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Thursday, July 2, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS
2015 Schefters: The awards
for when you’re feeling blue
By MAX COHEN and
JAKE LOURIM
Daily Sports Editors
Sure, this wasn’t necessarily
a year to remember in Michigan
athletics. In the most tradition-
ally popular sports, there was
the miserable football season,
the injury-riddled men’s basket-
ball season and a hockey season
that ended with the Wolverines
falling short of the NCAA Tour-
nament for the third straight
year.
In total, Michigan’s three big-
gest sports all failed to make the
postseason in the same year for
the first time since 1972-73.
But here, we’re celebrating
only the positive of Michigan
athletics. The Daily presents
the 2015 Schefters, our annual
look back at the best of the year
in Wolverine sports. The awards
are named after Adam Schefter,
an NFL Insider for ESPN and one
of the Daily’s most prominent
alumni.
We can’t promise anything, but
there might even be a Jim Har-
baugh mention.
Breakout Athlete of the Year:
Zach Hyman, Ice Hockey
For the first three years of Zach
Hyman’s career at Michigan, he
showed glimpses of the talent that
led the Florida Panthers to make
him their fifth-round selection in
the 2010 NHL draft. But it wasn’t
until his senior season that he put
it all together.
Hyman tallied 22 goals and 32
assists during his senior season,
his 54 points well surpassing the
35 points he had scored in his pre-
vious three seasons combined.
Not only did Hyman fare well
compared to previous versions of
himself, but also compared to the
rest of the conference and country.
Hyman led the Big Ten in scoring,
was a first team All-American and
was a finalist for the Hobey Baker
Award, college hockey’s most
prestigious honor.
Best
Single-Event
Perfor-
mance: Jim Harbaugh’s intro-
ductory press conference
You knew he had to be men-
tioned in this, didn’t you? In a
year in which the performances of
many of Michigan’s most popular
teams left fans unsatisfied, Har-
baugh’s introductory press confer-
ence on Dec. 30 delivered in every
single way.
Sure, Harbaugh could have
stood up at the podium and stared
intently into the cameras for 15
minutes and you all would have
been satisfied, but he ended up
hitting all the right notes in his
formal introduction as the Wol-
verines’ coach. Harbaugh spoke
about becoming Michigan’s coach
as if it were a homecoming, and
he finally gave football fans some-
thing to look forward to after a
disaster-filled 5-7 season.
For one day, anything seemed
possible. Except, of course, for
Harbaugh’s soon-to-be created
Twitter account. Some things are
too ridiculous to imagine.
Game of the Year: No. 6 Wis-
consin 69, Michigan 64 (OT),
Men’s Basketball
ESPN’s “College GameDay”
in town, a sellout crowd for a
Saturday night tip and a chance
to earn a marquee win over the
No. 6 team in the country: It just
didn’t seem like enough to keep
the Michigan men’s basketball
team in the game against Wis-
consin on Jan. 24.
The matchup appeared to be
a mismatch: The Wolverines
were 12-7, unranked and play-
ing without their best player in
junior guard Caris LeVert, who
had suffered a season-ending
foot injury the previous week-
end. The Badgers were 17-2, in
the driver’s seat in the Big Ten
and starting All-American cen-
ter Frank Kaminsky along with
another future NBA Draft pick
in Sam Dekker.
But the Wolverines summoned
one of their best efforts of the
season, battling Wisconsin in the
most exciting game of the year.
With Michigan trailing late
in the game, sophomore guard
Derrick Walton Jr. scored seven
points in the final 24 seconds
— punctuated by a game-tying
3-pointer with 1.3 ticks left — to
send the game into overtime.
He finished with 17 points,
but in the end, his magic wasn’t
enough as Wisconsin outlasted
the Wolverines in a classic.
Coach of the Year: Carol
Hutchins, Softball
The years when Hutchins isn’t a
viable candidate for this award are
few and far between. Even so, her
31st season as Michigan’s softball
coach was special.
The
Wolverines
won
their
eighth straight Big Ten champion-
ship in dominating fashion, accu-
mulating a 21-2 record against
conference foes. The success con-
tinued in the postseason, where
Michigan won the Big Ten Tour-
nament for the first time since
2006.
The Wolverines didn’t lose a
game in the postseason until the
finals of the Women’s College
World Series in Oklahoma City.
Michigan finished the season
as the No. 2 team in the country,
the program’s best result since its
national championship in 2005.
Hutchins’ ability as a coach was
apparent in the non-strategic ele-
ments of the game as well. Though
she tends to project an image of
constant intensity, she allowed her
players to have what seemed to be
the time of their lives, “making
pizza” and scoring runs.
No coach at Michigan has
done more to further a sport than
Hutchins, and this year’s Wom-
en’s College World Series was the
most-watched version of the event
in history. Even Hutchins would
smile about that.
Team of the Year: Women’s
Softball
The Wolverines put together
one of the most dominant sea-
sons in their illustrious history,
finishing 60-8 and capturing
Big Ten regular-season, Big Ten
Tournament, regional and Super
Regional crowns. They lost to
No. 1 Florida in a hard-fought
Women’s College World Series
final, first losing 3-2 before eve-
ning the series with a 1-0 win
and finally dropping the winner-
take-all game, 4-1.
Until then, they had dominated
their opponents all season long.
They outscored them, 540-125.
Seven starters hit above .300. Five
smacked at least a dozen homers.
Four drove in at least 60 runs.
Two pitchers — senior Haylie
Wagner and sophomore Megan
Betsa — won at least 25 games,
posting nearly identical 1.75 and
1.72 earned-run averages.
When they captivated Michi-
gan fans all over the country dur-
ing the World Series, they proved
they were the Team of the Year.
DELANEY RYAN/Daily
Junior second baseman Sierra Romero led Michigan to the NCAA Championship game.
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Senior forward Zach Hyman scored the most points (54) by a Wolverine since 2010.