2B — Monday, March 19, 2018
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Putting a spotlight on women’s sports
In observance of Women’s History
Month,
The
Daily launches
a series aimed
at telling the
stories
of
female
ath-
letes, coaches
and teams at
the University
from the per-
spective of the
female sports
writers
on
staff. Former managing sports edi-
tor Betelhem Ashame kicks off the
series with this column.
T
his month is almost
universally known for
March Madness, the
single best sporting event of the
year.
In the past weekend of the
NCAA Tournament, there was
the historic 20-point upset of
No. 1 overall seed Virginia at the
hands of No. 16 seed UMBC —
the only time the lowest seed has
beaten the top seed in the men’s
tournament.
There was No. 13 seed Buffalo
putting together a 20-point win
of its own over No. 4 seed Ari-
zona to secure the first tourna-
ment victory in program history.
There was No. 11 seed Loyola-
Chicago advancing to the Sweet
Sixteen on the back of not one,
but two game-winning shots
against No. 6 seed Miami and
No. 3 seed Tennessee, respec-
tively.
And of course, there was the
shot that wrote Jordan Poole’s
name in Michigan lore, as the
freshman guard — with his legs
stretched wide apart and a hand
directly in his face — made an
improbable, miracle shot to beat
the buzzer and punch the third-
seeded Wolverines’ ticket to Los
Angeles for the Sweet Sixteen.
But you already know all that.
I’d bet my bracket money on it.
There’s probably a lot about
this weekend you know noth-
ing about, though. For instance,
there’s more than one NCAA
Tournament in March.
And this isn’t the first time a
No. 16 seed topped a No. 1 seed.
Harvard upset Stanford in the
women’s tournament 20 years
ago.
That fact might catch you by
surprise. It certainly did for me
when I saw it on Twitter, in rela-
tion to UMBC’s feat. I’m just as
old as that game, and I had never
heard of it.
There have been notable
upsets in this year’s women’s
tournament, too. You just prob-
ably didn’t know about them.
There was No. 12 seed Florida
Gulf Coast stunning No. 5 seed
Missouri with a double-digit
victory — despite the Tigers’
best player dropping 35 points
— becoming the lowest seed to
advance to the second round in
the 64-team field.
There was No. 11 seed Central
Michigan securing a win over
No. 6 LSU for the first tourna-
ment victory in program history
as the first 11-seed to win since
2015. Mere hours later, there was
No. 11 seed Buffalo pulling off a
20-point upset as well by beating
No. 6 seed South Florida to also
earn its first tournament victory
in program history.
And Michigan, which made
the tournament for the first time
since 2013, advanced out of the
first round with a double-digit
win over Northern Colorado,
but expectedly couldn’t pull off
an upset of its own against No. 2
Baylor in Waco, TX.
Even as a female former man-
aging sports editor of this paper,
I admittedly didn’t know much
about the women’s tournament
this year, either. Besides that
Michigan part, I had to do some
searching to find out what I just
told you.
While the men’s tournament
has been broadcast all over CBS,
TNT and TBS, the women’s
tournament has been relegated
to ESPN2 — the secondary chan-
nel of the network branded as
the worldwide leader in sports.
That isn’t a new phenomenon for
women’s sports.
Even on the professional
level, for example, the WNBA
constantly finds itself stuck on
ESPN2, while the NBA spreads
its games between ABC, TNT
and ESPN. With a lower volume
of coverage, it isn’t hard to see
why women’s sports struggle to
come out from behind the shad-
ows.
There’s more you should know
about this weekend as a Michi-
gan fan.
The swimming and diving
team finished in fourth place at
the NCAA Championships and
secured a team trophy — earn-
ing 267 points, the third-highest
total in program history — for
the first time since 1996. Nine
swimmers, one diver and four
relays scored points, includ-
ing three national runner-up
finishes, to help the Wolverines
become the first Big Ten team to
earn a top-five finish since that
same year.
The gymnastics team cap-
tured its fourth Big Ten regular-
season title in the past six years
with its 15th win of the season at
the Big Five Meet. Michigan now
has an opportunity to claim its
fifth consecutive Big Ten Cham-
pionship next weekend as well.
The water polo team ran its
win streak to 15 games with
three more victories over ranked
opponents to finish off its non-
conference slate — the sixth time
in program history the Wolver-
ines have achieved that many
consecutive victories.
The softball team did one bet-
ter and extended its win streak
to 16 games with four victories
by a combined margin of 35-0,
including an exclamation mark
courtesy of freshman right-
hander Sarah Schaefer, who
tossed the first perfect game of
her Michigan career.
Those are just five of the 14
female teams that don the maize
and blue. I could go on, but I’ll
stop there.
A few synopses don’t do jus-
tice to these teams. Their stories
are just as layered and their
accomplishments are just as
important as those of the men’s
teams that have been in the
spotlight all this time. They just
haven’t received the same level
of attention.
There’s one more thing you
should know about, if you didn’t
already. March is also Women’s
History Month. It’s an oppor-
tune time to put a spotlight on
these women.
It’s our responsibility to write
about them. It’s your responsibil-
ity to read about them.
Women’s sports have been
undervalued in society for a long
time, even after Title IX. If you
didn’t already, hopefully now
you know.
So over the course of the next
two weeks, in accordance with
Women’s History Month, my
fellow female sports writers and
I will be putting a spotlight on
their stories.
They deserve to be told. We
are here to do the telling.
Ashame can be reached at
ashabete@umich.edu or on
Twitter @betelhem_ashame.
EVAN AARON/Daily
The men’s basketball NCAA Tournament is going on, but there should be more attention paid to women’s sports.
BETELHEM
ASHAME
A familiar miracle
WICHITA, Kan. — You’ve
seen that play before.
Alright,
so
you
haven’t
seen
that
exact
scenario,
with Jordan Poole hitting an
improbable, contested three
to send the Michigan men’s
basketball team to the Sweet
Sixteen. But you’ve seen that
set before.
Think
back
to
January,
when the Wolverines needed
free
throws
from
senior
guard
Muhammad-Ali
Abdur-Rahkman to overcome
Maryland.
It’s the same set.
Freshman forward Isaiah
Livers
inbounded
the
ball
with a baseball pass to Abdur-
Rahkman, who turned at half
court and tried to make a play.
Back then, he got into the
paint and was fouled. This
time, he was cut off by Houston
defenders, and he had to dish it
off to Poole.
And the fate of the entire
season rested in the hands of
the
boisterous,
inconsistent
freshman from Milwaukee.
Even before that, it would
have been hard to console
Abdur-Rahkman with the hope
that the play has worked before.
Moments earlier, he missed a
layup that would have tied the
game with six seconds left. He
kneeled under the basket after
the whistle blew, watching
his college career flash before
his eyes, as the Cougars had a
chance to ice the game away at
the free-throw line.
“I think people were down.
I
especially
was,”
Abdur-
Rahkman said. “But I’m a
leader, so I have to keep that
stale face and show strength.
Coach (Beilein) was trying
to boost us all up, because
we were all kind of down. We
thought it was over.”
Duncan Robinson was in
a similar position. With 2:06
remaining, he was called for
his fifth foul in a tie game.
It was just the fourth time
the
fifth-year
senior
forward
had fouled out
in his Michigan
career, yet there
he was, walking
to the bench for
quite
possibly
the final time
in his Michigan
career.
Junior
forward Moritz
Wagner went over to Robinson
and tried to tell him that this
wouldn’t be his last time, that
he had seen his team pull out
close games before and that
he was about to see it again.
But it’s hard to believe at that
point.
“Michigan’s
done so much
for me, and I
just didn’t want
to go out that
way,” Robinson
said. “You know,
that second half
I didn’t feel like
I played well.
I just — I want
it
more
than
anything for my
teammates, my coaches, this
fanbase, the whole University,
and I didn’t want to go out
like that. For a second there,
you try not to go to that place
mentally, but I was fighting it.
I was fighting it.”
John Beilein might have
been the only one who kept
the faith. Maybe it was just the
coach’s façade they must put
up to keep their team calm, or
maybe it was that he knew his
end-of-game play had worked
before.
Either way, after Abdur-
Rahkman’s missed layup, he
called his team over to talk
about the situation. Beilein
pointed to the clock. He was
trying to get his team to believe
that they had one last chance.
“We had a lot of time
that we’ve been practicing
the play,” Beilein said. “We
decided we were going to run
it. We had time.”
Added Livers: “He literally
said, ‘Look. Look at that much
time.
That’s
too much time.
We’re
good,
we’re
gonna
go
with
that
famous
out-of-
bounds play.’ He
has a lot of trust
in that play.”
But
it
isn’t
just
that
the
play had worked
before or that
the Wolverines have won close
games before.
Jordan Poole has literally hit
that shot before.
Just
last
week,
when
Michigan
held
an
open
scrimmage, Poole hit a game-
winner from almost the same
area of the floor.
“It’s like the same spot,”
said fifth-year senior guard
Jaaron Simmons. “That’s crazy
to me. That’s crazy to me. But
shoutout to JP, man.”
That’s not all, either. Livers
says he’s seen Poole take the
shot countless times before. In
fact, he takes it at the end of
his warm-up routine.
“I
definitely
just
dream
of
shots
like
this,”
Poole
said. “I’m the one that, when
the clock’s going down at
shootaround,
I’m
the
one
dribbling and waiting to see
if I can make the last shot. I
missed it earlier when we were
doing shootaround, but this
last one I didn’t miss.”
There’s
one
more
place
you’ve seen that shot before.
It’s in your dreams.
Any
kid
who
has
ever
touched a basketball has taken
that shot in their driveway.
You count down the seconds
in your head, like Poole at
shootaround, and you wait
until the last possible moment
to heave it from deep and send
your hypothetical team to a
championship.
It isn’t the same, because
Poole’s shot was real, but
you’ve seen that shot before.
On
Saturday
night,
Beilein
called his go-to
play
with
the
season on the
line, trying to
salvage
more
time for Abdur-
Rahkman
and
Robinson
and
the rest of this
team.
Poole got the
shot that he and so many others
have dreamed about taking.
And
despite
everything
going on around him, it was
easy to see it go in.
EVAN AARON/Daily
Freshman guard Jordan Poole hit the game-winning, buzzer-beating 3-pointer to lift Michigan to a 64-63 win over Houston in the NCAA Tournament.
Jordan Poole’s shot may have seemed like a prayer. But it’s something many should be familiar with.
MIKE PERSAK
Managing Sports Editor
“I think people
were down.
I especially
was.”
“I definitely
just dream
of shots
like this.”