A Big Win for the Maize and Drew

Drew Henson, making his first start, threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to David Terrell with 6:42 left to give No. 9 Michigan a 13-10 victory over No. 17 Wisconsin Saturday.

Henson eluded a rush, rolled right and threw across the field on his back foot, over two defenders and one of his receivers, to a leaping Terrell in the back of the end zone.

It was more playground than playbook.

“There was no diagram,” Henson said. “You don’t want to take chances like that often, but I felt like it was the time to take a chance.”

Henson, who fumbled twice in the first quarter, was 15 for 27 for 257 yards and a touchdown. He played the entire game after missing the first three games because of a broken foot, and coming off the bench the previous Saturday to lead Michigan to a come-from-behind victory at Illinois.

The Wolverines, 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten, became the first Division I-A program to reach 800 wins.

The Badgers (3-2, 0-2) likely eliminated themselves from winning a third consecutive Big Ten title. Since 1896, a Big Ten championship has been won by a team with two conference losses only four times.

Michigan needed the go-ahead touchdown after Wisconsin took a 10-6 lead with 12:10 left. On a play-action pass, Brooks Bollinger tossed a five-yard pass to Chad Kuhns to finish a 13-play, 71-yard drive, which took 5:47.

Wisconsin had a chance to tie it with 2:42 left, but Vitaly Pisetsky missed a 42-yard field goal to the left by less than a foot. Bollinger threw two interceptions in the first quarter, the first of which was in Michigan’s end zone.

“We had some real wasted chances,” Wisconsin Coach Barry Alvarez said. “And I’m real concerned that we shot ourselves in the foot. We’re making mistakes and we have a small margin of error. Against teams like this, you can’t make the mistakes we made.”

Wisconsin played with its entire roster for the first time. The NCAA suspended a total of 26 players, who served staggered suspensions over the first four games, for receiving unadvertised discounts at a shoe store.