Inside the Box Score - Game 9 {EDIT: Photos added}

     This week on the board, there were two posts that caused me to reminisce about past road trips. I already commented on the Illinois trip. I saved my Iowa road trip story for this diary, since we played Iowa yesterday. My first road trip to Iowa was actually an air trip. My Dad’s friend was a pilot and owned a four-seated airplane. His friend and our co-pilot for the trip was a Minister (insert God was our co-pilot joke here.) We experienced a fair amount of turbulence over Kalamazoo, and I tossed a fair amount of cookies over said city. Four-seater turbulence >>> Regular airplane turbulence. When you can look out the window and see the tires floating in mid-air, you realize you are basically hovering over the earth in a flying car. The contents of your stomach don’t stand a chance of staying put. Anyway, I recovered as the Minister convinced me that the best thing for an upset stomach was a Ginger Ale. That may be because that’s the only thing they had on hand, but to this day I still drink a Ginger Ale whenever I fly.

    As we approached the stadium, we saw the Iowa Hawkeye mascot. I don’t think I had ever seen a mascot before*, at least not up close, so I asked Dad to get a picture. However, I thought the chances of a Michigan fan getting a photo with the Iowa mascot were slim. So I closed my jacket and walked up to the mascot. I shook his hand, er, talon, and just as Dad was ready to take the shot you see below, I opened my jacket to reveal my Michigan T-Shirt. One point for sneaky Michigan fans everywhere. Note to Dave Brandon: this experience did not cause me to question my Michigan fandom in the least.

A young ST3 with the Hawkeye mascot

* Other firsts on that trip include seeing tight ends stand up. That Hayden Fry was such an innovator.

Link: http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/110511aaa.html  

Burst of Impetus

• Obviously, the two turnovers were huge. One took away a potential seven points, and one gave Iowa three points. In an 8 point game, that was the difference.
• Iowa tried a quick snap on 4^th and 1 and we stopped them. I was hoping that Ferentz was going to turn to his OC and say, “See, I told you going for it on 4^th and 2 inches was a dumb idea,” and never go for it again. Alas, they went for it later in the game, converted, and went on to score.

Trash Cans Full of Dirt

• Thomas Gordon had zero tackles. There was a board post on this topic yesterday. I don’t understand how you take your 2^nd leading tackler out of the lineup. I get that his getting a lot of tackles is part of the position he plays, but he sure looks like one of our best 11 defenders to me. Additionally, Gordon is listed at 208 pounds on the roster, and Woolfolk is 191. When you are playing against Coker and those corn-fed hawkeyes, I want MOAR BEEF on defense. I’m not going to complain about Woolfolk. I understand wanting to get an experienced, 5^th year senior, and team leader on the field, but if I was Gordon and lost my job due to intangibles I’d be “upset”. (The actual word is “pissed,” but I recently learned Mom is reading my diaries. If you notice a change in tone, that’s the reason.) 
• Bill Simmons often writes about a VP of Common Sense. I think a VP of Common Sense would tell you not to take your 2^nd leading tackler out of the lineup, since tackling is sort of important.
• Coker had 132 yards on 29 carries for a 4.6 average, numbers that should have been average enough to get us a victory. I estimated that he gained 58 yards just by falling forward (that’s 2 yards per carry.) That’s a big man. Some day, we’ll have 5^th year senior linebackers that stand up 230 pound running backs, but until we do, we’ve just got to live with the YAC. Nothing against Ryan and Morgan, but I think they would agree that 3 years from now they are going to be a lot stronger.
• After Iowa scored their first touchdown, I found out Andy Rooney had passed away. I will present the next bullet in his memory.
• Do you ever notice how often our opponents score on their first drive? I hate that.
• And now back to your regularly schedule diary.
• Demens was the leading tackler with 11. A bunch of guys chipped in with 6. 6 TFLs were spread among 6 tacklers, including a big 8 yard sack by Heininger.
• We had 0 QHs. If QH is “quarterback hurry” like I think it is, the inability to get to Vandenberg on a regular basis may have been the defensive story of the game. He had time to survey the field and went 14-21.

Filthy

• Can I leave this section blank?
• Touss was filthy for a little bit, but then he reverted to “china in a bull shop” mode. My first half notes are littered with “Tousses”.  Touss is so much fun to say, why oh why can’t he be a 1000 yard rusher?
• Touss finished with 58 yards on 16 carries. That should have been enough to enable the play action, but a combination of dropped passes, poor throws, and suffocating Hawkeye defense (I mean that literally, I think they choked a few of our WRs on more than a couple slant routes) lead to a 17-37 day for Denard. That was filthy in the original meaning of the word.
• B. Binns for Iowa had 3 pass breakups. Ugh.
• When Touss got hurt, why no Shaw? We basically just abandoned a running game that while not at last week’s level, was still working enough to move the chains.
• On Denard’s TD pass, he had 9 seconds in the pocket to throw the ball. That’s filthy, I guess.

Big John R. Studd Referee Section

• The officials for the game are listed in the box score. None of them is a friend of mine. I’ll leave it at that.
• We were penalized 3 times for 20 yards, and Iowa was penalized 5 times for 29 yards. It was as if the refs forget that they had flags that they could throw. For all the folks who are in the “let them play” camp, well, this was a game for you. I prefer the, “call it if you see it” camp.
• I don’t want to blame the refs for the loss. They were at least consistent, and that’s one thing I ask for. I say this because the interception and the last play of the game were very similar, an Iowa DB was hanging all over our receiver before the ball got there and no flag was thrown. Brady Hoke agrees with me on the first play (ref: his halftime interview), Dave Pasch agrees with me on the second (ref: his post-game comments) and my wife agrees with me on both, “How is that not passing interference?” She doesn’t watch much football, but she can recognize “passing interference” when she sees it. (She also thought the non-touchdown was a touchdown, FWIW.)
• I ask for consistency because then you at least have a chance to modify your game plan. When it became clear that the Iowa DBs were going to be allowed to play physical, why do you throw a slant on the last play of the game?
• I don’t blame the refs for the interception because Denard really shouldn’t have thrown into quadruple coverage. That’s usually a bad idea.
• I have to question what was so controvertible about Hemingway’s catch that prevented the replay official from overturning the original call. Surely, 70,000 Hawkeye fans would controvertiblize an overturn, but he caught the ball in one hand, brought it in to his other hand, got a knee down, and the ball was still above the ground. How is that not a touchdown? Granted, I’m biased, but if you asked 100 un-biased observers if that was a touchdown, I’m guessing at least 95 say yes, and the other 5 are morons.

 San Diego 49ers

• Hemingway had a nice jumping catch, but that was offset by a drop on the first drive. We really needed to score on that first drive to let them know the Minnesota game was not an aberration. Instead, they stayed in it and gained confidence.
• Hemingway lead us with 5 catches for 64 yards.
• Nine different receivers caught passes this week, including 2 by Kelvin Grady who doubled his season total.

• The meme of the week was that Jeremy Gallon can dunk. We will also remember this as the week Mitch McGary committed to UofM, and I suppose he can also dunk. But since I’m in the mood to share photos from my youth, I can report that your faithful Box Scorespondent can also dunk, and I have a picture to prove it. Officials from Guinness measured the height of the rim to be exactly 10 feet (from somewhere on that gently sloping driveway.)

Is that Jeremy Gallon or ST3? Unlike Brady Hoke, I have worn red in the past, but that was a University of Detroit T-shirt.

Hexadecimal Points

• Iowa tried the non-traditional uniform thing this week, but they stopped at the helmet. The Hawkeye was displayed in red, white, and blue, and the decal on the other side was removed to honor the war dead.
• Hawthorne and Cavanaugh each had two tackles.

Derpan Meyer

• Dave Pasch redeemed himself in my eyes with his post-game comments. Yeah, Dave, that should have been a penalty. Oh well.
• I like how Spielman called out the Iowa DB who kept putting his hand up to his ear. Spielman basically said, play the game and if you do well the crowd will cheer for you. You don’t have to beg for applause. Spielman is so old-school, you can’t help but like the guy, except for the fact that he hates us.
• Spielman said that Touss added Zest to our offense. I wasn’t sure if I was watching a football game, or a commercial for a shampoo, but I think his comment was correct.

Random, as Yet Unnamed, Bullets

• I’m learning that writing these are not as fun after losses.
• This could also be titled, look at the boxscore and tell me who won.
• We had 22 first downs to their 15.
• We had 323 yards to their 302.
• We ran 75 plays to their 56.
• Our net rushing was 127 yards, theirs was 131.
• So far, pretty even, right?
• Net yards per punt, 33.8 (us), 36.6 them.
• Net yards per kickoff, 47.5 for us, 34.6 for them. Whoo-hoo.
• They had two guys with double digit tackles, Bernstine with 15 and Nielsen with 13. How do we not win that game? I had no idea Bernstine even played and yet he ended up with 15 tackles. I guess I focus more on our team.
• At one point in the game, they were 1 for 6 on third down, yet had scored 17 points. How did that happen? They ended up 4 for 12 on third down to our 7 for 16. How did we lose this game? Oh yeah, turnovers. (Notice I didn’t blame the refs here?) Actually, the reason we lost the game was red zone efficiency. They were 3 for 3 with 3 touchdowns, we were 3 for 5 with 2 TDs and a FG. You’ve got to make the most of your opportunities. They did. We didn’t. End of story.