May has arrived and with it comes the postseason phase of the baseball and softball seasons. The B1G Softball Tournament is currently ongoing, with Michigan playing their first game later today. Baseball is also down to the wire, the final two weeks of the regular season before the conference tournament takes place over Memorial Day weekend. A lot going on as the Michigan teams enter the home stretch and we will dig into it today: 

Softball: Good, but recently frustrating 

My last piece was introducing softball's big upcoming weekend against Penn State, noting that there were two series left in the regular season and a strong finish was going to be needed to differentiate this team from last year's squad, which bombed down the stretch. The good news is, Michigan mostly proved that this team is different. They swept a solid PSU team in Happy Valley and then came home and took the first game of the series from Ohio State. The win streak was up to 14 at that point and it felt like the hot streak was going to continue forever. Then the OSU series finished in disastrous fashion and dampened the mood significantly. Let's break it down below. 

The Penn State series was a good test for this Michigan team, a matchup between Lauren Derkowski and Bridget Nemeth, two of the better pitchers in the B1G. Nemeth has been probably the second best pitcher in the conference behind only Northwestern's Ashley Miller, so I was heartened to see Michigan have some real success against her. They only got two runs in the first game, but with Derkowski's dominant pitching, it was enough for a 2-0 shutout win. Their next games were better, getting a couple runs off Nemeth in brief work when she came in for relief on Saturday, and then scratched out three runs against her on Sunday in a gutty win in extras. In total, Nemeth surrendered 7 ER against Michigan in 18 winnings of work, a 2.72 ERA for a pitcher whose season ERA is 1.68. That's fine with me. 

Michigan was able to sweep the series because it was a strong weekend for Derkowski and the rest of the pitching staff, but also because the bats battered PSU's non-Nemeth pitchers in the Saturday game. That middle game was a 14-3 bludgeoning, in between the two close, "playoff" style 2-0 and 3-2 wins. Michigan was able to get the sweep because the power continued to deliver, home runs from Maddie Erickson and Keke Tholl on Friday and Sunday, respectively, which are so big against ace level pitchers. During the blowout win in between, Michigan got great hitting from all over, Erickson, Jenissa Conway, and Lilly Vallimont all socking long balls, in addition to another great day for Ella Stephenson. 

[Katelyn Mulcahy]

It was the satisfactory sort of weekend that sent a message that this Michigan team was for real, locking up a top two spot in the B1G Tournament by sweeping a top 40 RPI opponent on the road. The final weekend of the regular season was back at home against Ohio State, a decent but not tournament-bound opponent. The Friday game was a throwback to some of Michigan's mid-April games, where iffy pitching and dreadful defense buried Michigan into a hole and required the offense to dig out of it, which they gladly did thanks to more clutch hitting from Erickson (two huge RBI doubles) and Ella Stephenson (insurance 2 run HR late). 

Heading into the Saturday game, Michigan was only 0.5 games back of Northwestern, needing to win out and have the 'Cats drop one of their last two against Indiana to take the regular season title. The Maize & Blue got the help they needed on Saturday afternoon from the Hoosiers, but that's when things sputtered. Over the final two games of the series, Michigan would put together their two worst offensive performances since February, scoring one total run across the two games. This was a shockingly poor showing at the plate from a team that has been able to sustain lively offensive efforts against a number of different levels of pitching. Michigan's pitching couldn't answer the bell, particularly on Saturday, and they lost the two games 6-0 and 2-1.  

[AFTER THE JUMP: takes and baseball]

Things Discussed:

• LSU is out of NIL money? They got outbid for an MSU DT and Brian Kelly says "We don't buy players." That'll be news to Bryce Underwood; hope his checks clear.
• Spartans getting in their feelings about Jaden Mangham possibly transferring to Michigan (or Ohio State or Minnesota). Want to prevent him from graduating. There's an intrastate program that allows you to finish your MSU degree at Michigan. Why can't this work for other guys? It's a formal in-state program. The reason academic programs like this don't associate with athletic transfers that much is schools other than Michigan are good at making exceptions for athletes. Michigan should have done so for Terrence Shannon; they probably were right to turn down Caleb Love.
• Brian: Good time to be a Michigan fan; long-term prognoses for OSU and MSU not great.
• Dusty May's presser: Best first presser ever? He's a great communicator/teacher who gave us a lot of information, addressed exact questions. He was watching OSU games for fun? Seth: He was probably watching OSU games because he thought he'd be coaching them.
• Dusty's offense: two point guards, wants all of his players to be facilitators so the ball can't get stuck, can't get trapped. All of these guys have an out: good passers or at worst they can shoot it over anybody. Kinda like Beilein's where the PG with a 64-bit decision tree. Dusty May wants lots of guys with 16-bit decision trees. Tough part: lots of teaching to get it down.
• Rubin Jones perfect glue guy. I'm calling this now: I'm the #1 Rubin Jones fan around here. No takesies.
• Competition in the Big Ten? Oregon and UCLA will be decent, MSU standing pat with a bubble team, OSU is new coaching, Purdue graduated everybody. Michigan will probably be…top 4, 6-seed? Expect them to lose some games early as they learn to play with each other.
• Roster May built is ideal but for a star. I call it the Dayenu roster because everybody's one flaw from being in the NBA. Craig: May wants to be fun as well as good. Seth: Sounds like he's one of us.
• Football in the break: Texas CB Terrance Brooks?. Watched him vs Washington last year, when he was getting burned because he was in man all day. He's..Vincent Gray? Technically solid, smart, big, good ball skills, not a burner. Need to give him help; Michigan would be a good fit because they use so much poach coverage to take away the post. Texas was terrible because they were playing so much press quarters with no help on the double post and fade. Michigan takes that away.
• Schools cutting sports because of paying athletes? They'll say that, but they shouldn't. They're paying just 10% of their budget to players; pro leagues pay 55%. Will happen at the mid-major level because their conferences don't make sense and football is already a massive expenditure that they finance with student fees. Brian: that's a marketing fee; they can just cut back on marketing.
• What we want to see from Congress: your cap is based on how many scholarships you give out.

[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]

NIL being taken seriously. I've heard this was supposed to happen a year ago, but better late than never:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- NFL Players Association (NFLPA) executive Terése Whitehead, an expert in brand building and athlete marketing, has been appointed as University of Michigan Athletics' first in-house NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) Executive GM in collaboration with Altius Sports Partners (ASP) on Wednesday (May 8). Returning to her alma mater, Whitehead brings extensive experience as Vice President of Consumer Products & Strategy at NFL Players Inc., the for-profit business arm of the NFLPA. Whitehead will spearhead Michigan's NIL program in her new role, leading the department's strategy to provide athletes with comprehensive support and resources to capitalize on their NIL opportunities.

I wonder how much the sudden movement on this after a couple of years of dithering has to do with Sherrone Moore and Dusty May replacing Jim Harbaugh and Juwan Howard. No offense to the prior coaches meant; it's just that Harbaugh and Howard were both very famous athletes who could reasonably believe their star power made NIL relatively unimportant. Moore and May are not, and neither has the kind of bulletproof track record Harbaugh had. Both will seek every advantage they can get.

[After the JUMP: Brian Kelly said what]