M-barrassing

They don’t understand it, either. Another Saturday and another win just out of reach for the Spartan football team, this one more painful than the rest because it came at the hands of their biggest rival. Following the game, junior quarterback Brian Hoyer was at a loss for words. He doesn’t know why his team keeps coming so close, only to fall short.

“We’re down 14-3 at halftime, we come out and play hard as hell, we play our asses off,” Hoyer said, his eyes glazed over after losing 28-24 to Michigan. “Sometimes, I guess things aren’t meant to go your way.”

It was their sixth straight loss to the Wolverines. It was their fifth loss of the season — all by seven or fewer points.

“It hurts really bad and that’s something we’re going to have to deal with,” senior running back Jehuu Caulcrick said, his last shot at defeating the Wolverines killed when U-M scored two late fourth-quarter touchdowns.

In the first half, it looked like the game might be a Maize and Blue blowout.

After MSU scored a field goal on its first drive, the Spartans failed to get a single first down on their next five possessions.

Hoyer missed two potential touchdown passes; the first was overthrown to senior tight end Kellen Davis, and the second fell short of junior wide receiver Devin Thomas.

“When I threw it, I’m like, ‘All right, it’s a touchdown,’” Hoyer said.

“If the wind got it I’m not sure, but the only thing on my mind was just don’t overthrow him.”

Despite combining for only 28 yards in the first half, Caulcrick and junior running back Javon Ringer came out firing on all cylinders for the final two quarters.

“For whatever reason, we caught fire emotionally and our running backs found creases,” head coach Mark Dantonio said.

Ringer had one run at the end of the third quarter that literally turned the game around for the Spartans.

When the ball was handed off to him, Ringer knew his team needed something big. He ran to the left sideline, right into the arms of a tackler, but wrenched himself out.

“Thank God, somehow, I was able to snatch out of it,” said Ringer, who finished with 128 yards on 15 carries. “I turned around, cut back and saw open field, and I just ran as hard as I could with the energy I had left.”

He followed blocks all the way to the other sideline, streaking 72 yards to the U-M 5-yard line. On the next play, Hoyer threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Davis, and the Spartans took the lead, 17-14.

Caulcrick would bull-rush the Spartans to a touchdown on their next drive, giving them a 24-14 lead with just under eight minutes left.

Eight minutes until the Spartans’ past failures came back to haunt them.

U-M mounted a comeback behind quarterback Chad Henne with an onslaught of mid-ranged passes to wide receivers Mario Manningham and Adrian Arrington.

On the first drive, Henne threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Greg Mathews, followed by a 31-yard bomb to Manningham in the end zone on their next drive.

Early in the week, Dantonio asked his team how long they will “bow down” to U-M, but after the game, he found himself being asked a similar question.

“No, I don’t think we bowed down,” Dantonio said. “We just didn’t get it done at the end of the game for whatever reason.”

Like Hoyer, Ringer struggled to come up with an answer for what is missing from this Spartan football team. He couldn’t put his finger on why so many wins this year have fallen just out of reach.

But Ringer said he still feels like this team is different than the one that imploded last season. The players aren’t pointing fingers and turning on each other, they aren’t getting blown out and giving up, he said.

“We feel like we can win every game,” Ringer said. “That’s the mentality we had going into this game and all the way to the end.”