 
because we do care about 
Karan and he has earned that. 
So we wanted to get him over 
that hump.
“Oh yeah, he said that today, 

and I said, ‘We’ve got you. I’ll 
be blocking for you.’ ”
For as inspiring as Higdon is 
to his teammates, the run that 
broke his season total into four 
figures was far from the most 
inspired Higdon 
has 
produced 
this year.
He 
took 
a 
simple 
handoff 
on 
3rd-and-5 
and didn’t come 
close to the first 
down. In fact, the 
run was a part 
of an uninspired 
performance 
for 
Higdon, 
in 
comparison to what he has 
done the rest of the season.
Higdon finished with just 42 
yards on 15 carries, though he 
did punch in two touchdowns.
Still, 
what 
Higdon 
did 
against Rutgers was enough to 
push him past 1,000 yards.

“It’s 
unbelievable,” 
said 
junior 
quarterback 
Shea 
Patterson. “It’s really cool, 
especially, you know, going — 
we went with him in the spring 
and summer and saw all the 
hard work he 
put in. And, 
you know, he’s 
such a pivotal 
leader on this 
team. So just 
to 
see 
him 
accomplish 
that 
goal, 
it’s 
amazing, 
because 
we 
all know how 
hard 
he’s 
worked to get it.”
Perhaps that work in the 
offseason was a product of 
what 
Higdon 
mentioned 
in July. If Gentry is to be 
believed, Higdon has been 
thinking about his 1,000 yards 
since then.

On the other side, 

familiar misery
P

ISCATAWAY — Amid 
the bitter chill and doz-
ens of 
devoted (or 
delusional) 
fans, the 
clock slowly 
winds 
Saturday’s 
game to a 
close. The 
scoreboard 
reads: 
“Michigan, 
42. Rutgers, 7”. 
As the Scarlet Knights 
scamper for a first down, the 
PA announcer chimes in with 
a hearty “That’s a Rutgers… 
FIRST DOWN!” Two plays 
later, Wolverines sophomore 
cornerback Ambry Thomas 
intercepts a pass from Scarlet 
Knights quarterback Artur Sit-
kowski. 
“We can still win!” yells a 
member of the Rutgers band. 
The last two remaining brave 
souls in the front row don-
ning scarlet hold up three fin-
gers. They boast ironic smiles 
as a Michigan third down 
approaches with under a min-
ute left in the game. 
Devotion, delusion, what’s 
really the difference? Fandom 
requires plenty of both. 
The game comes to a merci-
ful close, Rutgers notching its 
33rd conference loss since join-
ing the Big Ten in 2014. Play-
ers share pleasantries. Some 
search for their families. 
Then the two programs walk 
down the tunnel at the same 
time, diverting into polar oppo-
site paths.
On one side of the locker 
room is a 
program blos-
soming into a 
national jug-
gernaut. With 
the win, the 
Wolverines 
marched one 
week closer to 
a potential Big 
Ten title and 
College Foot-
ball Playoff 
appearance.
“It’s great to be a Michigan 
Wolverine right now,” said 
junior defensive end Rashan 
Gary “That’s all I got to say.”
On the other, a team slowly 
crawling toward season’s end. 
The Rutgers team meeting 
room is littered with motiva-
tional quotes and checklists, 
as if offering a plea rather than 
encouragement.
One — posted in between the 
meeting rooms, covering a full 
wall — lists special teams goals 
that have been met or failed to 
have been met in each game. 
Another includes a four-step 
“plan to win.”
Rutgers coach Chris Ash 
starts his press conference by 
thanking reporters for coming, 
and you truly believe him.
“Coming into the game 
(Michigan was) playing as good 
as anybody in the country,” 
Ash said. “Playing a team like 
that, you’ve got to play almost 
perfect football. We made some 
mistakes in all three phases of 
the game to let that score get 
the way it did.”
He laments many of those 
mistakes. His team threw for 

just 59 yards — 19 of which 
came via a running back. His 
defense stopped just four of 
Michigan’s 12 third down 
attempts. In the end, what was 
a 7-7 game after the first quar-
ter spiraled into the 42-7 blow-
out everyone expected.
He also lists achievements. 
He was proud to have been able 
to run for 193 yards against 
a stout Wolverines front. He 
thinks his team held up well in 
the trenches.
There was a moment late in 
the first quarter, when Scarlet 
Knights running back Isaih 
Pacheco scampered 80 yards to 
tie the game at seven, and cast 
just a shadow of doubt on this 
forgone conclusion.
The crowd was giddy. The 
players jumped around. Positiv-
ity — a foreign feeling to many 
— spread around the stadium.
“I felt like we’ve been there 
before,” Pacheco said, on the 
feeling around the team after 
the score. “This is a play we 
could do to any team. We’ve 
just gotta all play together.”
Sitkowski felt a heightened 
belief, too. Maybe, just maybe, 
this one-win football team 
could pull off the unthinkable.
“We believed as soon as we 
stepped foot on that field, man. 
We believed. We all believed. 
We’ve believed since we saw 
Michigan on our schedule,” 
Sitkowski said. “No matter 
what was going to happen we 
all believed in each other. It 
never crossed our mind. When 
Isaih hit that run, I tell ya, we 
were all excited. It shows that 
we can do it, man. We can do 
anything we put our minds to 
in life.”
The Wolver-
ines rattled off 
35 unanswered 
the rest of the 
game — and Rut-
gers returned to 
its interminable 
stasis of misery. 
Michigan junior 
quarterback 
Shea Patterson 
largely did as he 
pleased, completing 18-of-27 
passes for 260 yards and three 
touchdowns in three tidy quar-
ters of work. Sitkowski finished 
a beleaguered 8-of-19 for 40 
yards and an interception. This 
is nothing new for Rutgers. 
This was just Saturday.
After being asked a generic 
question about his team’s per-
formance, Sitkowski responds 
with a 15-second answer that 
includes the phrase “we played 
hard” five times.
In fairness, what is there left 
to say? His team hasn’t won a 
conference game in over a full 
calendar year. Since joining the 
conference in 2014, Rutgers has 
routinely served as the doormat 
of the Big Ten. Saturday eve-
ning was just the next in line of 
beatdowns and humiliations.
Sophomore center Cesar 
Ruiz emerges from the scrum 
of players after the game and 
walks up to Rutgers offensive 
lineman Micah Clark.
Clark lets out a sigh and a 
smile. He needs not say more.

Marcovitch can be reached 

at maxmarco@umich.edu or on 

Twitter at @Max_Marcovitch.

MAX

MARCOVITCH

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Rutgers coach Chris Ash said his team made mistakes in Rutgers’ loss. 

“Playing a team 

like that, you’ve 

got to play 

almost perfect...”

MARK CALCAGNO
Daily Sports Editor

MIKE PERSAK
Managing Sports Editor

ALEC COHEN/Daily
Junior defensive end Rashan Gary returned to New Jersey on Saturday to face the Scarlet Knights with Michigan.

“I don’t think 

I’ve ever been a 

part of a team 

that’s this close.”

ALEC COHEN/Daily
Senior running back Karan Higdon crossed the 1,000-yard mark for the season in Saturday’s win over Rutgers.

“I feel like 
Karan, he had 
a goal in his 
head.”

“And, you 
know, he’s such 
a pivotal leader 
on this team.”

