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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.

