Michigan wins thriller over Notre Dame

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — A dropped TD pass didn’t deflate Tate Forcier. The Michigan freshman simply threw another one on the next play.

After LaTerryal Savory bobbled and dropped a reception that would’ve been a go-ahead touchdown with just seconds remaining, Forcier hit Greg Mathews for a 5-yard score with 11 seconds left, lifting the Wolverines to a 38-34 win over No. 18 Notre Dame on Saturday.

“It will go down in history as one of the greatest games in the Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry,” Mathews said. “I’m glad I got a chance to play in it.”

Armando Allen ran for a touchdown and got the 2-point conversion on a nifty Statue of Liberty play with 5:13 left after Jimmy Clausen threw his third touchdown pass to give the Fighting Irish (1-1) the lead. But Charlie Weis chose to throw instead of trying to run time off the clock and Notre Dame’s defense could not deny Forcier and the Wolverines (2-0).

“I think it was mistake that they were throwing the ball because they let us save our timeouts,” Forcier said. “Those timeouts definitely came in handy.

“I wasn’t expecting them to throw the ball. It really helped us.”

Weis defended his choice to put the ball in the air after running for a first down and a short gain to start a drive deep in Notre Dame territory.

“They loaded up the box and made it clear that they weren’t going to let us do that, so we had to throw the ball,” Weis said. “On third down, we could have run and made them use a timeout, but we were trying to win the game.”

Forcier’s 31-yard TD run on a fourth down gave the Wolverines an 11-point lead early in the fourth quarter. He threw an interception on his next drive to aid the Irish’s comeback, but the freshman bounced back by converting a third down with a pass before his clutch connection with Mathews in the front corner of the end zone.

Savoy dropped a sure score in nearly the same spot on the play before. Forcier made a series of heart-stopping jukes to jitterbug away from tacklers in the backfield with no time outs before he found Savoy, who almost appeared surprised by the ball.

A season after losing a school-record nine games, Rodriguez has college football’s winningest program at 2-0 for the first time since 2006 with a rout of Western Michigan and an emotional win over the rival Irish, whose winning percentage ranks second in the nation — behind Michigan’s.

Weis, meanwhile, will likely face a lot of questions and second-guessing as he tries to address what went wrong at the Big House and why he hasn’t been able to win many big games in his five seasons. Two years ago, Notre Dame lost a school-record nine under Weis and dropped six more last season.