The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Tuesday, September 24, 2019 — 7
Just four days after falling
short in a five-set thriller against
Notre
Dame,
the
Michigan
volleyball team had something
to prove against the Fighting
Irish on Sunday afternoon.
Powered
by
sophomore
outside hitter Paige Jones’ third
consecutive double-double, the
Wolverines (7-3) finished their
non-conference slate on a high
note, exacting revenge on Notre
Dame, 25-23, 25-15, 20-25, 25-16,
in the second half of the home-
and-home series.
Michigan raced out to an
early lead, winning seven of
the match’s first nine points.
Freshman
opposite
May
Pertofsky exposed holes within
the Fighting Irish’s (7-3) serve
receive with a pair of aces,
forcing Notre Dame into an
early timeout. The middle stages
of the set were relatively even,
with the teams splitting the
next 26 points coming out of the
timeout.
Neither side was able to string
together more than two in a row
until the Fighting Irish scored
four unanswered points to tie
the frame at 23.
With the opening set on the
line, senior setter MacKenzi
Welsh took control of a broken
play. Notre Dame’s outside hitter
tried to roll a ball over her block,
but Welsh sent the ball to the
back corner on the first contact.
It landed just out of the reach
of a diving libero, giving the
Wolverines the only set point
they needed.
Michigan has been relatively
inconsistent
with
the
first
contact throughout the early
stages of the season, so Welsh
has
grown
accustomed
to
getting creative. When poor
passing puts the Wolverines
out of system, their senior floor
captain kept them in the rally.
“It’s a lot of running around
sometimes,”
Welsh
said.
“Consistently,
if
people
are
working hard defensively then
it’s me working twice as hard to
make sure that we’re putting the
next ball up and making the play
better. Just trying to get hitters
in the best position possible
while also fighting for the people
who hit the first touch.
“That’s the most important
thing in our gym — defense and
fighting all the way through the
rally.”
Michigan’s
emphasis
on
defense carried over into the
second set, particularly in the
front
row.
The
Wolverines
posted nine team blocks for
the match, with five different
players recording multiple block
assists.
Fifth-year
senior
middle
blocker Cori Crocker tallied
a season-high six blocks and
chipped in four kills. Even when
she wasn’t sending balls back,
her touches at the net slowed
most swings down before they
reached the back row.
“Sometimes (Crocker) tries
to be too big,” Michigan coach
Mark Rosen said. “ … She plays
big and sometimes she needs
to play a little more controlled
and not always so big. I thought
tonight she did that really well.
“Their
offense
is
very
patterned in what they do. I
thought our blockers did a good
job of picking up their pattern
and then being very efficient
against it.”
When
it
came
time
to
finish the sweep, however, the
Fighting Irish fought back. They
came out of the locker room
with a refined approach that
emphasized tactical serves at
different distances in an effort
to move the Wolverines’ passers
off their line. It kept the unit off-
guard, thus making the back row
less aggressive in anticipation.
Michigan’s
serve
receive
failed to adjust and its offense
suffered as a result. Without a
consistent foundation to work
from, Welsh spent most of the
set scrambling. The Wolverines’
third-set
hitting
percentage
was capped at just .100, their
lowest mark of the match by
over
175
percentage
points.
They committed eight errors, a
stark contrast to the nine total
mistakes they made in the three
other sets combined.
But in the fourth frame,
Michigan returned the favor
when it mattered most. The
Wolverines used a six-point
run midway through the set
to put the match out of reach,
holding Notre Dame to a hitting
percentage of -.088 — just its
second negative efficiency rating
in a set this season.
Fittingly,
Crocker’s
sixth
block set up Michigan’s first
match point. The Fighting Irish
were held to a hitting percentage
of just .117 for the match — a
74-point
improvement
from
the mid-week matchup for the
Wolverines. Rosen spoke highly
of his team’s defense during
Wednesday’s loss in South Bend,
but noticed one key difference in
his team’s blocking in Sunday’s
rematch.
“Tonight, we got (blocks) on
the stat sheet,” Rosen said. “We
blocked them to the point where
they really weren’t coverable as
much.”
In the first set of Sunday’s
match against Notre Dame, May
Pertofsky stepped up to the line to
serve and quickly earned Michigan
a point to go up 5-2 on a service ace.
On the next play, the freshman
opposite hitter would once again
secure a service ace, forcing the
Fighting Irish (7-3) to call a timeout
and giving the Michigan volleyball
team (7-3) early momentum in a
game that it was in a breezy 3-1
victory.
Pertofsky, who has become
a
major
contributor
for
the
Wolverines in the early stages of
their season, has arguably been
the team’s best server, notching 13
service aces thus far this season.
She tied her career high on Sunday
with four total service aces, adding
two more in the match’s second
set. Despite her prowess on the
service line, Michigan coach Mark
Rosen believes that she still hasn’t
hit her full potential in that facet of
the game.
“Her serve is definitely a really
fun work in progress,” Rosen said.
“It’s getting better and better, and
when it’s on, it’s nasty.”
Added Pertofsky: “I’ve been in
practice working on getting my
serve more consistent, harder, and
I’m still working on it.”
Despite her prowess on serves,
Pertofsky
was
perhaps
most
effective in the front row, blocking
five shots and notching five assists.
Her ability to disrupt shots allowed
the Wolverines to extend rallies
against the Fighting Irish all match
long, many of which they won
thanks to Pertofsky’s set ups.
“I thought she was great
tonight,”
Rosen
said.
“She’s
learning how to be a very
consistent player, and for the most
part this year she’s been that.”
In the second set, Pertofsky
came up to serve with the game
tied early at three. She ripped one
into the left corner, scoring her
third ace. After a Notre Dame
error, Pertofsky once again scored
a service ace, giving Michigan a 6-3
edge and momentum that it would
carry to a 25-15 victory — the most
lopsided win of the match.
“I just went back there and said,
‘We really need this momentum
right now and just come out as
hard as we can,’ ” Pertofsky said. “I
was like ‘I’m just gonna go after it,’
so I served as hard as I could and
I felt the connection was really
good.”
In the fourth set, Pertofsky
once again came up big for the
Wolverines. With a seven-point
lead, she netted a kill on a spike off
a pass from senior setter MacKenzi
Welsh. On the next play, she
blocked a ball right in front of the
net and gave Michigan a 24-15 lead
on its way to a 25-16 victory to close
the match.
After
finishing
the
match
with 17.5 points to lead the team,
Pertofsky should continue to be
a force for the Wolverines as they
head into their conference slate.
Even though he knows there’s still
room to improve, Rosen couldn’t
be happier with his freshman’s
stellar outing.
“Tonight was a great match
for her,” Rosen said. “And it was a
great match against a really great
opponent.”
‘M’ takes fourth place
The Michigan women’s cross
country team came to the John
McNichols Invitational with
a chance to prove it belonged
amongst the nation’s elite. Led
by freshman sensation Erika
VanderLende — the number
one freshman in the country
according to FloTrack — the
Wolverines showed they are
close to it by placing fourth
against a 21-team field that
included three other top-10
teams.
This wasn’t just any early-
season
race,
however.
The
course at Indiana State is
the site of the 2019 NCAA
Championships for the 19th
consecutive
season,
though
this race was just 5,000 meters,
1,000
meters
shorter than the
championship
race.
Michigan was
also without a
few key runners.
Last year’s Big
Ten
Freshman
of
the
Year,
Ann
Forsyth,
ran unattached
along
with
freshman Amber Gall. As for
sophomore Jessi Larson, who
was a member of last year’s top-
four finishing squad at NCAA’s,
status is more complicated.
“It’s 50/50 if we have her for
the championship part of the
season, ” said Michigan coach
Mike McGuire.
VanderLende had a standout
performance for the Wolverines
on Saturday, coming in fourth
overall, behind only an NCAA
champion Werner and two
other seniors. As a Michigan
high school record holder in the
two mile and No. 1 nationally for
that event in 2019 at Rockford,
it shouldn’t come as much of
a surprise that VanderLende
is already competing at such a
high level. The race saw her go
with the lead group from the
gun and never fall off to the
chase pack. Her time of 16:40.1
is also the fastest time by a
Michigan runner at this course,
eclipsing the previous mark set
by Katie McGregor back in 1998
by over 20 seconds.
“She did a nice job moving up
through the third and fourth
kilometer,”
McGuire
said.
“Really happy with how she
ran. ”
VanderLende wasn’t the only
Michigan runner to finish near
the top, though. Seven other
Michigan runners finished in
the top 35, two greater than any
other team at the meet. As the
Wolverines’ biggest strength
coming into this season was
their depth, Saturday proved
just
that.
Juniors
Kathryn
House
and
Maddy Trevisan
came in second
and
third
for
the
team,
respectively,
and behind them
was a group of
five
Michigan
runners within
nine places of
each other.
“We
did
a
nice job packing, ” McGuire
said. “We’d like to and we feel
we can move that pack up closer
to our third runner.”
Though the Wolverines felt
good about their performances,
they
didn’t
pull
anything
unexpected and beat any teams
they weren’t supposed to. They
came in fourth behind the other
three nationally-ranked schools
present at the meet, and if they
want to be one of the teams to
beat, they’re going to need to
beat those types of teams.
“We were solid, but at the
same time we are capable of
getting better, ” McGuire said.
“If we sure some things up, we
can be a contending team going
forward.”
SPENCER RAINES
For The Daily
WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY
We can be a
contending
team going
forward.
Michigan flexes forward depth through four lines
Running
a
finger
down
the Michigan hockey team’s
lineups, next to the majority
of the players’ names will be
the letter “F” — indicating
their position, forward. Of the
27 players on the roster, 17 are
forwards. Among the forwards,
there’s a mix of returnees,
rookies,
even
a
graduate
transfer.
Questions will arise about
chemistry,
experience
or
defensive capabilities. But the
ability to score answers itself.
“Can he score?
Yes.
Can he?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.”
Looking up and down the
lineups, Mel Pearson expresses
the utmost confidence.
“We
have
four
lines,”
Pearson said. “Four lines, that
can play against anybody. Four
lines who can score, and I really
like that. I think that’s going to
be the strength of our team, are
our forwards.”
From the previous year, the
only forwards to depart from
the program were Josh Norris,
who left to join the Ottawa
Senators, and Brendan Warren,
who left due to graduation.
However, their contributions
were
limited.
Norris
was
injured halfway through the
season
in
World
Juniors,
cutting his season short with 19
points in 17 games. Warren only
tallied three points over the
course of the year.
“You take out Josh, and when
you look at it, he only played
half a year for us,” Pearson said.
“And then, Brendan Warren,
and that’s really it. We’ve added
some real good depth there.
And it’s going to be hard to fill
out our lineup every night up
front.”
The team moved on from
both players quickly, replacing
Norris with then-junior Nick
Pastujov on the top line for
half a year. Replacement for
Warren’s production will be
easy to come by.
“You can take one guy and
plugging other one, another
player in and I don’t think
you’re going to see a big drop
off or any real change,” Pearson
said.
On the flip side, 13 players
return — responsible for 180
points from the previous season.
In addition, Michigan added
freshmen
draftees
Johnny
Beecher and Eric Ciccolini
as well as graduate transfer
Jacob Hayhurst.
The
problem
went from who
would
replace
the
missing
production
to
who all will step
out on ice.
It’s
the
plethora
of
choices
that
Pearson thinks
is
beneficial
for the team. Having too many
talented forwards can only
muster
higher
competition
in practice. There are only 12
slots, not including the extra
skater. So, a maximum of 13
forwards can be dressed for any
one game, meaning there will
be forwards forced to sit that
can make an impact.
“But that’s what you want,”
Pearson said. “You want these
tough decisions.
“It’s going to be some really
good players not playing, not
dressing, let alone not playing
and just not dressing.”
Senior
defenseman
Luke
Martin
shares
the
same
sentiment
as
Pearson.
The
competition for the forward
spots,
he
thinks,
brings
excitement
in
the
rink
each
and
every
practice. All the
players, having
to defend against
them in practice,
are capable of
winning a spot
in his eyes.
“Right down
the line,” Martin said. “It’s
going to be tight. And it’s just
going to make, like I said, it’s
gonna make practice that much
better.”
The strength of having four
lines is invaluable. Whereas
some teams will focus on
having two strong “top lines”
and stack the remaining lines
with
situational
players,
Pearson believes the course of
action that best benefits the
Wolverines is to have all four
lines be capable of scoring,
and that Michigan has the
personnel to make that happen.
No checking lines. No energy
line. Just four lines that can
play and score.
And four strong lines allows
for wear-and-tear action. As
Pearson points out, especially
in professional hockey, the top
six forwards will form two
lines that strike after the third
and fourth lines put pressure on
the other team. The Wolverines
believe they have four lines
capable of keeping the pressure
on for 60 minutes, which will
result in higher-scoring games.
“I think we have four lines
that not a lot of teams are going
to be able to keep up with in a
match, game in and game out,”
Pastujov said. “ ... Just watch us,
hopefully, roll over teams with
four lines.”
Revenge
Four days after heartbreaker at Notre Dame, Wolverines beat Fighting Irish in four sets, 25-23, 25-15, 20-25, 25-16
DANIEL DASH
Daily Sports Writer
TEDDY GUTKIN
Daily Sports Writer
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Freshman opposite hitter May Pertofsky has notched 13 service aces thus far this season, including four against Notre Dame in Michigan’s win on Sunday.
TIEN LE
Daily Sports Editor
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Senior forward Nick Pastujov replaced Josh Norris midway through last season after Norris suffered an injury.
Just watch us,
hopefully, roll
over teams
with four lines.