M Vs. USC: Old-Fashioned Ground Warfare

M Vs. USC: OLD-FASHIONED GROUND WARFARE
Rose Bowl Opponents Like To Run
By Wayne DeNeff

The Michigan-Southern California Rose Bowl game is more than a month away but football fans already have a pretty good idea of what it will be like.
A titanic struggle of land weapons!
The undefeated Trojans, who marched through nine opponents and tied Notre Dame, have the nation’s third leading rusher in a hard-running Clarence Davis, their tailback.
They also do extremely well defensively against a running attack. They’re ranked 10th in the nation in this category.
Michigan, of course, does a rugged job of advancing the ball along the ground and would appear to have more diversity in this phase of the game. Sophomore tailbacks Billy Taylor and Glenn Doughty, fullback Garvie Craw and quarterback Don Moorhead have helped the Wolverines move into seventh place nationally on rushing offense.
The Wolverines also do well against the run as Ohio State, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota will attest.
The Gophers never got closer to the goal than the 18-yard line. A late-in-the game touchdown was the only score the Hawkeyes could muster, Illinois was blanked, Wisconsin broke a TD on a long run after the game was decided. The Buckeyes scored a pair of TDs, the first set up by a long return by Larry Zelina and the second on a pass play they used for the first time with the ball on the 22-yard line, third down and 14.
Both clubs defense the pass very well so there isn’t likely to be a great change in strategy between now and Jan. 1 when the champs of the Big Ten and Pacific-8 square off.
Davis was far and away the rushing champion in his league and he became only the ninth rusher in Pacific Coast and Pacific-8 history to gain more than 1,000 yards in a single season. He has a 1,275 total.
Davis, ranked only behind Cornell’s Ed Marinard and Missouri’s Joe Moore in the national statistics, picked up his 1,275 yards in 282 carries and scored nine touchdowns.
And here’s the way the ball-carrying assignments have been divided among the Wolverines:
Taylor—808 yards in 123 tries for a 6.6 average.
Doughty—732 yards in 149 carries for a 4.9 average.
Moorhead—565 yards in the 152 carries for a 3.7 average. (It should be remembered that Moorhead’s figures include those plays in which he was nailed behind the line of scrimmage for losses in a passing situation. Moorhead actually has gained 737 but he lost 172).
Craw—329 yards in 11 tries for a 3.0 average.
While the national tendency seems to be to pass, pass, and then pass some more, Michigan and Southern California have done alright by keeping their attacks primarily on the ground.