The Wolverine Now

sept. 15, 2013 Red-Faced Victory The Wolverines Are 'Embarrassed' By Cliffhanger Win T I turned around to see what happened," Beyer said. "I was looking at my teammates, and their reaction told me that we had won the game. It was awesome." The awesomeness ended there. Gardner labored through the ultimate all-or-nothing game, rushing for 103 yards and a touchdown on 10 carries, and throwing for 248 more and two touchdowns on a 16-of-30 effort. But he threw three interceptions, one returned for a touchdown, and fumbled deep in Akron territory. "I wasn't myself today," Gardner in- By John Borton he Wolverines played Survivor in a stunner of a 28-24 win over Akron Saturday afternoon. But there wasn't a celebrant in sight, and more than a few volunteers were offering to vote U-M off an island of mistake-filled misery. "This is embarrassing for the University of Michigan football team," fifth-year senior captain Taylor Lewan fumed afterwards. "Yeah, we won the game. We're 3-0. That's great. But it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing. It would have been a lot more embarrassing had Devin Gardner not driven the Wolverines 70 yards in the closing moments, culminating in fifth-year senior running back Fitzgerald Toussaint's gamedeciding two-yard touchdown plunge with 2:49 remaining. Michigan still needed a fourth-and-goal stop in the north end zone to win. Akron quarterback Kyle Pohl took the Zips from his their own 25 to the Michigan 1, but three plays later, with five seconds remaining, they needed to make one more play to register one of the biggest shockers of all time at Michigan Stadium. Instead, junior outside linebacker Brennan Beyer blew up the middle on a blitz, blasted Pohl and caused his end zone toss to flutter harmlessly out of reach, saving one scary afternoon in Ann Arbor. "I saw that the ball was in the air, so 28 Fifth-year senior Fitzgerald Toussaint's two-yard touchdown run with 2:49 remaining in the fourth quarter gave the Wolverines the lead for good. photo by lon horwedel 24 sisted. "I can't really say much else. Pressure doesn't bother me, and they got to me today. I made a lot of bad decisions. I probably played my worst game ever, and it won't happen again." His counterpart went 25-of-49 for 311 passing yards, gunning a pair of TDs. But Pohl also threw a point-blank end zone interception late, and couldn't convert the one throw that would have immediately ushered him into the Akron Athletic Hall of Fame. Survival, indeed. "We've got to do a better job," U-M head coach Brady Hoke underscored. "You can't win championships with those mistakes." Michigan received the supreme wakeup call five minutes into the second half, when Pohl fired a 28-yard touchdown pass to Zach D'Orazio. That gave Akron a 10-7

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