Michigan won its third consecutive Big Ten title on Saturday night with a 26-0 win over the Big Ten West champion Iowa Hawkeyes at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The third straight title is Michigan’s 45 Big Ten championship in program history, which is the most by any team in the conference.
Semaj Morgan highlighted a rather boring night with an 87-yard punt return, but both offenses were rather quiet throughout the night.
Below are three takeaways from Michigan’s conference title-winning game.
Semaj Morgan emerges at team’s top punt returner
All season long, Michigan has bounced between sophomore Tyler Morris and senior Jake Thaw at the punt returner position. The younger, more versatile Morris provided a higher ceiling, but the older, more reliable Thaw proved to be the sure-handed option at returner.
But on Saturday night, Michigan may have found a new option.
In the first quarter, after Iowa’s second drive of the game, Michigan trotted out true freshman Semaj Morgan to field the punt, and what happened in the ensuing moments was electric.
Morgan fielded the ball at the eight-yard line and broke into the open field. He galloped for what seemed like an eternity before he was eventually tracked down by an Iowa special teamer at the five-yard line.
The return officially went down as 87 yards, which was good for the longest punt return in Big Ten Championship Game history.
Morgan didn’t register another return yard on the night, but his 87-yarder was more than enough to prove his worth catching kicks.
He had been the team’s top kickoff returner for quite some time, but on Saturday night, Morgan may have established himself as the top punt returner going forward.
A new No. 1
With No. 1 Georgia’s loss to No. 8 Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, the expectation is that Michigan, with its win over Iowa, will be the No. 1 team in the country come Sunday afternoon when the official College Football Playoff rankings come out.
The No. 1 ranking would be Michigan’s first best-in-the-country ranking since, seemingly, 1997, when the Wolverines won a share of the national championship along with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
It will be the first time in more than a year that Georgia will not be the nation’s top-ranked team.
Just three years after an appalling 2020 season in which Michigan went 2-4 and clearly struggled on both sides of the ball, it appears Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines have made the climb to college football’s summit.
Who’s next?
Alabama’s defeat of Georgia threw a wrench in one of the more wild championship weekends in history. Had the Bulldogs won and stretched their winning streak to 30 games, the reveal of the College Football Playoff matchups on Sunday afternoon would have been rather uninteresting.
Georgia, Michigan, Washington and Florida State would have almost certainly been the four teams selected, but Alabama had other plans.
The Crimson Tide upset Georgia, 27-24, to claim the SEC crown.
As already stated, Michigan, in its frosty white uniforms, defeated Iowa, and the Wolverines will likely move into the No. 1 spot. Washington is expected to be the nation’s No. 2 team, but spots 3 and 4 are completely undetermined.
There are two spots remaining for what appears to be four teams — Georgia, Florida State, Alabama and Texas.
The committee has one of the tougher jobs in recent memory as they set out to determine the final four teams that will compete for a national title.
Michigan is comfortably in along with Washington, but the Wolverines’ opponent in the first round of the playoffs is still up in the air. It could be any of the four aforementioned teams, but to predict which team it will be is a near-impossible task.
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