Roy Roundtree said after Michigan’s 67-65 marathon win over Illinois on Saturday in Ann Arbor that he had woken up “hungry."

And on the game’s very first play from scrimmage, the Illini defense served him up filet mignon and put it on a silver platter.

Sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson faked the run up the middle, drawing the safeties in to cover the run. That left a seam open down the middle of the field.

So Roundtree shot into the open field and Robinson spotted him, lobbing a long pass to his wide-open wide receiver for a 75-yard touchdown. It was the start of a career day for the redshirt sophomore wideout, who finished with a Michigan-record 246 yards on nine receptions, two of which went for touchdowns. Roundtree destroyed Jack Clancy’s 1966 record by 49 yards.

“Today was a great day,” Roundtree said after the game. “I really don’t get into the stats and stuff like that. I just make sure if we score, we score again. That’s our motto on the offense ... Everybody got to eat, and today, we all had time with the ball."

Quarterbacks coach Rod Smith said after the game that they saw weaknesses in the Illini secondary, and after a disappointing mistake in last year’s game, Roundtree was a big part of exploiting those weaknesses.

In the Wolverines’ devastating loss in Champaign last year, Roundtree appeared to have a 76-yard touchdown, similar to Saturday’s first play. But after a video review, officials ruled that Roundtree was caught at the Illinois 1-yard line. From there, Michigan couldn’t punch the ball in on four straight tries, effectively stopping the team’s momentum dead in its tracks.

This week though, Roundtree told offensive coordinator Calvin Magee that it wouldn’t happen again.

“We teased Roy all week, I don’t know if he told you,” Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said. “Last year, he had a long one and got caught, didn’t stick it in. He didn’t get caught today… Calvin was on the headset with me when he caught the ball, and he says, ‘Don’t get caught this time, Roy, don’t get caught this time!’ He took off pretty well. He’s a talented guy.”

For Roundtree, most of his record-setting performance took place in the first half, when he accumulated a staggering 192 yards on four catches.

“I was like, dang, can we get some? Can we get some?” redshirt junior wideout Junior Hemingway joked after the game. “I told him keep doing that, keep doing that. We are going to keep running our routes to outside receivers so we can get the safeties out of there, so you can be open all the time. It’s a team game, but man, he had a real good game today.”

Fellow wideout Darryl Stonum said Roundtree’s performance opened the field up for a lot of other guys in the second half — Hemingway especially.

With Illinois up by a touchdown in the game’s do-or-die second overtime, sophomore quarterback Tate Forcier’s third-down throw hit off an Illinois linebacker’s helmet and bounced into Hemingway’s hands as he ran into the endzone.

“I was lucky,” Hemingway said. “He got in front. I wasn’t expecting the ball to get batted in the air because he swung down. It just popped in the air and I stayed with the ball and just caught it.”

The catch put the Wolverines in triple overtime, where they clinched the game on a two-point conversion throw-and-catch from Forcier to Hemingway.

It was a fitting way to end career days for Roundtree, Hemingway and the entire receiving corps.

“I’m very proud of them,” Magee said. “Earlier, when we were doing a lot of running in the season, they were just doing their jobs blocking. … I always knew they had those capabilities and we wanted to start getting them the ball.”