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2B — Monday, October 23, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsMonday
‘M’ wins Big Ten championship
in 1-0 victory over Northwestern
For the first time since 2011,
the Michigan field hockey team
is the outright regular season Big
Ten champion.
Friday afternoon, the fourth-
ranked
Wolverines
(8-0
Big
Ten, 14-2 overall) took on No.
8 Northwestern (5-2, 12-5) and
earned a hard-fought 1-0 victory.
In the first half, Michigan
outshot the Wildcats 8-3 and
notched three penalty corners
to
Northwestern’s
one.
The
Wolverines,
however,
were
unable to convert their chances,
and the two teams entered
halftime in a scoreless tie.
The second frame, though,
told a different story, with the
Wildcats determined to increase
their offensive aggressiveness.
Northwestern’s
pressure
resulted in two green cards for
Michigan just two minutes into
the second half. The Wolverines
struggled to maintain possession,
only worsening the situation.
But senior goalkeeper Sam
Swenson came up big — as she
has throughout her career —
and saved the Wildcats’ three
shot attempts. And as the half
continued, the Wolverines began
to find their footing. Around 20
minutes in, Michigan flipped the
script and put Northwestern on
the defensive.
The Wolverines earned six
penalty corners in the second
half.
They
converted
those
into only one shot on goal. But
that one shot proved to be the
difference.
Just 10 minutes remained in
regulation when junior defender
Maggie Bettez pushed the ball
out to sophomore midfielder
Guadalupe Fernandez Lacort,
who laid the ball off to senior
midfielder
Katie
Trombetta.
Trombetta’s shot was low and
powerful,
but
a
deflection
sent
it
over
the
sprawling
Northwestern goalkeeper to give
the Wolverines the lead.
“Northwestern’s
a
great
team and has a great defense,”
said Michigan coach Marcia
Pankratz. “We had a couple
of opportunities, and we were
just trying to stay patient and
execute under pressure the best
we can and it worked out.”
It was a dream finish to
her regular season career for
Trombetta, as her goal proved to
be the decisive blow that pushed
Michigan to the conference title.
“I mean, there are really no
words to describe it,” Trombetta
said. “We were just giving
everything we got and to finish
it off was just truly an incredible
feeling. It just really amped us
to finish those last nine minutes
and not give them anything.”
The
Wolverines
controlled
possession
after
they
took
the lead, but as time expired,
Northwestern
had
one
last
chance off a penalty corner. Still,
Michigan’s players held off their
celebration and stayed composed
in order to prevent a game-tying
goal.
“Don’t let them score, don’t let
them get anything,” Trombetta
said,
describing
her
team’s
mentality. “Just get it out and
just give it all you goalkeeper
your head down and keep your
feet out the way.”
The Wolverines had clinched
a share of the title last weekend
with wins over Iowa and Indiana,
but they maintained their focus
on Friday and were able to win
the conference outright.
“It’s a lot of pressure and they
just stayed poised and tried to
execute the gameplan,” Pankratz
said. “They played as hard as
they could, and I was just really
proud of them.”
The
Wolverines
celebrated
their championship at Ocker
Field on Friday evening, but
the team knows its season
is far from over with the Big
Ten Tournament coming up
next weekend, and the NCAA
Tournament soon thereafter.
“We want to work harder,
and we want to win another
championship,” Trombetta said.
“It’s just going to keep pushing
us to work as hard as we can.”
No surprise
This should come as no
surprise.
As Saturday’s 42-13 blowout
loss demonstrated, the
Wolverines are not in the same
league as No. 2 Penn State. And
they never were.
Though Michigan’s 4-0 start
planted seeds of optimism
that the
Wolverines
could be
better
than what
they were
projected
to be, it’s
time for the
harvest and
the crops
haven’t
grown.
Michigan is no longer in the
Associated Press Top-25 poll.
That’s a long fall from grace for
what was once considered the
seventh-best team in the country.
Maybe that ranking made
sense at the time. It doesn’t now.
To put it in perspective, Penn
State was ranked No. 7 at the
end of last season. That came
after a year in which the Nittany
Lions won the Big Ten and would
have won the Rose Bowl over
Southern California if not a last-
second field goal.
Of the five opponents
Michigan has defeated this
season, not one currently owns
a winning record. The best of
the five — then-No. 17 Florida —
might have been blown out 33-17
in the season opener, but seven
weeks later, the Gators are just
3-3.
Saturday night, while sitting
in the visiting media room, fifth-
year senior quarterback John
O’Korn tried to take a positive
spin on the outlook of the
Wolverines’ season.
“We can be as good as we
want to be,” he said. “We’re
gonna need some help now to
accomplish all of our goals but …
it’s up to us to make a decision to
make this season what we want it
to be.”
Before the
year began,
Michigan
insisted that its
goals centered
on winning
a Big Ten
championship
and contending
for the College
Football Playoff.
Even though
the Wolverines lost the majority
of their starters on both offense
and defense, they asserted that
they were still capable of putting
together that kind of season.
But maybe those shouldn’t
have been the goals for a
Michigan team with so much
roster turnover. Even those
Wolverines — the
team with the
most players
selected in the
NFL Draft last
April — blew out
the mediocre
competition before
falling short
when faced with
more challenging
opposition
courtesy of Iowa,
Ohio State and Florida State at
the end of the year.
At the start of this season,
Michigan may have surpassed
some of its expectations, thanks
in large part to its No. 1 overall
defense. Maybe before season-
ending injuries to redshirt junior
quarterback Wilton Speight
and freshman
receiver Tarik
Black, its
offense would
have had a
better shot of
doing the same.
But at this
point, with
contests
against No.
5 Wisconsin
and No. 6 Ohio
State still to come at the end of
the year, an 8-4 season seems to
be the most likely outcome for
the Wolverines.
After the game, O’Korn was
asked what message Michigan
coach Jim Harbaugh had for
his team given that strong
possibility.
“The fake
love’s gone,” he
recalled. “There’s
no bandwagon. It’s
us. ”
Fifth-year senior
linebacker Mike
McCray backed him
up, maintaining
the belief that
Michigan’s goal is
to win out.
As important as
a confident mentality is, so is a
firm grip of reality.
Just two weeks ago, the
Wolverines said the same after
an unexpected loss to Michigan
State. They argued that one loss
wouldn’t change their course of
their season. But it essentially
did.
Coming into the year, it was
expected that Michigan would
have to beat either Penn State,
Wisconsin or Ohio State in order
to prevent a step backward for
the program. Not many people
accounted for an additional loss,
especially to a Spartan team
coming off a 3-9 season.
Now, with two losses already,
it would be bold to predict that
the Wolverines will finish with
fewer than four.
For Harbaugh, it would be the
most losses of his tenure. After
the game, he insisted that the
Wolverines’ problems can be
solved.
“We’re gonna do better. We’re
gonna regroup, come back,” he
said. “ ... We solve it with our
team, and nobody can help us but
us. We put our best people on it —
our players and our coaches.”
When asked if they can be
solved this season, his answer
was a blunt: “Yes.”
I’m not so sure. Most of
Michigan’s problems have
to do with their youth and
inexperience, important factors
that somehow disappeared
from the public consciousness
after victories over teams that
now look headed straight for
nowhere.
Even those wins, from
turnovers and penalties to bad
decisions and halftime deficits,
showed that the Wolverines
have a lot of room to grow. Those
games should have been the
warning signs.
While the experiences will be
helpful for the future, that future
involves buying a 2018 calendar.
That should come as no
surprise.
Ashame can be reached at
ashabete@umich.edu or on
Twitter @betelhem_ashame.
ARNOLD ZHOU/Daily
Senior midfielder Katie Trombetta scored the goal that won the game and title.
AMIR ALI
For the Daily
SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Fifth-year senior linebacker Mike McCray maintains that Michigan’s goal is to win out, but that’s easier said than done with Wisconsin and Ohio State left to play.
BETELHEM
ASHAME
The fake love’s
gone. There’s
no bandwagon.
It’s us
We’re gonna do
better. We’re
gonna regroup,
come back