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Tuesday Quick Hits: Baseball to Host Regional, Softball Eliminated
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Leave a Comment- Fresh off of a record regular season in Big Ten play, the Michigan baseball team went into last week’s conference tournament looking for another championship. Opening postseason play on Thursday, the tourney got off to a promising start as Michigan beat Illinois 5-2. One night later, U-M was again victorious as they defeated the second best team in the conference, Purdue, by a score of 6-1 (highlights). The Boilermakers did recover with a win over Indiana, though, setting up a rematch with Michigan on Saturday night with the Big Ten title on the line. Just like the first meeting on Friday, Michigan took down Purdue, this time by a slimmer score of only 3-2 (highlights). The win gave Michigan the Big Ten Tournament title yet again.
- By winning the Big Ten title and having shiny new facilities, Michigan got the right to host its first NCAA Tournament regional in 22 years. A year ago, Michigan should have been the host of their Super Regional match-up with the eventual champions, Oregon State, but due to renovations of Fisher Stadium, the Wolverines were unable to host. That forced them to play at OSU and didn’t make an already tough series any easier. Thankfully, this time around Michigan is getting its shot at hosting the regional, which hopefully will make the path back to the Super Regional a tad easier.
- The three other teams in Michigan’s regional are Arizona, Eastern Michigan, and Kentucky. Michigan will open the tournament with Kentucky, and then things will move on from there. This isn’t an easy regional by any means, so having homefield advantage is definitely a good thing.
- Switching gears, the Michigan softball team had already played host to the initial part of the NCAA Tournament. The Wolverines went through the regional without a loss and moved on to the Super Regional against Virginia Tech this past weekend. Going into this series, the biggest concern for the Wolverines was without a doubt facing pitcher Angela Tincher, who had already no-hit the U.S. National Team. All it takes is a great pitcher and your season can be ended instantly, and that is something that has happened to Michigan many times in the past.
Michigan won the first game of the Super Regional on Saturday by a score of 1-0. This was a pitcher’s duel for sure, but Michigan got 1 run on the board in the bottom of the 6th inning, and that’s all that was needed. The victory put U-M one win away from the Women’s World Series, a place they haven’t been back to since winning a national championship in 2005.
Sunday’s first game was another pitcher’s duel. This time, though, Virginia Tech came out as the winners thanks to a sloppy first inning. All VT needed was 1 run, and they got it thanks to a couple of errors. The loss set up a third and deciding game where the winner would move on and the loser would be done playing softball for the season.
Just as we saw in the first two games, VT pitcher Angela Tincher was outstanding and dominated Michigan. To win or even have a shot, Michigan would have needed to pitch just as good, and unfortunately that was not the case at all. After getting hosed on a pitch that should have been an inning-ending strike but instead produced a bases loaded walk, Michigan lost all of its composure. The Hokies ran away with this game and won 6-1 to move on to the Women’s World Series. Michigan had a great season that they should be very proud of, but to lose like this isn’t easy, especially when they fell just one win short of getting to the World Series yet again.
- Rich Rodriguez is not going to tape Michigan Replay in time for it to air on the Sunday after a game. This differs from what Lloyd Carr did as he would sometimes tape the show in the middle of the night to get it ready in time for Sunday mornings. It will be different not being able to watch Michigan Replay the day after a game, but you can understand why Rodriguez wouldn’t want to do it so shortly after the end of a game, especially when it would have to be in the middle of the night sometimes.
- Tigers manager Jim Leyland had a chance to meet with Rich Rodriguez last week.
- Former Michigan tight end Aaron Shea retired from the Cleveland Browns.
- Leon Hall was the focus of an article on the Cincinnati Bengals’ official website.
- Michigan 2008 recruit Mike Martin broke the state’s shot put record last week.
- MVictors takes a look at the Michigan Business School’s tailgate bus.
