ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- On one punt return, safety Calvin Lowry typified the play of the Penn State football's special teams.

The Nittany Lions defense forced Michigan's offense to punt the ball from their own 31-yard line and, instead of catching the ball after calling for a fair catch, Lowry let the ball bounce, roll, trickle and bounce and roll and trickle more than 10 yards towards the end zone his team was supposed to defend.

Kicker Kevin Kelly missed two field goals, the kickoff coverage team gave up 164 yards on returns and 128 of those yards belonged to Wolverine wide receiver Steve Breaston alone.

"Penn State is one of those teams that you always want to play," said Breaston, a native of North Braddock. "I wished I had played that game as a freshman. It was just a great feeling playing a team like that. Coming off a loss, it's great to get back up."

Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr thought Breaston's kickoff return in the final minute of the fourth quarter was the biggest play of the game.

"On the last play if we don't get almost to midfield, Breaston doesn't get the ball out there, it's going to be a much different game than those last 40 seconds because we're going to have to throw the ball," Carr said. "Because he got it out to almost midfield, we ran the ball once and we hit some short passes, inevitably."

own south, they call scrappy special teams play and swarming defense "Beamer Ball" after Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer. And, though Michigan's defense has not been a rock of dependability this season, it somehow teamed up with success on special teams to poke a hole in the Lions' undefeated raft.

Penn State coach Joe Paterno agreed with Carr's assessment of Breaston's punt return.

"If there's one thing I second guessed myself on, the last kickoff we should have just power kicked it to the other side. But, you never know," Paterno said. "But, he could've picked it up. The other kid's pretty good too."

When the two teams are only two points apart at the end of the game and the losing team missed two field goals, it's very easy to quickly blame football's most famous scapegoat: the kicker.

To be fair, the winds in the depths of the basin that is Michigan Stadium switched directions in the middle of the game.

Wolverines kicker Garrett Rivas, who was tagged by a few to be the top kicker in the Big Ten before the season started, made a 47-yard field goal and missed a 43-yard one.

Kelly missed one from 45 yards thanks to a bad snap, but he also missed a 32-yard attempt.

Those two misses were the only real snafus Paterno could think of to explain why the Lions went scoreless in the first half.

It all comes back to the return game, though.

The best starting field position the Lions were able to manage, with the exception of a recovered fumble in Michigan territory at the 35-yard line, was the Penn State 37-yard line. The Lions started drives at their own 20-yard line four times, and they couldn't start drives farther up field than their own 28-yard line the remaining seven times.

Freshman Derrick Williams, who returns kickoffs, and Justin King, who was mostly relegated to defense, still have yet to line up deep for a punt return. Sure, Lowry hasn't fumbled any returns this year, but he hasn't really had the chance to break a big return either because he is so often forced to call for a fair catch.

Even if special teams wasn't the sole explanation for Penn State's loss Saturday, Breaston was at least one reason Michigan walked home happy.

"Anything can happen through the course of a Big Ten season," Breaston said. "We still have a chance at a lot of things, a lot of our goals. We just have to keep fighting. We had a tough loss last week, but we won this week. The way the Big Ten is now, everybody is on an equal playing field."