Michigan Beats Va. Tech in OT in Sugar at LinesMaker

Michigan Beats Va. Tech in OT in Sugar

NEW ORLEANS – Here’s another tra­di­tion that Brady Hoke has restored at Michi­gan: Winning.

The coach who grew up in Ohio but revered the Wolver­ines since child­hood ended his first sea­son in charge hold­ing up the sil­ver Sugar Bowl tro­phy amid flut­ter­ing maize and blue con­fetti. The Michi­gan band pro­vided the sound­track for the rau­cous cel­e­bra­tion: the school’s famil­iar fight song.

Bren­dan Gib­bons drilled a 37-yard field goal down the mid­dle in over­time, lift­ing No. 13 Michi­gan to a 23–20 vic­tory over 17th-ranked Vir­ginia Tech on at the Super­dome on Tues­day night.

The vic­tory capped an impres­sive debut sea­son for Hoke, who has led the Wolver­ines (11–2) back to promi­nence with a BCS bowl vic­tory. In his usual style, he also deflected the credit from him­self onto the senior lead­ers of “Team 132,” as he calls the squad with a nod to the num­ber of teams the his­toric foot­ball pro­gram has fielded.

“I’m just real proud, real proud of our seniors. Real proud of how they took this foot­ball team last Jan­u­ary and molded it and did a tremen­dous job,” Hoke said, not­ing that only five Michi­gan teams have won 11 games in a sea­son. “We always have a tremen­dous legacy of Team 132 that a lot of teams are going to have to try and match up to.”

Denard Robin­son high­lighted an oth­er­wise unspec­tac­u­lar night with touch­down passes of 45 and 18 yards to game MVP Junior Hemingway.

“It shows our hard work,” Hem­ing­way said, his voice crack­ing with emo­tion. “It shows every­thing we put in from Day One, all the long days, long nights. Man, I’m telling you, it feels too good, man. Too good.”

It is fair to say that an unusual rough patch that saw Michi­gan endure two los­ing sea­sons in the pre­vi­ous three is his­tory, but Michi­gan still has more work to do to become a national title con­tender. Vir­ginia Tech gave the Wolver­ines all they could han­dle and might have won if not for some key miscues.

“I’m about half-sick right now,” Vir­ginia Tech coach frank Beamer said. “Too many mis­takes. … They weren’t stop­ping us; we were stop­ping ourselves.”

Vir­ginia Tech (11–3) had more than dou­ble Michigan’s total yards, 377–184, and had 22 first downs to Michigan’s 12 but set­tled for four field goals in reg­u­la­tion by third-string kicker Justin Myer.

How­ever, Myer was unable to con­nect on his fifth try from 37 yards away in the open­ing pos­ses­sion of overtime.

Robin­son fin­ished 9 for 21 for 117 yards pass­ing and threw an inter­cep­tion. He rushed 13 times for a season-low 13 yards.

“I feel like this was a team that didn’t quit and we just kept fight­ing,” Robin­son said. “We held every­body account­able for what we had to do to win.”

Vir­ginia Tech first-year starter Logan Thomas was 19 of 28 of 214 yards with one interception.

Thomas scored Tech’s only touch­down on a 1-yard keeper that tied the game at 17– after a 2-point con­ver­sion– early in the fourth quarter.

Vir­ginia Tech senior receiver Danny Coale, who ranks sec­ond all-time for the Hok­ies in catches and yards receiv­ing, had eight catches for 117 yards, and nearly made a spec­tac­u­lar div­ing catch for a touch­down in over­time. Coale held on to the ball for what was ini­tially ruled a score, but the play was over­turned on video review, which showed the receiver nar­rowly landed on the sideline.

“Danny’s play is so close, and it seemed like there was just quite a few of those there tonight,” Beamer said. “So close, but just didn’t quite have it go our way.”

The result of that third-down play forced Tech to try for Myer’s failed field goal.

Michi­gan then used three con­ser­v­a­tive runs to set up Gib­bons in the mid­dle of the field. Right before Gib­bons lined up for the game-winning kick, he said he thought of “brunette girls.”

“Every time we were like strug­gling in kick­ing, coach tells me to think about girls on a beach or brunette girls,” Gib­bons said. “So that’s what we did. Made the kick.”

As his kick sailed through, Gib­bons sprinted toward the Michi­gan side­lined and was mobbed by team­mates while the Michi­gan band belted out the school’s fight song, “The Vic­tors,” while Michi­gan fans, in rhythm, thrust a sea of maize pom-poms in the air.

Vir­ginia Tech fell behind late in reg­u­la­tion after gam­bling on a fake punt. Michigan’s Jake Ryan stopped it at the Tech 45, lead­ing to a short drive that set up Gib­bons’ go-ahead 39-yard field goal with 4 min­utes left.

That was just enough time for the Hok­ies to tie it once more, even though they had to start at their own 9 after a hold­ing penalty on the kickoff.

Thomas marched the Hok­ies 83 yards in 3:58, set­ting up Myer’s game-tying 25-yarder.

It was the fourth field goal of the game for Myer, who until a cou­ple weeks ago was the third-string place kicker.

Pri­mary place kicker Cody Jour­nell didn’t make the trip after his arrest in an alleged home inva­sion, then backup Tyler Weiss was sent home from New Orleans because of a cur­few violation.

So place kick­ing duties fell to Myer, who had missed his only two attempts dur­ing the reg­u­lar season.

Hem­ing­way staked Michi­gan to a 17–6 lead in the third quar­ter when he skied over Tech’s Antone Exum for an 18-yard catch from Robin­son in the back of the end zone. The scor­ing drive was set up by an even more dif­fi­cult grab by reserve Michi­gan line­backer Frank Clark, who leaped and reached high over his head to snag Thomas’ hard-thrown pass at close range, return­ing the inter­cep­tion to the Tech 35-yard line.

“I was just try­ing to dump it over his head. He timed his jump per­fectly and got his hands on it and came down with it,” Thomas said. “All the credit to him. He made a great play. Great athlete.”

Tech cut it to 17–9 on Myer’s 36-yard field goal.

Tech then tied the game on a series kept alive by Thomas’ 13-yard scram­ble on fourth and 11 from the Michi­gan 35. A few plays later, Thomas pow­ered in from a yard out, then lobbed a short pass to Mar­cus Davis for a 2-point con­ver­sion to even the score at 17 early in the fourth quarter.

Vir­ginia Tech dom­i­nated most of the first half, tak­ing a 6–0 lead on Myer’s field goals of 37 and 43 yards, and could have led by more had the Michi­gan defen­sive line not stuffed Thomas on a quar­ter­back keeper on fourth-and-1 on the Wolver­ines 4.

Michi­gan man­aged only one first down before stalling again at its own 26, but the Hok­ies’ James Hop­per was flagged for rough­ing punter Matt Wile on a failed block attempt, giv­ing the Wolver­ines a first down on their 41.

Robin­son, yanked his leg from a defender’s grasp and unleashed a long throw off of his back foot while scram­bling to his right. Virg­nia Tech free safety Eddie Whit­ley tried to under­cut intended receiver Hem­ing­way and snag the inter­cep­tion, but mist­imed his leap by a split sec­ond. That allowed Hem­ing­way to make the grab with no one between him and the end zone, and the play went for a 45-yard score.

Hav­ing been shut out most of the first half, Michi­gan sud­denly had a 7–6 lead, then got the ball right back on the ensu­ing kick­off when Tech’s Tony Gre­gory fum­ble the return when he was hit by J.B. Fitzger­ald and Michigan’s Delonte Hol­low­ell recov­ered at the Hok­ies 26.

Michi­gan failed to get a first down the con­ven­tional way and set up for what would have been a 36-yard field goal if it hadn’t turned into one of the wack­ier plays of the bowl sea­son instead.

Unable to get a clean snap and hold, Drew Dileo threw just a moment before being slammed flat on his back by Tech’s Jack Tyler. The ball thrown to no one in par­tic­u­lar looked like it was about to be inter­cepted by the Hok­ies’ Kyle Fuller when he was bumped by a team­mate. Fuller wound up tip­ping the ball in the air and it was caught by long snap­per Jareth Glanda for a first down on the Tech 8.

Michi­gan didn’t have time to con­vert that stroke of luck into six, but was able to line up a chip shot field goal as time ran out for a 10–6 half­time lead

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Michi­gan beats Va. Tech in OT in Sugar .

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