Michigan plays assertively in win streak
The No. 25 Michigan baseball team is
riding a five-game winning streak, which
includes a series win over archrival Ohio State
and a sweep at Minnesota. But the Wolverines
still feel there’s room for improvement.
“I still don’t think we’re playing our very
best baseball yet,” Michigan coach Erik
Bakich said. “I still think there’s plenty of
opportunity to get hot.”
Their best could still lie
ahead, but by playing more
assertively,
Michigan
has
undisputedly heated up over
the past five games.
Bakich
saw
a
glaring
weakness earlier in the season:
complacency.
Michigan
often mirrored its opponents,
trading scoreless innings and
only scoring when trailing. It’s
easy to overlook instances of
this complacency because the
result is usually a dramatic,
late-inning victory. Consider the 10-inning
win against Penn State on Mar. 27 — in which
the Wolverines came back from a five-run
deficit — or the 6-5 win against Maryland on
Apr. 4, when the two teams traded runs and
Michigan was simply the last to score.
But sometimes, the strategy backfires and
the Wolverines’ opponent is last to score.
Such was the case in an 8-3 loss to Iowa
on Mar. 7, when the Hawkeyes scored six
unanswered runs in the final three innings,
and a 10-inning, 3-2 defeat at Penn State on
Mar. 26.
Michigan has long been aware of these
tendencies, but initially struggled to make a
change.
“We can’t wait around to the ninth inning,”
senior designated hitter Danny Zimmerman
said on Apr. 5. The day before, the Wolverines
trailed Northwestern 4-1 in the ninth but
then loaded the bases for Zimmerman, who
represented the winning run. He struck out.
“We can’t always win in the ninth; we’ve
got to do it earlier.”
Added Bakich on Mar. 22, after a
comeback against Michigan State fell short:
“You still have to have a sense of urgency
each inning. You can’t just wait and expect
that (a ninth-inning comeback) is always
going to happen.”
Over the past five games, though,
Michigan has played more assertively,
scoring early, pitching well and keeping its
opponent out of contention from the start.
Its starters combined for a commanding 2.15
ERA during that stretch. The bullpen never
let the opponent back into any game. On
defense, the Wolverines committed just four
errors and turned 10 double plays. They also
scored early and often, whether adding to a
double-digit onslaught or sealing a win with
a few insurance runs.
In the second game of last weekend’s series,
when Michigan traded zeros with Minnesota
for the first eight innings
before breaking the scoreless
tie with a four-run ninth, that
complacency seemed to be back.
But sophomore right-hander
Cameron Weston contributed
an assertive seven innings of
shutout ball and junior right-
hander Willie Weiss earned the
win with 1.2 innings in relief,
striking out every batter he
faced.
“It’s not always based on
hitting,” Bakich said. “What
Cam Weston and Willie Weiss
did yesterday from the pitching side of things
was very loud as well.”
The Wolverines are becoming assertive
at the right time; they’ll need to play that
way in upcoming matchups against Indiana
and Nebraska, their two toughest opponents
of the season, to keep their Big Ten
championship hopes alive.
“That’s what’s needed to be a successful
team,” Bakich said.
JACK WHITTEN
Daily Sports Writer
GRACE BEAL/Daily
While early in the season, the Wolverines relied on strong late-game
performances, they’ve been scoring early and often in the past two series.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
18 — Wednesday, April 21, 2021
‘M’ wins Big Ten title
On Saturday, the No. 3 Michigan field hockey
team celebrated a senior class that had notched
one postseason and three regular-season Big Ten
titles, in addition to a Final Four appearance in
2017. With such a decorated class being honored,
the Wolverines were determined to send their
seniors off with a win.
They did just that. Michigan (10-2 overall, 6-0
Big Ten) defeated Indiana (1-13, 4-3 Big Ten) 3-0, in
a season-ending matchup designated as non-con-
ference due to COVID-19.
While the team’s final
game at Phyllis Ocker Field
was a celebration of the
Wolverines’ departing vet-
erans, the younger players
impacted the match early.
Freshman
midfielder
Pilar Oliveros scored the first
goal of her Michigan career
with about a minute remain-
ing in the first quarter. Redshirt junior forward
Kate Burney extended the lead later on, netting her
first of the season. Once again, the Wolverines were
buoyed by the performance of its depth pieces.
“The Big Ten is a very difficult conference
with some extraordinary teams, so being able to
win the (regular season) championship has a lot
to do with our depth,” Michigan coach Marcia
Pankratz said. “We can really run two full lines of
players and keep everybody fresh, so that versa-
tility has meant a lot and you can see it today with
Pili and Burney getting those first goals.”
During the stretches of time between those
two scores, the Wolverines continued to dominate
the Hoosiers with possession but struggled to find
the back of the net from scoring range. In physical
matchups that leave many bodies in the scoring cir-
cle with more loose officiating on the field, frustra-
tions can mount. The Wolverines, however, stayed
patient to eventually find both goals.
“Indiana’s goalie played a great game,” senior
fullback Halle O’Neill said. “I mean, we had 29
shots on goal and we only put in three, so I think
she played out of her mind. When you’re getting
opportunities like that, eventually a couple of
them will go in and it doesn’t have to be pretty —
but pulling out three goals
when they played like that
I think is still a good accom-
plishment.”
Michigan extended its
lead with a third goal in the
fourth quarter, notching a
score off of a tip from the
penalty corner by senior
midfielder Kayla Reed.
With an urgency to pre-
pare for bigger things ahead, the Wolverines
sought to continue cleaning up their finishes on
the attacking end in the closing minutes. While
junior goalkeeper Anna Spieker never had to
touch the ball, occasional chances to sharpen up
on defense also emerged.
As the clock hit all zeros, Michigan sent its
seniors off celebrating with the best parting gift
possible: a Big Ten regular-season title. And in a
hard-fought battle to find the scoring column, its
tendency to stiff-arm adversity was at the center
of it all.
JOEY GOODSIR
Daily Sports Writer
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Michigan’s senior class has celebrated three regular-
season Big Ten titles during its four years in Ann Arbor,
the last of which was clinched on Saturday night.
SportsMonday: What we have
The last picture I have on my phone from
inside The Michigan Daily newsroom is of
a computer screen. I was laying out the last
newspaper I ever made there. The headline
on the top banner of the sports section reads,
“THE END.”
In a normal place, with
normal people, exporting
that sports section at 1:05
a.m. would’ve been the
end for me too. I would
have shut down the
computer, gone home and
retreated into months of
quarantine.
But because The Daily is The Daily, that day
— the day the world stopped — became one of
my favorite college memories. For hours, long
after the paper had been sent to the printer, we
danced on tables, played cards and belted out
Electric Love. One kid, who I’ll only name as
Chunks, spent the evening eating cardboard
and wearing an empty case of Bud Light over
his head. The seniors hugged and cried, and I
did too, because I knew it would be my last time
seeing any of them as college students.
If I had been a little more prescient, I would
have known to soak up the memories and take
a picture or two for myself. Back then, though,
we all assumed we’d be in the newsroom by
September. So this week, when I went back to
remember that night, I found my camera roll
barren. The next photo after that last picture of
InDesign is of an empty campus the next day,
our new reality having already set in.
And yet, a year later, I’m not particularly
upset I don’t have any pictures from that night.
The memories and the friendships don’t need
to be immortalized on a phone screen. I’ll
remember them forever regardless.
As I searched for manufactured memories
for this column, that’s the lesson I realized.
None of the group pictures and planned events
are what I’ll remember from college a decade
from now.
What I’ll remember is jumping in the
Huron River in the middle of the night, soaked,
shivering and laughing with my best friends. I’ll
remember stuffing 11 people in a sedan on the
way back from Denny’s because we didn’t want
to pay for an Uber. I’ll remember going sledding
in kayaks long after production had ended, even
though I had an 8:30 the next day.
None of those moments fill up my camera
roll or social media feeds. Just as importantly,
none were planned more than a few minutes in
advance.
As much as anything, that befits the last four
years. For just about every freshman, going off
to college is accompanied by some big dream
manifested throughout their high school years.
For me, that dream was to major in statistics
and work in an MLB front office. A major reason I
chose to go to Michigan was its extracurriculars,
but I was more focused on the sports analytics
club than the student newspaper.
Fortunately, my freshman year roommate
joined the section, so I followed his lead and
went to a mass meeting. But even when I
started writing regularly as a freshman,
eventually covering the baseball team, I never
envisioned this.
That summer, I had a conversation with
Rian, a friend I’d met at The Daily, predicting
our futures at the paper. I told him I was
hopeful for a spot on the hockey beat, but that
after sophomore year, I’d have to devote my
attention to pursuits beyond journalism. He
wanted to cover men’s basketball as a junior
and football as a senior.
Three years later, we’re still good friends.
He’s been a fantastic editor but decided to
pursue a career outside of journalism and
didn’t do a beat after sophomore year. Instead,
over the next few months, I was the one who
fell headfirst into the career he had ordained
for himself.
By my second semester, I was spending
every moment I could at The Daily. I learned
this strange “euchre” game I had never heard
of. Even if it usually ended with Paige sticking
a pair of 5s on her forehead in celebration, I
played because it was an excuse to hang out
with my new friends until the sun came up.
That spring will forever be the time I most
associate with college. If, 70 years from now, I
look back on it as the best time of my life, I won’t
regret a thing.
But, like everyone in my grade, my college
years will forever be inextricably tied to
COVID-19. It’s easy now, with two weeks until
graduation, to think about what the pandemic
took from us. The Rick’s pushes we didn’t
have, the stories we never told, the nights of
production forced onto Zoom.
Instead, though, I find myself thinking
about what The Michigan Daily gave me
over the past year. When online school felt
meaningless, this job gave me a purpose. As
a writer, I was able to tell the stories that gave
Michigan fans an escape. As a leader of the best
goddamn student sports section in the country,
I was able to provide an outlet for freshmen
entering an overwhelming campus with no
in-person means of making friends.
On a personal level, The Daily gave me the
group of eight friends that we turned into a
social bubble from September to April. It may
not have been the year anyone envisioned, but
we laughed at Love It or List It, withstood some
earth-shaking back cracks and got to watch
Jared shotgun a Truly in Joe Pleasant’s name.
And together, we got through it. As of
this week, all nine of us are at least partially
vaccinated. The end is finally in sight.
Equally close is the end of my college career.
It would be easy to focus on that instead. The
future is a scary thing. I’d be lying if I said I
knew everything it holds.
It’d be easy, too, to focus on the year we
didn’t have. When I look back on my camera
roll, there won’t be photos from senior year
inside 420 Maynard or at my last State News
game. But I’ll always have the NYPD runs and
the kayaking trips, the empty stadiums and the
packed rental cars.
And that’s even better.
Mackie can be reached at tmackie@umich.
edu or on Twitter @theo_mackie. He wants
to thank every person who’s made the last four
years so special. That includes anyone who’s ever
read one of his stories.
SportsMonday: Walls, memories and what The Daily means
Last October, Theo Mackie and I got
invited to the newsroom one Friday morning
to unpack boxes. It was great to get back in the
building, but felt a little
wrong that we needed
someone to open a locked
door to access a place that
we spent most of college.
That compounded once
we got inside.
By
some
awful
coincidence, The Daily
redid its roof last summer,
which meant that as we all sat locked in our
homes, the newsroom had to be stripped bare
of its personality. The posters and random odes
to inside jokes long forgotten were packed in
boxes, to avoid anything getting ruined by
falling dust and debris.
We were supposed to be there to do our best
to put it back together.
I stressed about the cork boards next to the
sports desk and the posters that went nearby. I
wanted it to look and feel the same, but I could
just draw from my memory. I taped Kevin
Santo’s old ID to the cork board, next to Jake
Lourim’s notebook and the Santa hat Tien Le
took from Madison Square Garden. No one
who returns there in the fall will have any real
connection with those items, but part of me still
worries they’re in the wrong place, next to the
wrong thing.
I’d try to explain the significance of that, but
that would require explaining the significance
of The Daily. And despite having spent the last
three years daydreaming about what I’d write
in this column while bored in class or in the
car, I’m still really struggling to do that. It’s less
something I can articulate, but rather than a
flood of memories crashing down.
Nervous emails to Kevin and Betelhem
Ashame and Max Marcovitch about joining
months before school started, quickly fast-
forwarded to two years later, dropping
everything to meet Max at Hunter House in
the middle of the day to piece together an atom
bomb dropped in the middle of our first month
as Managing Sports Editors. A 3 a.m. phone
call from Tien — “come play basketball” — then
migrating to West Quad to hang out with Lily
until the sun came up. Drives through the
night that bleed together, with Max and Mike
Persak, with Theo and Aria Gerson. Waiting
for the building to clear out as production
wound down so we could sit and play euchre
until Paige set her timer to go home. Tapping
idiots on the shoulder at a party and telling
them to come to The Daily so maybe they’d
eventually understand this place the way I do.
Coming out of the closet and having my worst
fears dissolve.
I never expected The Daily to be any of that
for me. It was supposed to be a way to advance
my career, to do sports journalism. The Daily
would help get me there, and in the meantime
I’d stay holed up in my room watching games.
That was my plan for college. A standing 4 p.m.
Sunday meeting was, at best, an inconvenience
to be worked around. If I walked quickly, I
could get back for kickoff of the next window
of football games.
Then something funny happened. I
started skipping NFL Sundays — and if you
knew me at all at that age, you’d know that
wasn’t a thing I ever did. I once made my
poor mother drive an eight hour round trip in
one day instead of staying the night because
the place we were going didn’t have access
to watch Monday Night Football. But here
I was, at 5 p.m. on a Sunday, sitting at the
sports desk with my back to the television,
not caring about what I was missing.
When they ran for MSE, Mike and Orion
Sang said they wanted The Daily to be a place
people went when they didn’t need to be there,
to do homework or just hang out. I took that to
the greatest extent I could and started showing
up every night. It was one of the best decisions
I ever made, because the best memories
originated from when I didn’t have to be there.
It was a little bit tempting to write this
column about the pandemic, and I think
there’s a part of every kid in college right now
(or at least those among us with the extreme
privilege that COVID-19 hasn’t touched our
lives in a more direct way) that will always
feel bitter over losing some percentage of the
best time in our lives. But my overwhelming
emotion from the last 13 months is a deep
appreciation for everything I had in college
beforehand, the memories I’ll always hang
onto and those I made this year because of
friends I met at The Daily.
One of my fears is that, post-COVID-19,
The Daily will change into a place people don’t
go unless needed. Zoom is convenient. So is
cutting down on print, doing less work and
staying in so you can watch football or catch up
on school. Caring about the minute details of
the items surrounding the sports desk feels like
a manifestation of that fear.
I want people to get out of The Daily what I
got out of The Daily, and that’s at least a small
part of it I can control.
But that fear is, of course, completely
irrational. The Daily works because people
who come into it get more than just a place
to build a resume, and nothing will change
that. Whether the sports desk looks right
to me or not doesn’t matter, because when
people come back to the building and make
their own memories, it will look right to
them.
And it will always look like home.
Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu
or on Twitter @ethan_sears. He’s so grateful
to everyone who made this such a rewarding
experience. You can find his work this summer
at the Los Angeles Times.
ETHAN
SEARS
THEO
MACKIE
Photo courtesy of the Sears Family.
Photo courtesy of Theo Mackie.