All Blue Issue 5: Infinite Blue

We are now entering the busiest part of the atheltic calendar. The fall team sports are all in conference play, while golf, cross country, and tennis are just getting started. Not to mention fall ball exhibitions for softball and baseball and women's hockey opening its season this week. I will not dig out of the box score mines until mid-December.

I'm going to do a Monday special next week, with some field hockey and women's soccer bracketology. As long as I'm there I'll probably talk about the big scoreboards and how I think they're being used (mostly, quite well).

Threeish Previews

#22 Women's Soccer v. #4 Penn State, Thursday Sep. 28, 7p, B1G+

As of today, Penn State is the only ranked team that is scheduled to play at U-M Soccer Stadium this fall. Penn State has only one non-win this season, a draw in the opening match v. now-#1 UNC. In their nine wins since, they have allowed three goals. Now they'll show up in Ann Arbor to play one of the other most prolific defenses in the Big Ten. In this match, one goal on either side might just be enough.

Penn State spreads out the scoring pretty evenly. While Olivia Borgen leads the Nittany Lions with 4 goals, in conference play no player has more than one goal.

Don't get me wrong, Michigan's in "no moral victories" mode, but I'd feel pretty good if they come out of this with a point. That said, a win and some friendly results elsewhere and suddenly Michigan grabs a share of the conference lead. I don't think this is a big swing game when it comes to the overall season arc (though I'll be really annoyed if they drop out of the rankings with a loss to #4), but it could be a big swing game when looking at how the conference tournament bracket shakes out.

#15 Field Hockey @ Indiana, Friday Sep. 29, 3p, B1G+

In the Big Ten, you gotta be thrilled anytime you get to play an unranked team. Doubly so when you're #15 and looking for your first conference win. Sure, going on the road might be a tougher test than seeing the Hoosiers come to Ann Arbor, but confidence has to be high that the Wolverines will return home with their first conference win.

Indiana's season has taken pretty much the shape you'd expect it to if your only information about Indiana field hockey was "one of the only two not-elite teams in the conference". They have not beaten a ranked team, they have beaten almost all of the mid-majors they have faced (the specific exception: Miami (OH)). Indiana also lost in East Lansing. It's probably just slightly too early to declare them the worst team in the conference, but with the State loss the Hoosiers are on "winless in B1G play" watch.

FALL BALL SPECIAL

Happy fall ball! If you would like to watch the Wolverines play a ball-and-bat sport for free, this weekend provides your first opportunities (with a couple more to come).

Softball:
v. Toledo, Friday Sep. 29, 6p, FREE ADMISSION
@ Notre Dame, Saturday Sep. 30, Noon

Softball plays twice this weekend, once here v. Toledo and once in South Bend. The short recap of the Wolverines 2023 season is this: it's really hard to lose perhaps the best head coach in school history in any sport. Coach Bonnie Tholl and her pack of "oh yeah I remember them" assistant coaches (Amanda Chidester! Jennifer Brundage! Faith Canfield!) will look to right the ship in year two and return Michigan to national, or at least Big Ten, contention.

Mostly, we're going to concern ourselves with the newcomers here while also remembering that small sample sizes are small. Michigan brings in two Perfect Game Top 50 recruits, #32 Jenissa Conway (OF) out of California and #50 Erin Hoehn (P) out of Indiana. Also worth watching for is Lilly Vallimont, a redshirt freshman who was the #1 catcher in the nation coming out of high school but sat with injury last year.

I'm not going to get too deep into the opponents but: Toledo had a very similar record to Michigan, except they had it in the MAC. Notre Dame made the NCAA tournament, where they went 1-2 and were eliminated in the regional.

Michigan will host three more games this fall, a double-header v. Concordia on Sunday October 8th at 1, and Bowling Green the following Friday at 5:30.

Baseball:
v. EMU, Saturday Sep. 30, Noon, FREE ADMISSION

No doubt Carol Hutchins' retirement was the big story at the Wilpon Complex last year, but Michigan Baseball also debuted new coach Tracy Smith.  Smith led the Wolverines to a 28-28 record and two wins in the Big Ten Tournament.

Michigan is YOUNG. Fully half of the 42-man roster is incoming freshmen. On top of that, eight transfers join the Michigan roster this year. I am personally intrigued by grad transfer Kyle Dernedde, who made two all-regional teams while playing in NCAA Tournaments at powerhouse Oregon State. Among the freshmen, Collin Priest out of Florida was Perfect Game's 7th ranked 1B, and Bradley Link, also of Florida leads the Wolverines' new pitchers in the rankings.

Eastern finished a game above .500 last year and wear an extremely sick logo on their hats. After this, Michigan will play a neutral-siter against Kentucky next week in Cincinnati, before hosting the Great Lake Canadians on Sunday October 15th at noon.

Threeish Recaps

Men's Soccer

v. Rutgers, 3-2 W
@ Indiana, 0-0 T

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. A week after a 2-2 draw in Maryland opened conference play, Michigan remains unbeaten in the Big Ten.

After 20 minutes of play at U-M Soccer Stadium, Rutgers led 2-0, and held that lead at halftime. It was a familiar story, but on this night, wasn't the whole story.

Michigan got some life when Nolan Miller drew a foul in the box, and the penalty held up on VAR. Despite the Knights keeper getting his fingertips on it, Bryce Blevins converted to cut the Rutgers lead in half.

90 seconds later, it was tied. Moshtaba Al-Hasnawi corralled the ball at the top of the box and sent in a near-perfect pass to Alex Waggoner, who was waiting a few few feet from the goal line and flipped it past the keeper. Game on.

The Wolverines found their go-ahead goal on a beautiful free kick from Riley Ferch. A Rutgers defender got tangled with Waggoner just outside the box, and Ferch put enough arc on it to clear the wall of defenders and snipe it past the outstretched arms of the Rutgers keeper. Twenty minutes later, 3-2 was the final. A huge comeback and a reason for optimism for the rest of the season. (Not to harsh the vibe, but boy would this have been easier if the B1G+ broadcast had had a scoreboard.)

The Indiana box score is reminiscent of several women's box scores this season: Indiana pelted the goal, shots were 19-5 in favor of the Hoosiers, but Isaiah Goldson's 7 saves made it a moot point. Those 7 are a high for any keeper in Big Ten play (though the Big Ten seems to disagree with Michigan here, they say it was only six, I'll trust our good friend M Go Blue Dot Com).

#22 Women's Soccer

@ #18 Northwestern, 2-0 W
@ Illinois, 2-1 L

I for one won't be complaining about going 1-1 on the road, especially given that they won the cool one. Facing #18 Northwestern at their house, Michigan's two primary goal scorers did their thing. Freshman Gabrielle Prych added to her impressive debut season, giving Michigan a lead less than seven minutes into this match. The Wildcats played some impressive defense on the corner that led to the goal, but as it ping ponged around in front of the goal Prych picked it up and headed it just above the Cats keeper.

The match threatened to have the familiar 1-0 scoreline Michigan loves to post, but with just over eight to play, Sammi Woods sent it from long range outside the box and there was nothing for the keeper to do. It was her fifth this season, as she leads the Wolverines.

The Illinois game reminded us that the one remaining question for these Wolverines to answer is "what happens when the other team scores two". While its a bummer to break an eight-game unbeaten run that stretch to the second match of the season, it was going to happen eventually, and they can put it behind them quickly with a win against Penn State tonight.

Tennis

Men, Malibu Showdown (@ Pepperdine, Malibu, CA)

The men headed to Pepperdine for the Malibu Showdown, hopefully some of you caught a big on Cracked Raquets. (I, unfortunately, did not. I believe I was at the Rutgers game for much of the Saturday match.) This event had a weird format: teams went head-to-head like a normal match, but they didn't do team scoring. If they had, the Wolverines would have had a shot to sweep the weekend: they won all three "doubles points", and did not lose singles on any day. The match v. Kentucky would have been 4-3, Louisville was short a singles match and would have been a 3-3 draw, and the Pepperdine match would have been 5-2 had there been team scoring.

Jacob Bickerseth swept the weekend, winning every doubles set he played and all three singles matches. Individual #31 Gavin Young went 1-2, but I am particularly pleased by the 2-1 performance of Nicholas Steiglehner, nominally playing #5 singles (again, technically this wasn't a real match). With so much roster turnover, I trust the top guys to step up to replace Fenty/Styler/Maloney, but those wins at the bottom of the lineup will carry Michigan to match wins.

Women, Fall Ranked Spotlight (@ NC State, Cary, NC)

Meanwhile, the three ranked Wolverine Women were in a more traditional singles tournament in North Carolina, where they all put up winning records after early-round losses. #24 Kari Miller took a loss to #16 Irina Cantos Siemers of Ohio State in the second round of the main tournament, but only lost one set in her run through the consolation bracket. Miller picked up wins over the #28, 51, and 18 players in the country (in that order chronologically).

#41 Julia Fliegner lost her first two matches, but bounced back in the consolation bracket to pick up three straight wins. Like Miller, she only lost one set in her final three matches (to be fair, they did not play third sets, 1-1 matches went to a 10-point tiebreak but Miller and Fleigner won those too). #80 Lily Jones spread out her wins and losses, upsetting #9 Carol Lee (Georgia Tech) in the first round, while going loss-win-loss-win the rest of the way. Freshman Piper Charney also participated, going 2-3 in the A-2 draw for the second tier of players at the tournament.

What Else Is Blue

• Women's hockey starts this weekend with a pair of games: they'll play Concordia Friday in Canton before heading to Mount Clemens to take on MSU. Expect some woho stuff in this space.
• Volleyball is still looking for their first Big Ten win, and have two very tough road matches this weekend agains #13 Minnesota and #1 Wisconsin.
• Men's Golf won their second tournament of the season, and Wolverines Ben Hoagland and Yuqi Liu split the tournament title at -9. Hunter Thomson at 4th and Will Anderson at 8th rounded out Michigan's top 10 entrants. In retrospect this should have been a full recap but I got too excited about tennis, as a I am wont to do.
• Women's Golf led the final day at the Glass City Invitational at historic Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, helping them move from 7th to 5th in the final standings. Monet Chun's 67 helped her climb to 6th individually.
• #28 Men's cross country finished 14th among a loaded field at the Virginia invitational. 11 of the top 13 teams were ranked, and Michigan did outpace Princeton and Washington, both of whom are ranked higher. As usual, Tom Brady was the top finisher for the Wolverines.
• #25 Women's cross country finished second at the Badger Classic, falling short of host Wisconsin. Michigan did soundly beat #16 OSU, who finished 5th, and put Kayla Windemuller and Samantha Saenz in the top 5, at 2 and 4 respectively.