IOWA CITY - During its Big Ten opener on Friday night, it almost seemed as if someone was controlling the Michigan field hockey team's momentum with a light switch.

Literally.

With the Wolverines holding an early 1-0 lead, senior captain Mary Fox had just begun to distance herself from Iowa defenders as she dashed down the right sideline for a breakaway with about six and a half minutes to go in the first half. Just as she was making her move toward the goal, the field lights standing high above Iowa's Grant Field suddenly went out, halting play for over 20 minutes.

"I've never seen anything like it," Iowa associate athletic director Paula Jantz said, describing the outage. "It's never happened before."

But once the lights came back on and play resumed, Michigan looked as if it was still in the dark.

While the Wolverines were sluggish following the light outage, the Hawkeyes returned to the field ready to play.

Iowa picked up a goal to tie the score at one just minutes after play restarted and dominated the Wolverines defensively for the rest of regulation, sending what had already been a crazy contest into overtime.

But Michigan had just enough to pull it out in the end when junior Lucia Belassi's overtime goal with under three minutes to play in the extra period sealed Michigan's 2-1 victory over No. 20 Iowa.

According to Fox, the win was important simply because it was against a team like Iowa.

"It would have been bad if we had lost," Fox said. "Every Big Ten game counts for us. It was a huge win because it was against Iowa, and we consider them to be one of our top rivals in this conference."

Prior to the outage, the Wolverines (1-0 Big Ten, 5-5 overall) controlled the opening half. Sophomore Stephanie Hoyer got the team on the board first when she received a pass from sophomore Michaela McDermott and blasted a line drive into the upper left corner of the goal to give Michigan a 1-0 lead almost 17 minutes in.

But then things got strange, and the conspiracy theory began. Hoyer jokingly said that the Hawkeyes (0-1, 4-5) may have known more about the outage than what they were willing to admit.

"My theory is that Iowa did something to the lights," she said smiling. "The scoreboard was still on, so the power wasn't the issue. I've never ever been in anything like that."

Michigan clearly had momentum when the outage occurred. But it was apparent that the Hawkeyes turned the tables on the Wolverines after play resumed. Iowa denied Michigan a shot or corner opportunity for 25 straight minutes after the outage and during that same time span, the Hawkeyes took eight shots, picked up five corners and scored once.

Michigan coach Nancy Cox attributed much of Wolverines' loss in momentum to the break that transpired from the outage.

"I think that the stoppage in time completely took the momentum out of our kids' sails," Cox said. "I told them all week that when Iowa comes out, they're going to come out incredibly motivated and that they had to meet that motivation and exceed it. Our kids were doing a good job of that, and then the stoppage in time happened. When Iowa came back out (after the stoppage), we didn't come out with the same type of aggressiveness."

Just when it looked like both teams would fail to score in overtime, Fox crossed midfield and came down the crowded right sideline with the ball. Maneuvering her way between two Iowa defenders, she flipped the ball to Belassi, who was there to knock it through for the third game-winner of her career.

The win marked the Wolverines' fifth victory in the last six games, and also the fourth straight time that Michigan has beaten Iowa dating back to 2004.

"It was just relieving," said Belassi of scoring the goal to finish off the Hawkeyes. "I just wanted it to go in. I didn't care about anything else."

Michigan 2

Iowa 1