Quick hitters for this week

Quick hitters

This week in football.

Published: 2011-09-29


Adam Richard

arichard@mndaily.com


-Minnesota is 24-69-3 all time against Michigan and 3-36 over the last 39 games. Michigan has won the Little Brown Jug the last three times, but the two teams haven’t played since 2008.

-Denard Robinson broke the NCAA single-season rushing record for a quarterback last season. He is currently leading the Big Ten in rushing and is fourth overall in the nation.

-First year Michigan head coach Brady Hoke implemented a pro-style offense and said he plans to give Robinson only 10-15 carries per game. In the last three games, Robinson has run 16, 26 and 21 times for 108, 198 and 200 yards, respectively.

-Minnesota safety Kim Royston leads the Big Ten in tackles with 41. He’ll be a key to stopping Robinson and Michigan’s offense.

“We’re not going there to be in awe of the stadium. We’re there to win. We have to contain Robinson and have someone else beat us besides him,” Royston said.

-In addition to converting to ditching the spread offense, Michigan also switched its defensive scheme from Rich Rodriguez’s 3-3-5 to a traditional 4-3.

-Greg Mattison is the new defensive coordinator at Michigan. He achieved fame with Florida from 2005-2007, which included a national championship. He also ran the defense for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens from 2008 to 2011. He is the highest paid defensive coordinator in college football at $750,000.

-Minnesota’s run defense has been getting progressively worse each game. It has given up an average yards per carry of 2.39, 3.59, 3.81 and 4.96 in the last four games.

Michigan ranks first in the Big Ten and fourth in the nation with 6.80 yards per carry.

-Senior running back Duane Bennett is one of the few Gopher players on the roster in 2007, the last time Minnesota played at Michigan.

In that game, Bennett had more than 100 yards and averaged more than 5 yards per carry. He is coming off his best game of the season last week against NDSU, in which he collected 74 yards on 5.69 yards per carry.

-Michigan has an experienced wide receiver corps, beginning with Junior Hemingway and Roy Roundtree. Hemingway leads the team with 211 yards and a remarkable 42.2 yards per reception average.

-Minnesota’s offense was more successful on third down last week against NDSU; they converted 64 percent of the time, far and away their best of the season.

Michigan’s defense has allowed a third-down conversion rate of less than 45 percent in each of their last two games, and held their opponents to fewer than 10 points a game.

-The Wolverines have a perfect scoring record in the red zone. They have converted 13 times in 13 chances when inside an opponent’s 20-yard line, and 12 of those scores have been touchdowns.

-MarQueis Gray sat out practice Wednesday with a sore toe.



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