4B — April 22, 2019
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

It was easy to be skeptical a 
month ago. Jim Harbaugh has 
adapted, but he has never given 
up control, at least not in this way. 
Michigan’s offense has always 
been his, and before that, so was 
the 49ers’, Stanford’s and the 
University of San Diego’s. Hiring 
Josh Gattis to be his offensive 
coordinator was one thing. Letting 
him coordinate the offense was, 
entirely, another.
Still, 
that’s 
exactly 
what 
Harbaugh committed to doing.
“He’s 
going 
to 
coordinate 
the offense and call the plays,” 
Harbaugh said on March 18, when 
asked exactly what it meant to give 
Gattis the keys to the offense. “And 
that’s what that means.”
And, at least through spring 
ball, that’s what it has been.
After 15 practices, about 90 
percent of Gattis’ offense has been 
installed, he said Friday afternoon. 
That offense, entirely, belongs to 
Gattis.
“(Harbaugh) 
hasn’t 
been 
involved at all,” Gattis said. “He 
hasn’t stepped in.”
With the offense run to Gattis’ 
liking, it took three or four 
practices into the spring before 
Michigan had things down. The 
new elements — run-pass options, 
no-huddle and the like — weren’t 
all too hard to pick up, according to 
most players after the spring game.
The hard part, Gattis said, was 
going against Michigan’s defense 
every day in practice.
“You look at the average defense, 
you gotta go in throughout the year 
and they’re gonna be a four-down, 
they’re gonna be a static front in 
static coverage,” Gattis said. “Our 
defense presents a number of 
different challenges. So once we 
were able to able to apply our roles 
and they were able to learn the 
installs and then learn the rules 
going against our defense, you were 
able to see a lot of successful plays 
happen from that standpoint.”
As defensive coordinator Don 

Brown pointed out just after Gattis 
finished talking, the Wolverines 
are a package defense. There’s 
little trickery going on — they’re 
going to play man coverage and 
dare you to beat them. And with 
90 percent of the offense installed, 
the other 10 will be determined, in 
part, by what doesn’t work against 
Michigan’s defense.
Otherwise, 
it’s 
formations 
Gattis wants to add and things he 
wants to build on that have yet to 
be taught.
“One of the things to our 
advantage in this offense is the 
flexibility,” 
Gattis 
said. 
“This 
offense is what I call like a mutt of 
a dog. It’s got — it’s the pretty dog 
walking down the road and you’re 
trying to figure out, what kind of 
dog is it? And for us, we do a little 
bit of everything.”
At one point, as Gattis extolled 
his belief in the offense, Brown 
was standing about 20 feet to the 
side, behind a secretary’s desk. He 
was leaning down, arms crossed 
and eyes trained forward, out the 
door — a picture of intensity.
As his defense has sharpened 
Gattis this spring, so too has Gattis’ 
offense sharpened him.

“I think coach Gattis has done 
a great job of, got those guys going 
fast,” Brown said. “Which, that 
certainly helps us. … You better 
get up to speed, be running with 
a sense of urgency to get lined up 
and all those things. So, I think that 
part of it’s been really tremendous 
for us.”
And where is Harbaugh in all of 
this?
“He’s the CEO,” Brown said. 
“He’s running the program.”
That, according to Brown, 
means maximizing repetitions, 
keeping everyone on their toes 
and managing the bigger picture. 
It doesn’t include the thing 
Harbaugh has built his career on — 
running the offense.
During the spring game, Gattis 
called all the plays, and not off a 
script. Gattis doesn’t need one, he 
said, because this is his offense, 
and he knows what to do and 
when. This is his show.
“A lot of people have put a lot of 
questions and comments out there 
in the spring,” Gattis said. “This is 
a sign of what great head coaches 
do. They’re willing to change.”
For now, Harbaugh has done 
just that.

While Don Brown spoke to 
the media in Schembechler Hall 
on Friday afternoon, senior 
linebacker 
Khaleke 
Hudson 
walked down a hallway about 
20 yards over Brown’s shoulder.
As Hudson began to walk out 
the door and onto State Street, 
he paused, flashed a smile and 
pointed at Brown, bestowing a 
gesture of “You the man” on his 
defensive coordinator.
This is, after all, how just 
about everybody inside these 
halls feels about Brown. And 
it’s why — after losing eight 
defensive starters from a year 
ago — Michigan has no shortage 
of confidence in its defense.
“When you look at coach 
Brown’s track record, I would 
argue he’s the best defensive 
coordinator in the country,” 
said 
offensive 
coordinator 
Josh Gattis. “He’s constantly 
produced top defenses year in 
and year out, no matter where 
he’s been.”
Regardless of the man in 
charge, losing eight starters, 

including all four along the 
defensive line, poses a daunting 
challenge. 
Brown, 
though, 
has been through this before. 
“(After) last season was really 
like a picnic (compared to) 
after the ‘16 season, in terms 
of changing guys,” he said. 
And like it did then, Brown’s 
adjustment has come down to 
finding schemes that work with 
his new personnel. 
Solidifying schemes is even 
more important in Brown’s 
defense than in most. Gattis, 
in his first month practicing 
against 
Brown’s 
defense, 
said the toughest challenge 
his offense faces every day 
in 
practice 
is 
that 
the 
Wolverines 
don’t 
just 
run 
their 
base defense, 
instead 
alternating 
between three 
and 
four-
down 
fronts 
and displaying 
an 
array 
of 
blitz packages, even in spring 
practices.
That ability to mix and match 
packages 
to 
his 
personnel, 
though, 
has 
helped 
Brown 
mitigate the impact felt by 
Michigan’s losses from a year 
ago.
“I think this is gonna be an 
interesting group defensively,” 
Brown said. “We may be a little 
different, because we may have 
more guys like, ‘This guy’s good 
at this, that guy’s good at that.’ 
So you might have to piece it in 
a little bit like that, but that’s 
the fun part.”
In 
the 
linebacker 
corps 
— 
a 
group 
Brown 
called 
“unbelievable” 
on 
Friday 
despite losing Devin Bush to 
the NFL Draft — mixing and 
matching is less of an option, as 
Brown said he wants to find his 
top three and stick to them in 
most situations. But in the front 

four, the Wolverines will have 
to be more flexible than they 
were last year, when Rashan 
Gary 
and 
Chase 
Winovich 
could slot in at defensive end on 
nearly every down.
Gary’s 
midseason 
injury, 
though, provided a peak of 
what could lie ahead this fall, at 
least at one defensive end spot.
“We found out last year, 
through 
injury,” 
Brown 
said, “that we were able to, 
between (junior defensive end 
Josh Uche) and (sophomore 
defensive end Kwity Paye), 
we’ve got first, second-down 
production out of Kwity and 
third-down production out of 
Josh, which was 
an exciting thing 
for us.”
This 
year, 
those 
types 
of 
splits will become 
more 
common, 
with Bryan Mone 
and 
Lawrence 
Marshall, 
Michigan’s 
two 
interior 
starters 
for much of last 
year, also gone. Beyond Uche 
and Paye, Brown remained 
mum on exactly what those 
splits will be, but Carlo Kemp, 
Michael 
Dwumfour, 
Mazi 
Smith, David Ojabo, Donovan 
Jeter, Aidan Hutchinson and 
Ben Mason were all listed by 
Brown on Friday as part of 
the competition for snaps — 
potentially a deeper group than 
last year’s, even if it lacks the 
first-round edge-rushing talent 
of Gary and Winovich.
But whatever the personnel 
combinations, 
Michigan’s 
confidence 
in 
its 
defense 
remains as persistent as ever. 
And for that, it has one man to 
thank.
“I 
remember 
all 
the 
headaches coach Brown would 
present 
when 
you 
game-
planned against him,” Gattis 
said. “Imagine doing that for 15 
(spring) practices.”

THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer

ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor

Spring forward
With spring practice ending, Josh Gattis keeps the reins on Michigan’s offense as the team stays confident on defense

ERIN KIRKLAND/Daily
Offensive coordinator Josh Gattis has had full control over Michigan’s offense, as Jim Harbaugh said he would.

(Brown has) 
constantly 
produced top 
defenses.

Wolverines place third in NCAA semifinals

Throughout the meet, Bev 
Plocki heard people talking about 
the first session of the NCAA 
Championship semifinals.
The Gauntlet was what they 
called it. There were other names 
the Michigan coach heard, but 
The Gauntlet resonated with her.
It couldn’t have been more 
fitting to describe what the No. 
7 Michigan women’s gymnastics 
team faced in attempts to make 
the NCAA Championship final.
The Wolverines would have 
to finish top two — the finals 
advancement cutoff — in a field 
with No. 2 UCLA, No. 4 LSU and 
No. 6 Utah. Instead, they settled 
for a third place finish, scoring 
197.2000.
And The Gauntlet was only 
part of the struggle they faced.
All season, Michigan battled 
adversity, and its last week of the 
season served the team a heaping 
pile of it — on the final day of 
practice, senior Emma McLean 
broke her hand. McLean played a 
pivotal role in both the vault and 
floor lineups, and without her, 
if the Wolverines wanted a shot 
at the championship, someone 
would have to step up.
“That was a little emotional 
on our last day of practice,” said 
senior Olivia Karas. “To watch 
my best friend go down and know 
that was the end of her career. 
That was pretty hard for me.”
Opening the meet on bars, that 
call was answered. Michigan’s 
lineup featured all four members 
of the freshman class — Abby 
Brenner, Abby Heiskell, Maddie 
Mariani and Natalie Wojcik — 
and all four members contributed 
scores at or above a 9.8000. When 
Karas stepped up to the bars, 
she was calm and confident. She 
swung through the routine with 
ease and stuck her double pike 
landing receiving the highest 
score of the rotation. Altogether 
the Wolverines earned a 49.300 
— and a spot in second place.
“They’re 
amazing 
and 
incredible,” Plocki said. “I said 
to the freshmen, ‘You guys this is 
the beginning of something really 
special.’ They have contributed at 
such an incredible level. I’m so 

excited about how they’ve done.”
Headed to the balance beam, 
the Wolverines hoped to continue 
their streak of clean routines. 
Sophomore Lauren Farley led 
off and performed a routine that 
had a few wobbles and balance 
checks. Farley spent the week 
leading up to nationals in a boot 
with a foot injury. She earned 
a 9.7250. After four polished 
routines that all scored in the 
9.8000 range, the only gymnast 
left was breakout star Wojcik.
From start to finish, Wojcik’s 
routine was nearly flawless. She 
flipped. She jumped. She stuck 
her landing. Her score flashed 
— a 9.9500 — and Wojcik’s name 
topped the beam leaderboard. 
When both semifinal sessions 
concluded, she was crowned the 
NCAA national champion on 
beam.
The solid beam rotation kept 
Michigan in second place, but 
competition was closing in on 
the Wolverines. They were less 
than a tenth of a point behind 
first-place UCLA, and third-place 
LSU was only .0125 points behind 
them.
Headed 
to 
floor 
without 
McLean, Heiskell opened the 
rotation. The freshman tumbled 
her way through the routine 
and started Michigan off strong 
with a 9.8375. Next up was junior 

Maddy Osman. During her second 
tumbling pass, Osman bounced 
out of bounds and received an 
automatic one-tenth deduction. 
Her score was a 9.6500.
The Wolverines turned to 
Brenner, who danced, tumbled 
and entertained the crowd on her 
way to a 9.8500. Wojcik and Karas 
anchored the lineup, and both 
performed routines filled with 
personality and clean tumbling. 
Despite ending the rotation with 
a 9.9000 from Wojcik, a 9.9250 
from Karas and the dropping of 
Osman’s score, Michigan had 
slipped into third place.
“Our whole theme, everything 
we talked about in our team 
meeting last night, and even 
leading into competition was 
all about the fact that I wanted 
them to have fun,” Plocki said. “I 
wanted them to not pay attention 
to what anyone else was doing. I 
wanted them to compete for each 
other and stay in the moment and 
enjoy every moment.”
Just half a tenth behind second-
place LSU, the Wolverines’ last 
chance to earn a qualifying spot 
came down to the apparatus that 
has been their Achilles heel all 
season — the vault.
Michigan 
called 
upon 
its 
freshman class to fill McLean’s 
shoes. 
Heiskell 
started 
the 
rotation off with her Yurchenko 

full and after a small hop on the 
landing, earned a 9.8000. The 
only stuck landing of the rotation 
came from sophomore Anne 
Maxim. Her Tsukahara received 
the highest score of the rotation 
for the Wolverines — a 9.8625.
Wojcik, Brenner and Karas 
couldn’t hold onto the stuck 
landings, and, like Heiskell, took 
small hops. When the scores 
settled, Michigan finished in 
third place with a score of 197.200 
— only .163 behind the Tigers.
Four 
Wolverine 
gymnasts 
earned All-American honors — 
Karas, Wojcik, Osman and Funk. 
Karas led the group with four, 
earning first team honors on the 
uneven bars and floor and second 
team honors on beam and in the 
all-around.
“The people that we were 
competing 
against, 
I 
mean 
nobody 
anticipated 
us 
to 
advance,” 
Plocki 
said. 
“We 
were in second place after two 
events, and only down by a half 
a tenth after three and it just so 
happened that we ended on vault 
which is probably our event that 
we’re most challenged on.
“What this team was able to 
do and the pieces we picked up 
and the fight and determination 
and grit that they had, I’m 
incredibly proud of what we’ve 
accomplished.”

MOLLY SHEA
Daily Sports Writer

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Freshman Natalie Wojcik scored a 9.9500 on the balance beam as Michigan finished in third place at NCAA semifinals.

‘M’ finishes seventh

Elodie Van Dievoet teed off 
Sunday morning knowing that 
it could be her last time as a 
Wolverine.
The Michigan women’s golf 
team was a long shot to make the 
NCAA Tournament, needing to 
win the Big Ten Championships 
to do so. But Van Dievoet still had 
a chance to finish her career on a 
high note.
Two years ago at the very same 
location — TPC River’s Bend in 
Maineville, Ohio — Van Dievoet 
secured her place in the record 
books by earning the program’s 
first-ever individual conference 
title. On Friday and Sunday, she 
shot a 142 for two under par and 
finished tied for fifth.
“She’s got a lot of good, positive 
memories from this place and 
loves playing here,” said Michigan 
coach Jan Dowling. “ … She went 
into this tournament with the 
possibility that this is her last 
tournament ever for Michigan 
women’s golf. So that’s kind of a 
tough place to be and really proud 
of her to kinda get really tough 
— and she had a low score — and 
finish with a bang. So we’re proud 
of her round today. It showed 
character.”
Led by Van Dievoet and 
freshman Ashley Lau — who shot 
a 145 to finish tied for 11th — the 
Wolverines 
finished 
seventh 
of 14 teams with a total of 583, 
seven over par, in the weather-
shortened tournament, ultimately 
falling short of the finish required 
to qualify for NCAA Regionals.
On Friday, cold and rainy 
conditions 
slowed 
everything 
down, with all teams at least 
three over par. Michigan sat tied 
for sixth at the end of the day, just 
seven shots behind first-place 
Illinois.
But Saturday, it was colder 
and rainier, rendering the course 
unplayable. 
The 
Wolverines 
waited and waited as tee times 
were pushed back further and 
further, playing cards and doing 
homework to pass the time. 
Ultimately, the second round 
was canceled altogether, and 
Michigan instead got in some 

practice time before dinner with 
the players’ families.
While the canceled second 
round provided some advantage 
in that it meant fewer holes for 
a team like the Fighting Illini to 
gain separation, it was also one 
fewer round in the Wolverines’ 
season.
“It’s not ideal,” Dowling said. 
“We want to be playing 54 holes, 
but that was the scenario that was 
given to us. So we tried to make 
the most of it.”
The cancellation did afford 
Michigan one thing. It spurred 
the Wolverines to adopt an 
aggressive, 
chase-down-the-
leaders mindset Sunday, knowing 
that there was only one day to 
play catch up, instead of two.
Ultimately, 
it 
made 
little 
difference for the team as a whole, 
which finished three under par 
on Sunday to cement its spot in 
the middle of the pack. But for 
Van Dievoet, it paid off.
Sitting in just 14th on Friday, 
Van Dievoet came out Sunday 
and birdied five of 18 holes. She 
crept up the leaderboard with 
each passing turn, at one point 
sitting in third before a bogey on 
the 16th hole landed her just off 
the podium. She shot a 68 in the 
second round, the third-lowest 
score of the day.
Junior 
Alisa 
Snyder 
and 
freshman Sophia Trombetta also 
improved their standings Sunday. 
Snyder shot a 73 to finish four over 
par for the weekend, good enough 
for 
24th 
place. 
Trombetta, 
meanwhile, shot a 72 to shoot up 
from 41st after one day to 33rd 
after two.
Though 
Trombetta 
and 
Snyder punched above their 
weights, what ultimately held 
the Wolverines back was the 
struggles of sophomore Ashley 
Kim. Kim, who recorded the 
second-lowest score in program 
history as a freshman, never 
got into a groove, hitting a few 
loose iron shots and putting well 
below her standards. She shot 76 
on Friday and 77 on Sunday and 
tied for 56th, the lowest-placing 
Michigan golfer.

WOMEN’S GOLF

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer

Read more online
at MichiganDaily.com

