In its postgame interviews that took place in Crisler Center after the Michigan football team’s win over Indiana, Devin Gardner was ready to face the media. He smiled during his interview, for the first time in two weeks — since the Wolverines’ last win.
The redshirt junior quarterback grinned while talking about how easy it was for him to connect with fifth-year senior wide receiver Jeremy Gallon and how the two of them broke three Michigan records together — receiving, passing and total offense. Above all, he smiled when talking about the relief of shaking the loss to Penn State last week.
And it seemed fitting that while Gardner gushed, he was just down the hall from where the Michigan basketball team starts its season next week. Because in all honesty, the 63-47 win resembled the kind of matchup you’d have seen between Michigan and Indiana basketball coaches John Beilein and Tom Crean last year on the court, not the kind of thing a defensively-minded coach like Brady Hoke wants to see on his football field.
Gardner recounted a conversation he had with running backs coach Fred Jackson during the game.
“It’s going to be like a basketball game,” Jackson told him. “You have to keep scoring.”
The last thing Hoke wanted to do was turn Gardner into a star point guard, the one player who was expected to carry the team through the game. But Hoke still “had a sense that the offense would always respond,” he said.
They did. And Gardner became the main man orchestrating it all. There was no other choice.
A win is a win, and this one will be remembered as the one where all the records were broken. But above all, it has to be seen as what it really was: an ugly, three-and-a-half hour shootout in which the Wolverines didn’t secure their win over Indiana — Indiana — until midway through the fourth quarter.
Had Gardner not dazzled with his arm, had Gallon not flown through the air to catch the passes, what would we be left with to evaluate this team?
Hoke — who always beats around the bush and never criticizes anything too harshly — perhaps summed it up best, when asked about his reaction to the defensive performance and such a high-scoring game.
“A lot of frustration,” he said. “Sick feeling.”
Fifth-year senior safety Thomas Gordon said that the Hoosiers’ fast tempo caught the Wolverines off guard, though it certainly came as no surprise — they’d been preparing for it all week.
But if the Michigan defense struggled this much on Saturday against a team that hasn’t beaten the Wolverines since 1987, then what are they going to look like when November rolls around and it faces the meaty part of its schedule?
That’s not to take away from Gardner and Gallon’s accomplishments. But that kind of performance is not realistically sustainable — they aren’t still going to be smashing the same kind of records when Ohio State rolls into town. And then, what will the Wolverines have to cover up its miscues?
Hoke will dream about it, though.
“I’d like to see the same offense show up,” Hoke said about the Wolverines’ next contest, in East Lansing after the bye. Then he paused.
“Maybe a different defense.”
— Vukelich can be reached at elizavuk@umich or on Twitter @Liz Vukelich