Kyle Whittingham opened his Michigan tenure Saturday night as a 27.5-point favorite against Western Michigan. A loss would have marked only the Wolverines’ second ever loss to a Mid-American Conference team. The Wolverines instead won 13-12 on a last-second Hail Mary, but the new coach left the field far from happy.
Michigan escaped Western Michigan with a 1-point win on Whittingham’s debut, yet he did not let Bryce Underwood and the rest of the team treat it like a normal win. The locker room stayed quiet.
“But I’m going to tell you right now, there was not a lot of hooting and hollering in that locker room. In fact, there was none, because we understand that we’ve got a lot of work to do, and that we’ve got to be much, much better than we were tonight,” Whittingham made that clear in his postgame press conference. “My reaction was just, thank goodness. But I didn’t move. I was mad. I’m still pissed,” the head coach added…