Michigan Tech defensive lineman Austin Schlicht is chasing Saginaw Valley State quarterback Isaiah Malcolm during Saturday’s game at Curley Stadium in Houghton. (For David Archambeau/Gazette)
HOUGHTON — The Michigan Tech offense was beaten by No. 19 Saginaw Valley State on Saturday, losing 35-13.
The Huskies (1-3) have 9 first downs and 176 yards offensive.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals (4-0) had 413 yards of offense and 17 first downs.
When Husky’s attack worked, it was productive. But it was only for a few series.
The 22-point difference was the largest margin of victory between the two teams going back to 2010. His biggest scoring margin before that period was when the Cardinals beat him 55–35 in 2013. An eight-point scoring differential (115-107) in favor of the Cardinals over the last six games.
Tech rounded out a 5-play, 71-yard drive with a 3-yard rush by junior running back Will Marano. Drew Weibull’s extra point failed. The Huskies’ next drive went 48 yards in six plays and ended with a 30-yard pass from sophomore wide receiver Ethan Champney to sophomore wide receiver Brandon Michalak.
“I thought they did a really great job of getting the football moving and finishing some drives that needed to be done.” Michigan Tech head coach Steve Olson said: “And from there it was a normal football game.”
A Michalak touchdown gave Tech a 12 second lead.
Enter Isaiah Malcome, the Cardinals’ senior running back from Div. I Penn, a member of the Ivy League Conference. After Tech took the lead with Michalak’s score, Malcolm turned a corner and went up the left sideline on the first play from the Cardinals’ line of scrimmage for a 75-yard score. He added another score about six minutes later with a 7-yard run to make it 21-13.
Cardinals quarterback Andrew Brito scored on a 1-yard keeper in the third quarter. Redshirt freshman wide his receiver Arron Folkes from the Brito he caught a pass for 13 yards and with four minutes remaining he put him in third.
Saginaw Valley State scored first on a play extended by Brito. He narrowly escaped a collapsing pocket and sack, flicking a pass to Derrick his Hinton Jr.
Marcome ran for 145 yards on 20 carries and two touchdowns. His average distance per carry was 7.2 yards.
“They played great running backs and missed tackles and stuff like that.” Olson spoke of Malcolm. “But we have some young players who need to get better in terms of reading, and when we took them off the schedule, we had an opportunity. There have been many times when there was no, we said we needed to control him in our pocket, he could get out of our pockets, and he could keep containment when he got into a situation I have to do a better job.
“So there were mistakes made there. And there were too many mistakes. That’s what we have to clean up.”
Tech’s leading rusher, Marano ran for 35 yards on 15 carries. That’s an average of 2.3 yards per carry.
The Husky’s rushing attack was held back throughout the day. Tech rushed 28 times for 47 yards.
Huskies quarterback Will Ark had 99 yards on 11 of 20 passes. He was sacked twice and threw an interception.
Brito was 16 of 20 for 208 yards and two touchdowns.
Michigan Tech was led defensively by Marc Shippel’s 11 tackles, including nine solos. He had two tackles for the loss.
The Huskies were 10-0 on third down conversion, 0-1 on 4th down, and 2-1 in the red zone. Saginaw Valley State were 7 of 15 on third down conversion, 1 of 1 on 4 down and 4 of 4 on red zone.
“You have to stay on the block” Olson spoke of upcoming adjustments. “And that would give us an opportunity to set up more things again, offensively from that perspective, and there are some good plays that we made today. I had to work on the kind of thing.”
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The Husky family visits Davenport in Grand Rapids on Saturday noon.
The Cardinals play Saturday at Grand Valley State.