PISCATAWAY - Michigan finally got a little separation in its backfield Saturday, and freshman Savion Hiter was the one who created it.
In the Wolverines’ 28-21 win over Rutgers, Hiter handled more work than he had at any point in his college career, finishing with more than 20 carries for the first time. He turned those touches into 75 rushing yards, while the other two backs in Michigan’s committee were held to a combined 11 carries. Junior Jordan Marshall, who rushed for nearly 1,000 yards a year ago, had five carries and finished with no yards, his lightest workload since November 2024.
Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham said the shift came down to something the Wolverines had rarely seen this season: one back clearly having the hot hand.
“If you have a guy that’s got a little more of a hot hand than someone else, then you stick with that guy,” Whittingham said. “There’s been very little of that this season, it’s been very even and really nobody has separated themselves. Savion certainly, at least to an extent, separated himself during this game.”
Hiter’s day wasn’t pretty on the stat sheet. He didn’t score, and his average of 3.8 yards per carry still falls short of what Michigan wants from its ground game. But when the Wolverines needed a play, he kept delivering.
The biggest one came in the third quarter, when Hiter ripped off an 11-yard run on third down from the Rutgers 30. That burst kept the drive alive and set up freshman quarterback Tommy Carr’s rushing touchdown three plays later, pushing Michigan ahead 21-13.
Hiter also helped close the game. On Michigan’s final drive, he picked up gains of four and five yards in back-to-back snaps, putting Carr in position to finish the job with a third-down sneak for the first down that sealed it.
Carr said the numbers didn’t tell the whole story.
“I just think when we needed a first down, like at the end of the game, you know we made the play, we got enough around third downs, we got runs,” Carr said. “So maybe it wasn’t great statistically, but in situational runs, we had some big, big pickups there.”
That kind of timely production has been missing from Michigan’s run game for much of the season. The Wolverines have had flashes - including 150-plus rushing yards against both Iowa and Penn State - but those outings were built on uneven contributions from the whole committee rather than one back taking control.
Through seven weeks, Michigan entered the Rutgers game ranked 101st nationally in rushing offense. Marshall had 319 rushing yards, Hiter had 314 and Kuzdzal had 117, a spread that reflected the same problem all season: nobody had taken over.
Whittingham said that’s why the rotation had stayed so even.
“No one’s really just (saying), ‘I’m RB1 and there’s no question about it, and I’ve got the hot hand,’ ” Whittingham said Monday. “It’s been by committee pretty much all season long because of that, because nobody’s really taking the lead and just running away with the yards per carry and the production.”
Hiter didn’t deliver a breakout in the usual sense, but he did enough to stand out in the one way that mattered most Saturday. Michigan didn’t need a feature back to survive Rutgers, just someone who could win the key downs. Hiter was that guy.
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