All Blue: In Which I Am Wrong Several Times
After thinking far too hard about the bubble and bid thieves and what Michigan women's soccer had to hope for while sitting out the Big Ten Tournament, I looked at the numbers on Monday morning and tweeted that, unfortunately, I thought Michigan was headed to the "first four out" column.
Great news everybody, I was wrong.
Women's Soccer Makes the NCAA Tournament
Let's go!! I was wrong!! Despite finishing 9th in the Big Ten and missing out on the conference post-season, nine Big Ten teams made the NCAA Tournament and Michigan is one of them. As far as I can tell, they do not release a formal "last four in" in women's soccer, but based on RPI and women's soccer RPI guru Christopher Thomas having them out, I think we can reasonably bet Michigan got in by the skin of their teeth here. Or, if you'd prefer: despite an uneven Big Ten season, Michigan's non-conference success was too good to ignore.
Michigan will open on Friday at 7pm @ Princeton on ESPN+. Princeton is a 7-seed after placing third in the Ivy League regular season but losing in the Ivy Semis (which is also the first round in the Ivy).
It's hard to draw a ton of conclusions from Princeton's non-conference schedule. Michigan and Princeton had two mutual opponents; Princeton picked up a 0-0 home draw with in-state rival Rutgers (Michigan lost to Rutgers 2-0), and lost 3-0 in a trip to Penn State (against whom Michigan earned a 1-1 draw). Princeton's other most interesting result is a 3-2 win over Georgetown, who was ranked #10 at the time and ended up a 3-seed in this tournament.
The Tigers scored at a solid clip, averaging an even 2 goals/game, good for second in the Ivy. However, their 1.35 goals against/game is the second worst in the Ivy. Conceding that this stat probably says more about Michigan than Princeton, Tigers' keeper Tyler McCarney's 44 saves on the season is just over half of Stephanie Sparkowski's 79.
The Princeton player to watch is sophomore striker Pietra Tordin. Tordin scored 12 goals to tie for the Ivy League lead, following up on an Ivy League Rookie of the Year campaign as a freshman. It's not this simple, but if Michigan can stop Tordin they'll have a decent shot of winning the game: the Tigers were 7-0 in matches where Tordin scored, and just 2-5-3 (W-L-T) in matches where she did not.
If Michigan wins it will likely be a date with 2-seed Texas Tech, who plays FGCU in the first round. Other top seeds in Michigan's quarter of the bracket are #1 BYU and #3 North Carolina.
Cross Country Heads to Regionals
Both the men's and women's cross country teams are headed back to Madison, WI for the NCAA Great Lakes Regional. It is Michigan's third time on this course this season, having just travelled there for the Big Ten Championship after each made an early-season appearance in Madison as well.
As the Wolverines will recognize the course, they will also recognize the field. Indiana, MSU, OSU, Purdue, and Wisconsin will join Michigan in Madison. With the exception of Notre Dame, the rest of the opponents come from non-power conferences. The women have seen seven of their 28 non-B1G opponents at some point this season, while the men have seen nine of 25.
The top two teams at each regional are guaranteed berths in the National Championship meet, and 13 at-large berths fill out the championship field. The top four individuals at each region who are not on a team that is selected also qualify. To really get a look at an at-large, Michigan can likely finish no worse than fourth.
Both the men and the women are ranked fourth in the Great Lakes, so they need to beat their seed to automatically qualify. On the women's side, Notre Dame is tops in the region at #9 overall, while on the men's side it's host Wisconsin, at #5.
As far as I can tell this will not be streamed anywhere.
Men's Soccer Falls in Thrilling B1G Semi
This match had everything.
The tone was set when Indiana opened the scoring after 20 minutes (0-1), and then sixty-seven seconds later, Jason Bucknor equalized (1-1). A brief summary of events from there: A second Indiana goal (2-1). A third with four seconds left in the first half (3-1). An penalty kick awarded to Michigan after a VAR check (3-2). This insane pass leading to this insane header to equalize (3-3). A red card. More than one check to see if a ball had crossed the line (neither did). And then, just on the cusp of overtime, an Indiana goal to close out the match and with it, Michigan's season. 4-3.
Michigan will not make the 48-team NCAA Tournament, and it's hard not to think about the future. It was fun to say "this team almost never wins but on the bright side it almost never loses" all season, but when you look at the record in the cold light of day you can't say it's what Michigan was hoping for. There's reasons for optimism: it was better than last season, freshman keeper Isaiah Goldson affirmatively won the job and can keep doing it for three more years, the scoring was led by freshman Alex Waggoner. These are ingredients for a step forward.
Since Michigan's run to the Sweet 16 in 2019, a whole class has cycled through without playing an NCAA Tournament match (though, some of them may get one more shot, COVID eligibility is still a factor). Chaka Daley's tenure has often been feast or famine, and it's not hard to see which part of the cycle we're in. Michigan may have taken a step forward, but was it a big enough step? It's honestly very hard for me to see anyone else behind the bench for Michigan next season. Chaka Daley has been in a similar jam before, and followed it up with a Big Ten Championship and three straight NCAA Tourney berths. In my mind, he has another season of benefit of the doubt. But if next year finishes in similar fashion, it will be time to start thinking about what's next for Wolverine men's soccer.
Volleyball's Winning Streak
Once again, I was wrong. And once again, this is great news. When Michigan opened its Big Ten season 0-4 and then 1-10, I figured I was probably pretty much done thinking about volleyball for the season. Erin Virtue had her Year 0, it was going about how you'd expect a Year 0 to, and that was fine, but not very interesting to me.
Winning three straight is interesting! Not only did the Wolverines pick up a rivalry win against OSU (which I covered last week), the Wolverines continued their positive run of form in sweeps of Iowa and Maryland. Neither of these teams are exactly the class of the conference, with Iowa remaining winless and Maryland just a game better than Michigan, but after languishing in the bottom two all season any progress is good progress. It's especially impressive that Michigan hasn't dropped a set since the first set of the OSU match.
Michigan has six matches left and a real chance at going 3-3 and finishing with a middling Big Ten record. If we pencil in losses at #19 Penn State Friday and #1 Nebraska at the same time the next week, we're left with four coin-flippy matches. Rutgers (this Sunday) is still looking for their third conference win, Illinois and Indiana both hover around .500. Purdue's 9-5 record has me leaning loss, but maybe they can pull the upset at Cliff Keen.
Even if they can go 2-4 in this stretch, ending the season with a 4-4 November record would be a fantastic turnaround from where we were a few weeks ago. If the Wolverines can do that, there will be reason for optimism going into Erin Virtue's second year as head coach.