The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
9 — Monday, March 16, 2020
Sports

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily

Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico expected her team to get an NCAA Tournament bid this year.

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

The Michigan baseball team showed promise in the 15 games it played before the season’s cancellation.

Adjacent Stadium Boulevard, outside of 

Crisler Center, there’s a billboard.

During the day it’s merely a roadside 

distraction. Its rotating images about 

Michigan are only given attention when 

drivers sit still, stuck at the red light 

between Stadium and Main.

At night, its hundreds of LED panels 

stand alone as a source of light for the 

meager commuters driving past to look to, 

one of the only roadside attractions they’ll 

pass.

Most of the frames it shows are harmless: 

a plea for a passerby to buy football tickets, 

a lab photo with a declaration of being the 

best public school in the nation. There’s 

nothing someone looking at it would think 

twice about, until it reaches the photo of 

Jon Teske and Naz Hillmon framing the 

words “This week in Michigan basketball.”

This week in Michigan basketball is 

depressing. COVID-19 has forced the 

NCAA and Michigan to stop all athletic 

events for the rest of the year. There’s not 

much else to it, other than depressing. 

Seniors won’t see their season off the way 

they want to. Neither will coaches or fans 

or other players.

It brings a finality to the season that 

no one wanted, forcing us to reflect on an 

almost-done women’s basketball team far 

before anyone ever wanted.

Who knew that when a reporter asked 

Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico about 

reflecting on the season, “Now that it was 

over,” after its semifinal loss to Ohio State 

in the Big Ten Tournament, the season 

actually was over? And Barnes Arico’s 

gentle nudge at the end of her answer that 

the season was not over — there was the 

NCAA Tournament after all — proved to 

be wrong.

“This was a special group,” Barnes Arico 

said last Saturday. “It’s a special year. It’s 

kind of a bummer to end on a loss, but I 

think we put ourselves in a position with 

this tournament and with our schedule all 

season long to be an NCAA Tournament 

team.”

This 
year 
in 
Michigan 
women’s 

basketball was a rollercoaster, and it’s 

easy to look at the bad parts. The loss of 

superfan Chuck Raab on the day of the 

season opener, a fourth-quarter collapse 

against a weak Notre Dame team, Kayla 

Robbins’s ACL tear, blowout losses at 

home to Maryland and Indiana — a myriad 

of times to look back on and ponder, “If 

only.”

This season was long and grueling, 

with few payoffs for the Wolverines. An 

overtime victory over a Syracuse team on 

the program’s first-ever appearance on 

ESPN, sweeping Michigan State for the 

first time in years, a 15-point win over 

then-No. 18 Iowa on Pink Day — yet the 

biggest payoffs have, perhaps, a lot more 

to do with the future than with this year.

Freshman guard Maddie Nolan, after 

riding the bench for the first three months 

of the season, became a starter due to 

Danielle Rauch’s injury and literally stole 

the show in Indianapolis. Freshman center 

Izabel Varejão developed throughout the 

season to where, at the end, her potential 

was obvious: With Naz Hillmon, she will 

be unstoppable.

And then there are the two that you 

forget are sophomores, Hillmon and point 

guard Amy Dilk. Hillmon last week, amid 

the bombardment of depressing sporting 

news, was named one of five finalists for 

the best power forwards in the country. 

Her dominance became commonplace, to 

the point where no one blinked when she 

had a double-double by the third quarter.

Dilk, 
meanwhile, 
struggled 
with 

turnovers to start the year, but as the 

season progressed, the ball grew closer 

and closer to her hip until the pair were 

inseparable. She also became a scorer and 

distributor and figured out how to balance 

those two things.

While those futures are known, senior 

guard Akienreh Johnson’s is not. The 

team has applied for her to gain another 

year of eligibility, retroactively, after her 

freshman year was cut short with an ACL 

injury.

And now, with practices cancelled and a 

dead campus, she has to wait, not knowing 

if she’ll get that extra year — or when.

She’ll have to wait while that billboard 

outside Crisler Center will keep changing, 

rotating through its eight pictures as fewer 

and fewer people drive past it, blinking 

along as the country shuts down.

That 
billboard 
will 
be 
normal, 

promising normal, promising a next year 

for Michigan. One that will be more stable, 

with an ending.

For Wolverines, a long wild 

year holds promise for 2021

KENT SCHWARTZ

Daily Sports Writer

Last Wednesday night, I sat in front 

of a microphone and predicted that the 

Michigan baseball team would end its 

season at the College 

World Series.

Less than 24 hours 

later, 
the 
take 
was 

rendered freezing cold; 

the NCAA and Big Ten 

canceled all competition 

for the remainder of the 

spring sports season in 

response to the COVID-

19 pandemic. Now, not 

even 
the 
best 
team 

would be Omaha bound, let alone the 8-7 

Wolverines.

“(We haven’t) played a cupcake schedule 

like a lot of teams have done,” Michigan 

coach Erik Bakich said. “... We’ve played 

all (NCAA) Regional-caliber teams.” 

True. Pepperdine, the Wolverines’ final 

foe of the campaign and to whom they lost 

two of three, slashed a gaudy .301/.390/.441 

as a team. Connecticut starting pitcher 

Nick Krauth tossed 10 2/3 innings against 

the Wolverines, earning two wins and 

allowing just one earned run.

But other high-performing teams and 

players didn’t stop the Wolverines from 

taking three of four in their opening 

weekend of play in Arizona, winning an 

away series against Cal Poly or avoiding 

sweeps against the Huskies and Waves. At 

the end of the day, the greatest roadblock 

to Michigan’s success was Michigan itself. 

Offensively, 
the 
Wolverines 
were 

great at piggybacking off the success of 

teammates, but often unable to get the ball 

rolling. 

“I think the problem is that we didn’t 

use (my leadoff homer) to gain momentum, 

and we struggled the rest of the game to 

string quality at bats together,” Nwogu 

said after losing the last of three games 

to the Huskies, 9-2. “I think sporadically 

we put together some good at-bats but 

not enough to plate runs and that was the 

problem.” 

That was painfully evident in power 

outage defeats, and sometimes held true 

even in victory. In a 5-0 win at California, 

Michigan was stymied from posting 

crooked numbers despite working against 

the Golden Bears’ bullpen for eight 

innings. 

But 
when 
the 
floodgates 
opened, 

they gaped, and that was a cause for 

optimism. Against Cal Poly in Arizona, the 

Wolverines used two three-run innings 

— sending the entire order to bat in the 

first — to put up an eight-spot that lasted 

despite a catastrophe in the bullpen. 

A near-constant shuffle of the lineup 

and relievers didn’t help maintain this 

success.

“We haven’t had the same lineup twice 

which always leads to inconsistencies,” 

Bakich 
said 
after 
last 
weekend’s 

Pepperdine series. “But in the early part 

of the year you just have to experiment to 

find your best nine and we still don’t know. 

We are still trying to figure that out.”

Bakich had just begun to figure that out. 

A step in the right direction was moving 

junior shortstop Jack Blomgren from 

second to third in the order; Blomgren 

responded by reaching base 16 times in the 

ensuing eight-game span.

“I think it was just to split up the right 

handers,” Bakich said. “We want Jack up 

in the first inning, but I don’t think there 

was any strategy behind it other than 

sandwiching a left-hander between him 

and Nwogu.” 

By playing 31 of his 36 guys in the 

season’s first and only month, rather than 

sticking with nearly exclusively veterans, 

Bakich had a lot of similar decisions to 

make. And at season’s end, a core group of 

starters was starting to emerge.

Freshman outfielder Clark Elliott was 

becoming a fixture in right field, freshman 

Ted Burton and sophomore Cam Hart 

formed a yin and yang at third base and 

freshman Jimmy Obertop began to take 

over the first-base job. Redshirt freshman 

left-hander Steven Hajjar and junior right-

hander Blake Beers were the rotation’s 

rookies, but each pitched to lower ERAs 

than ace junior right-hander Jeff Criswell.

With junior outfielder Jesse Franklin 

and projected closer, sophomore right-

hander Willie Weiss, winding down 

rehab on their injuries — along with a 

more solidified group of starters — the 

Wolverines could have reached a perfect 

storm 
against 
significantly 
weaker 

competition. 

The bright spot is that everyone on the 

roster who would like to return will be 

able to do so for the 2021 season, thanks 

to eligibility relief for spring athletes. 

With all the pieces able to return, Bakich 

can continue to assemble the puzzle of 

the starters on which he was nearing 

completion this year. 

“The number one goal every year is to 

add as much value as we possibly can to 

an already storied program,” Bakich said 

at the team media day. “So last year going 

into it we wanted page 153 in the Michigan 

history book to be bookmarked for all 

time, and it’s the same goal this year.”

That goal, of course, is no longer 

attainable.

The value from team 154, though, may 

not come with a trophy, but with a group 

that showed the capability to power 

Michigan to Omaha come summer 2021.

JACK
WHITTEN

In 15 games, ‘M’ showed what 

next year could hold