Judging by the scoreboard at halftime Saturday, it seemed like Michigan still hadn’t gotten over its Notre Dame hangover.

By the end of Saturday’s first half, the Wolverines led Eastern Michigan by just seven points. The Eagles had 11 first downs to Michigan’s nine. After averaging 106 rushing yards through their first two games, Eastern Michigan had already racked up 128 rushing yards in the first half alone.

It seemed like the Wolverines were primed for a letdown after all of last week’s hype following Michigan’s 38-34 comeback win against the Fighting Irish.

But listening to redshirt junior linebacker Obi Ezeh, it sounds like the slow start simply might be because the Wolverines aren’t morning people.

“You try to avoid it, but it was an early game,” Ezeh said. “We’ve been used to these 3 p.m. games. I don’t want to use that as an excuse, but guys get used to things, and you change it up and you have to give them time to grow accustomed to it. I’m glad we survived this one, but we have to be ready in the first quarter next time.”

Regardless of the underlying mental reasons, the Wolverine defense was missing reads, having difficulty anticipating plays and not controlling gaps in the first half. The Eagle offense ran plays the Wolverines hadn’t seen on tape, and the defense was initially slow to adjust.

One of those missed reads led to Eastern’s first touchdown, on a play-action fake from the Michigan 11-yard line. Eagles quarterback Andy Schmitt faked a handoff to Eastern Michigan running back Terrence Blevins, and as senior defensive end Brandon Graham fell for the play, Schmitt rolled to the right and easily ran into the corner of the end zone. The touchdown tied the score at 10 with 11 minutes left in the first half.

“We was killing ourselves, we was missing assignments early in the game,” Graham said. “We was thinking too much out there. We went out there, we weren’t calm.”

After the defense’s uninspired first half, it came out in the third quarter ready to play. The Wolverines held the Eagles scoreless with just 51 rushing yards and six first downs in the whole second half.

Late in the third quarter, Schmitt, under pressure, threw the ball as Obi Ezeh flew toward him. Ezeh’s hit knocked the ball off course and freshman Craig Roh fell on the ball for the interception, which gave the Wolverines possession at the Eastern Michigan 21-yard line. The Wolverines scored a few plays later to make the score 38-17 and put the game effectively out of reach.

As the Wolverine defense made adjustments and the explosive Michigan offense scored 21 unanswered points, the Eagles felt forced to rely more on their passing game.

“It took us out of our running game,” Eastern Michigan coach Ron English said. “We just felt that we needed to catch up, so we had to throw the ball a little bit more than we wanted to.”

But the Eagles could only muster 62 yards in the air during the third and fourth quarters. And on what ended up being its last legitimate scoring chance of the game, with about 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Michigan defense overpowered Eastern Michigan’s running game, too. The Eagles couldn’t score after reaching the Michigan 9-yard line on a first-and-goal. With third down and two yards to go for a touchdown, Eagles running back Dwayne Priest was stuffed behind the line of scrimmage by four Michigan defenders. Eastern Michigan ended up turning the ball over on downs.

Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said after the game he wasn’t particularly concerned about the defense’s play, since the team needs to improve on all three phases. Still, after a sluggish second quarter by the Wolverine defense and an overmatched secondary against Notre Dame last week, this week marks the second in a row that the Michigan defense hasn’t dominated for all 60 minutes.

Before Saturday’s game, the Wolverine defense was second-to-last in the Big Ten in total defense, allowing 301 total yards to Western Michigan and 490 to Notre Dame. Though Saturday’s game could overall be considered an improvement on paper – Eastern Michigan racked up 285 yards – the defense’s tendencies to miss reads and not fill in the gaps could still be a major concern come Big Ten season.

“They were doing some things to us that we hadn’t repped, and that we hadn’t seen all week,” Ezeh said.