Michigan 59, Maryland 3: That November feeling

Here we are: another week, another blowout.

The difference, this time, is the time of year. With Michigan's 59-3 win against Maryland on the fifth of November, the Wolverines are undefeated in the final month of the Big Ten regular season for the first time since 2006.

It's easy to chalk some of this up to level of competition (although some seem to be forgetting Michigan has three wins against top-15 teams on its resume), but that still doesn't change the absolute certainty with which Michigan is winning. Ohio State, Clemson and Washington have all looked mortal against lesser conference foes. Michigan had its early tense period against Colorado and a close-but-not-close win in East Lansing, but otherwise this season has been a lovingly unfurled red carpet rolling toward Columbus, Ohio.

In 2006, Michigan opened its November with a shaky 34-26 victory against Ball State, which at the time didn't mean much but in retrospect presaged defensive failings later. Of course, those failings came to pass in a 42-39 loss against No. 1 Ohio State and yet another Rose Bowl thumping at the hands of USC.

This time, it was a conference foe in Maryland, not Ball State, and Michigan left no doubt. Wilton Speight continues to improve, playing his best game since the UCF game way back in September. Like the 2006 defense, which showed its cracks in the secondary late in the season, this otherwise dominant Michigan defense has showed some vulnerability against the run the last two weeks, particularly on the edge.

How many rushing yards do you think Maryland acquired on Saturday? Without looking, your guess probably greatly exceeds the reality. The Terps carried the ball 38 times for 78 yards, a figure that includes a long of 21 yards from the speedy Lorenzo Harrison.

That cognitive dissonance tells the tale to date. When Maryland finally got on the board with a field goal, the crowd seemed slightly perplexed. How could this be happening? When Rutgers acquired its first first down against the Michigan defense, some were mildly upset (sarcastically so, but still).

The level has been raised. It's why a two-score victory on the road against a rival, even a rival with a 2-5 record heading into the game, yielded mixed reviews rather than primal ululations on a mountaintop.

With said blowouts comes the cacophony of crowing on "class," that shape-shifting thing that means nothing except what the invoker wants it to mean. In this case, it's "don't score too many points because that is not nice."

Instead, Michigan should have taken delay of game penalties, punted the ball backwards, played Michael Onwenu at quarterback (okay, actually, please do this) and forgotten how to perambulate. In a Big Ten conference game, Michigan should be careful not to do too much, for it is unseemly.

I understand the desire not to feel embarrassed -- at the same time, it is not one opponent's duty to make up for its foe's inferiority with a forced display of "class," especially when there are still things to be accomplished (e.g. getting backups real, live reps).

It's no coincidence that other teams are doing the same. Ohio State dropped 62 on Nebraska. Clemson hit Syracuse with 54, only seven fewer points than the Michigan basketball team scored against Jim Boeheim's squad in a Final Four game in 2013. Washington scored 66 at Cal in an effort to make the playoff committee look bad after giving Texas A&M the No. 4 ranking. Louisville scored 52 at Boston College.

Style points supposedly don't matter anymore, they say. I'm not so sure.

In any case, Michigan has its sights set on a playoff berth, its destiny in its own hands. The Wolverines get Iowa on the road, a tricky Indiana team at home then a trip to Columbus against an Ohio State team that is still in play for a postseason spot. Then, should Michigan get through that stretch unscathed, they'll likely get a rematch with a tenacious Wisconsin squad.

Style points and strength of schedule and discussions of class will soon be blown away like a patch of fall leaves. Winning is all that matters.

And for the first time since 2006, winning is all Michigan has done heading into November, the month in which champions declare themselves.

---
As for the game itself, I'll direct you to MGoBlue's notes section for a full list of notable achievements. Among them:

• Michigan set a new season-best for total yards (yes, besting the Rutgers output). 
• Speight set a record for first-half passing yards with 292. 
• Somehow, Michigan became the first FBS team this season to score a touchdown on all of its first-half drives. 
• Jake Butt passed Jim Mandich in tight end receiving yards, becoming the program's all-time leader. 
• Michigan matched a season-high in tackles for loss with 13 (!), marking the sixth time this season Michigan has recorded 10 or more in a game. 

And so on and so forth. 

With the earlier caveat regarding Maryland's actual rushing output in mind, Michigan did show some vulnerability on edge runs, with linebacker Mike McCray looking wobbly in space at times. There's no doubt Urban Meyer was watching. McCray and all other would-be tacklers will need to be at their best on that November day in Columbus. Lorenzo Harrison is a solid player, but Curtis Samuel is something else. 

Otherwise, Michigan was just about perfect. Speight continues to display that uncanny, Roethlisberger-esque ability to shake off would-be tacklers and make a play. Although he was tackled for a loss once while attempting a hilarious spin move on third down (resulting in a Michigan field goal), he otherwise flashed a useful ability to get out of danger and even make big plays, including his first rushing touchdown of the season. 

In other noteworthy happenings, Jehu Chesson came alive, notching his first 100-plus yard receiving game of the year. Perhaps he's still working his way back from the knee injury sustained earlier this year against Florida. Whatever the case may be, now would be the perfect time to start seeing Citrus Bowl Chesson again. His speed and field-stretching ability would add yet another component to what has been an enjoyably diverse and productive offensive attack. 

---

Next week, Michigan visits an ailing Iowa squad that just took a 41-14 loss at Penn State. Iowa's running game was non-existent (26 carries, 30 yards). Its run defense failed to exist, too, giving up 359 yards on 52 carries (6.9 yards per carry). PSU QB Trace McSorley went 11-for-18 with 240 yards and two touchdowns. 

Michigan, of course, gets Iowa in Iowa City, a place they haven't won since 2005. That sort of trivia doesn't exactly matter, for a number of reasons, but it does mean Michigan cannot expect to play poorly and win easily. 

Most importantly, Speight will have another opportunity to get a road game in a hostile environment under his belt (I'm not sure the Michigan fan representation will be quite as strong for this one as it was in East Lansing). Every little bit of experience counts as the Wolverines prepare to gear up for the trip to Columbus later this month. 

Even a cursory scan of Iowa twitter reveals a deep sense of resigned frustration, one that Michigan fans know well -- except not really, because Michigan has never had a contract albatross like Kirk Ferentz's. 

This, for example, hearkens to Michigan teams of old, before the M Train and Peppers wildcat packages and fullback dives. 

Watch Penn State know Iowa's predictable play call pic.twitter.com/4pYTSGuNYZ

— Heavens! (@HeavensHawkeye) November 6, 2016

Michigan should leave Iowa City with a comfortable victory. But November can be a funny place in time, where "should" and reality part, leaving a swirling madness in the cleft. 

Michigan 70, Maryland 67: Going downtown

Going downtown can be a good thing. One could be going downtown for a fun time, to see the sights.

Or, going downtown, in hokey police-speak, could mean you're in trouble, set for a night of heavy interrogation in a sterile, fluorescently lit room.

That was much of the story tonight against the visiting No. 3 Maryland Terrapins. In the first half, Michigan shot the lights out from downtown. In the second, not so much, to the point that it squandered a 13-point lead.

But when it came down to it, Derrick Walton (12 points, 10 rebounds), who hasn't had a great season to date, made big shots. And in the final minute, Mark Donnal pulled down a key offensive rebound and knocked down a free throw to help the Wolverines pull out their first win against a top-5 team since January 2014.

We all knew the story: in four games against top-notch competition, Michigan took four losses by double-digit margins.

And once again without Caris LeVert, the Wolverines tried to score their first statement win of the season. Just like the last game, a double-digit loss at Purdue, Michigan would have to overcome yet another major size mismatch in the paint against a Maryland team carrying a 12-game conference winning streak heading into the game (dating back to last season).

Fifth time's the charm, they say.

Michigan jumped out to an 11-6 lead early with triples from Walton, Zak Irvin and Duncan Robinson (checked by the 6-9 Jake Layman).

Predictably, Michigan struggled to contain Maryland's frontcourters. Layman and Robert Carter combined for 20 first-half points on 8-of-10 shooting.

Meanwhile, Michigan was paced, of course, by lights-out shooting from beyond the arc, with Duncan Robinson prompting Dick Vitale to start rattling off a list of all-time great three-point shooters.

(This sandwich I made is great. Zingerman's. Maize and Blue Deli. Dimo's. I want to see this sandwich one-on-one in a sandwich contest against these guys.-Dick Vitale)

Michigan finished the half 8-of-15 from three with an eFG% of 64 percent (to Maryland's 52%), and a buzzer-beating tip-in by Donnal off of an Irvin miss sent the Wolverines riding high into the half up 37-29.

Robinson kept the good vibes going with a triple in the first minute of the second-frame, and a gust of chilly Ann Arbor wind pushed Michigan to a 13-point lead a little more than three minutes into the second half.

That evaporated quickly.

Diamond Stone ground the Wolverines down in the paint, scoring eight straight points and cutting the Maryland deficit to four. Meanwhile, Robinson went quiet for Michigan -- actually, the entire Michigan offense went dead silent for a span of about eight minutes.

The threes were splashing in the first half, but the Wolverines would need to find an answer when they inevitably stopped falling (or, rather, stopped getting the looks) -- because just like that, a Layman two just before the under-eight timeout tied it, 54-all.

With 7:23 to play, Michigan needed to find itself, fast, especially with Stone continuing to bully Michigan inside like a Monstar in isolation on Tweety Bird.

A nifty two at the rim from Robinson and a Burke-esque step-back triple from Walton gave Michigan some breathing room, a 64-59 lead with 3:33 to play. Walton has struggled this season on both ends of the floor, but hit the aforementioned triple and another jumper to keep Michigan afloat after the long scoring shortage.

But two Rasheed Sulaimon triples and two Stone free throws made it a two-point game with 40 seconds to play.

Not over yet.

With Maryland getting an opportunity to get the ball back after a stop, Walton drove left but missed off the glass. Luckily for Michigan, Donnal was there to grab the rebound.

Out of the Michigan timeout, Donnal buried 1-of-2 free throws to make it a three-point game. Michigan opted not to foul on Maryland's final possession, with a game-ending attempt by Sulaimon.

This time, Sulaimon missed, and Michigan scored its first resume-building win of the season, even without its leading scorer.

Perhaps lost in Stone's dominance (22 points, 11 rebounds) was Trimble's rough night (1-of-7, 2 points). Michigan clamped down on the standout guard, and shooting guard Sulaimon finished just 3-of-10, even with the two late triples.

Unsurprisingly, Michigan was handled in the frontcourt. Carter, Layman and Stone combined for 50 points on 21-of-34 shooting (62%).

Michigan counteracted that with a blazing first-half from beyond the arc, and a final six minutes in which they made just enough plays to squeak by with the win. Irvin led the Wolverines with 22 points on 8-of-14 shooting. Robinson finished with 17 (6-of-10, 5-of-9 from three).

Donnal pitched in eight points, nine rebounds and two steals.

With the win, Michigan moved to 13-4 (3-1) on the season. The Wolverines' brutal three-game stretch comes to an end Sunday when they pay a visit to No. 16 Iowa.

But for now, on a night of upsets in college basketball, it's okay to celebrate and worry about the rest later.

Michigan 28, Maryland 0: Boring Is Good

As Michigan went into the half up 6-0 in dreary College Park on Saturday, I felt like I'd seen this game before.

That's because I had, last Sunday, when the Chicago Bears traveled to Seattle to take on the Seahawks, with backup quarterback Jimmy Clausen at the helm for the NFC North cellar dwellers, in for the injured Jay Cutler.

Only this time, my team, Michigan, was the Seahawks, and the Terrapins, led by Caleb Rowe, looked much like the punch-less Bears.

After that Bears game, the coaches and even some local sports personalities praised the first half of play -- the Bears went into the break down just 6-0. The game plan worked, they said, a limited thing in which the Bears didn't allow Clausen to take chances downfield (that, or he chose not to take any) and featured goal line formations near midfield -- the latter was about as close as the Bears got to looking like a Harbaugh-coached outfit.

Even so, it was clear that the Bears had no chance, even down six.

That's why, when Matt Millen -- in an attempt to infuse some sort of life into the surreptitious thumping that was Michigan's eventual 28-0 win -- noted at some point in the third quarter that it was still "a two-score game," I laughed to myself.

As fans, we can often trick ourselves into thinking a game is closer than it is. After all, Michigan fans have had numerous opportunities to be on the trailing end of that in recent years. There's still 10 minutes to go, if we can just make one play and get a stop ... if we can just force a turnover ... if we can just hit this field goal ... if we can just score and recover the onside kick. 

So on and so forth. The sports fan's mind can bend and contort like no other, envisioning realities only found staring back at you in a house of mirrors.

If it wasn't over after Michigan's first two field goals, it was over when Drake Johnson went 31 yards down the left sideline for a touchdown score on another beautifully executed screen pass.

Maryland is not a good football team. They weren't last year, either, and we know how Michigan's matchup against the conference newcomers went last year in Ann Arbor.

The Wolverines led 16-9 in the third quarter. Having advanced to the Maryland 32, a Devin Garden pass on 4th-and-6 fell incomplete.

And it was all downhill from there en route to a 23-16 loss in Michigan's final home game of the season, dropping them to 5-6 and all but assuring a bowl-less season (with a tilt against Ohio State on the road the next week).

Oh how things have changed.

Instead, Michigan ground out a not-aesthetically-pleasing but comfortable win. The defense extended its streak of quarters without allowing a touchdown to eight, not allowing a score in 14 of the last 16 quarters, going back to the second game of the season.

The offense, meanwhile, did enough to make it work. Perhaps the only downside was the offense's seeming inability to make a consistent ground game work in De'Veon Smith's absence. Luckily, it sounds like he could have played, and is set to to do so when undefeated Northwestern comes to Ann Arbor on Saturday.

Drake Johnson (13 carries, 68 yards) did some nice things, but wasn't exactly a replacement for Smith's abilities. Ty Isaac (6 carries, 17 yards) has done some nice things this season, but coughed it up twice (albeit losing just one of them) -- with Smith likely to return to the backfield, I'd imagine that Isaac slips down a slot on the tailback pecking order. How long he stays there will be an interesting early test case in the Harbaugh era vis-a-vis bouts with fumbleitis and their repercussions. Derrick Green (7 carries, 26 yards), in what seemed like yet another audition for more playing time, didn't seem to help his case.

Overall, though, this is an offense that is making do. Jake Rudock's turnovers remain a concern, a week after a turnover-less affair against BYU inspired confidence that maybe the Iowa transfer was set to start playing the generally Big-Mistake-free football many expected him to play.

Against weak competition in Oregon State, UNLV and Maryland, it hasn't hurt the Wolverines. Of course, against Utah, what ultimately was a one-score loss, the pick 6 loomed in its culpability.

Against a Northwestern squad with a freshman quarterback who can run but leads an offense ranked 118th in passing, Michigan cannot afford to gift the Wildcats extra opportunities, especially via turnovers granting them prime field position.

This Saturday's game in the Big House is assured to be a low-scoring slugfest (the legitimate kind, not the euphemism for bad football rationalized as something else). Mistakes could prove the difference when these two teams, fielding two of the statistically strongest defenses in the country, meet this weekend.

But unlike the recent low-scoring Michigan-Northwestern tilts, this one won't make you want to close your eyes and imagine being somewhere else, watching something else, like I felt at Ryan Field last season where the Wolverines won, 10-9, but the game of football lost.

Whatever happens this Saturday, one thing is clear: Michigan football the last few weeks has been boring, but the good kind of boring. Like going to your favorite restaurant and getting the same thing you've been getting for years: the trusty, comfortable standby.

It'll be a while before Michigan once again assumes the mantle of good-boring on a consistent basis. There are still too many variables, particularly at the offense's most important position, to assume that Michigan can't lose to a team it "should" beat (and is it stands now, there are far more of those remaining on the schedule than perhaps previously predicted).

When expectations on a play-by-level are consistently met -- Smith grinding out yards after contact, Michigan's defensive line detonating the pocket, Jabrill Peppers pulverizing the grand designs of an opponent's screen pass -- it can be easy to settle into a feeling of something resembling boredom, stripped of its negative connotations.

I guess -- and this is an old feeling being dusted off and returned to a prominent position on the shelf of the fan base's collective consciousness -- this is what happens when you expect good things to happen, and they do.

This is good. Boring is good. All aboard the boring train to Indianapolis.

It won't be that easy, of course, and I'm being more than a little facetious. But there is something comforting about a 28-0 win in which a 6-0 halftime lead inspired little to no worry.

Whatever happens, despite this team's flaws, I don't dread sitting in front of the TV to watch this team play, even while I know things will go wrong at certain points in a game.

As the Wolverines attempt to put miles behind it and everything that's been, this campaign, almost at its halfway point, has been a success.

This is fun again. It's been a while since I could say that. I suspect it won't be the last.

Eventually, though, I won't have to say "again." It'll just be "this is fun."

Until then, the novelty of the boring reigns supreme.