Michigan 13
Ohio St. 9

Record before game

For 10 games and a half this season, Ohio State put on quite a party.

The Buckeyes were ranked No. 2 in the country, they clinched their first Rose Bowl trip in 12 years, and, finally, they had a 9-0 lead over Michigan at halftime yesterday in The Game. The crowd of 94,676 in Ohio Stadium was jumping to the rhythm of a national championship samba.

Just 30 more minutes and the national title dream would move to the Rose Bowl stage. The defense was rocking, the offense was moving the ball. Just 30 more minutes and. . . .

Michigan, as usual, crashed the party. Backup quarterback Brian Griese hit Tai Streets on a 69-yard catch-and-run touchdown the second play of the second half, a pass -- coupled with two field goals by Remy Hamilton -- that sent the Wolverines to a 13-9 win.

Michigan, which had entered The Game on a two-game losing streak for the first time since 1958 and which had seen a potentially great season slapped down by three losses in the Big Ten, exited triumphantly.

"For all you nonbelievers, for all you people who think the Michigan program is going down, look at the scoreboard," Michigan sophomore cornerback Charles Woodson said.

The Wolverines are missing out on the Rose Bowl for the fourth straight year, but for the third time in four years beat an undefeated, highly ranked Ohio State.

The telling blow was the pass from Griese to Streets. Streets beat cornerback Shawn Springs, who had slipped, and raced untouched to the end zone.

"They got the momentum with that play, I think that was the main thing," OSU coach John Cooper said. "They had a player make a play."

Ohio State didn't. The offense, which had flirted with game-breaking touchdowns in the first half, was held to 84 yards in the second. For the second straight game, including a 27-17 win the week before at Indiana, the once-rocketing offense was lackluster.

Sophomore Joe Germaine made his first start at quarterback in place of Stanley Jackson and had some success in the first half, the Buckeyes driving to three Josh Jackson field goals.

In the second half, though, the Michigan defense, which had given up 107 yards to tailback Pepe Pearson in the first, stacked up against the run. Pearson was held to 10 yards on eight carries in the second half. And Germaine and the receivers were constantly befuddled by a changing Michigan coverage scheme.

"I told our team at the half we were going to score more than nine points, but we were going to have to shut them out to win," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said. "They certainly answered the challenge."

To OSU senior linebacker Greg Bellisari's way of thinking, the OSU defense did not.

"We didn't think pointswise, we just knew we had to hold them to less than we could score," he said. "They scored 13 points, and I feel that seven of them were on kind of a fluke play -- I mean, how many times will Shawn Springs fall down? That's football. You deal with that."

But a loss is something he had not planned on having to deal with. Not with the way the Buckeyes, especially the defense, had played for 10 games.

In the second half, though, after the Streets play, Michigan went to a bullish running game.

"That big play right there at the beginning of the half gave them a lot of confidence," Bellisari said. "And as the game went along, we kind of lost confidence in ourselves.

"They started doing things, and we just kind of got out of our mental set we'd been in all year. That will hurt you. . . . They started running the ball on us, something that not many teams had done all year to us."

Before yesterday, no back had run for more than 100 yards on the OSU defense. Chris Howard ran for 105, with 92 on 20 carries in the second half. It was shades of Tim Biakabutuka's 313-yard performance against the Buckeyes last year in the 31-23 loss at Michigan.

Howard didn't score any touchdowns, but his runs primarily powered the drives to the two field goals. Hamilton's 43-yarder on the last play of the third quarter barely cleared the bar, but his 39-yarder with 1:19 left sailed through easily.

Ohio State's offense, which had entered No. 1 in the Big Ten in total yards and scoring, could not answer.

"Right now, honestly, I'm in denial," Bellisari said. "I really can't believe that this just happened."

It seemed most of the crowd felt the same way. Well after Germaine's last-ditch pass on the final play had been intercepted by Michigan safety and Columbus native Marcus Ray, fans stood stunned. The party was over, but no one seemed to want to go home.

Well, one party was over. Michigan's players were just starting to celebrate.

"We came here expecting to win, and we talked about what we had to do to win," Carr said. "It was a players' game, like most of these Ohio State-Michigan games are.

"It was won on the field by a group of guys who believed they could win."

For the seventh time in nine years at Ohio State, Cooper had to deal with a loss in The Game. But Germaine said that was the wrong back to place the blame.

"We were the guys out there," Germaine said. "If there is anybody to blame, it's us. We didn't get the job done.

"Like I said before, we can't put too much on this game. We've had a great year, and we must go on."