carol hutchins

[ED: Happy Softball Opening Day! Every year South Bend Wolverine writes these fantastic previews of Michigan's continuing softball dynasty. He put this up before the season started but they've already won two games, the second a no hitter by freshman pitcher Meghan Beaubien. I've added photos and captions. Enjoy the winning! -Seth]

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More great seniors where that came from! [JD Scott]

It seems as though Michigan softball is often at its best when other sports are scuffling.  Michigan’s mediocre 2005 football team played in the same year that Michigan softball won a national championship.  Softball’s 9-year Big Ten conference championship streak spanned the entire Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke years, covering some Beilein struggles and the late Berenson decline as well.  The high point of that run, the 2015 “Year of the Pizza” national runner-up squad, made names like Romero, Lawrence, Wagner, and Susalla household names while Wolverine fans were reeling from the collapse of the Hoke/Brandon fiasco.  If this pattern holds, then middling seasons in football, hockey, and arguably basketball as well just might be a good omen for the 2018 softball team.

Whatever the auguries, this is a team resolutely looking towards the future.  The conference championship streak is broken, all the biggest stars of 2015 have graduated, and one of the most exciting recruiting classes in program history has arrived in town, ready to get down to business.  The past is in the past.  With first-pitch just two days away, it’s time for a new generation to write some legends of their own.

Departures

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Will it be weird not having Megan Betsa around? You bet your ass it will! [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

Michigan bids a fond farewell to a storied senior class.  The four players who made up the class of 2017 played on some of the greatest teams in Michigan softball history, including one of my personal all-time, all-sport favorite teams to watch, the 2015 team.  These women won an astonishing 202 games as Wolverines.  In conference play, they brought home 3 Big Ten Championships and 1 Big Ten Tournament Championship, while in the post-season they won 3 NCAA regionals, made two trips to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series, and finished as National Runners-Up once.

The star of the group was right-handed strike-out artist Megan Betsa.  She made 1st Team All-Big Ten 3 times, and 2nd Team All-American thrice as well.  Her name won’t be dislodged from the Michigan record books anytime soon, as she finished her career second in team history with 6 no-hitters, third with 102 wins and 1,201 strikeouts, and fourth with 37 shutouts.  As a senior, she led the nation in Ks by a country mile, setting down 412 batters on strikes, 52 more than the second-place pitcher.  On a team that didn’t have a deep rotation, Betsa was an iron horse, throwing 235.1 innings while maintaining a remarkably high level of play throughout.

[Hit THE JUMP for the new wave, just like the old wave]

[Ed-S: We asked SBW to cover one of the best teams in Michigan sports history. Previously: Postseason primer]

All photos from Bryan Fuller

Regional Review

The Ann Arbor regional featured one of the more noteworthy upsets of the opening weekend of the NCAA softball tournament.  Fortunately for Michigan, it didn’t happen to us.  The Maize & Blue marched through the regional with relative ease, not quite hitting on all cylinders, but never seriously threatened either.  Before looking ahead to the upcoming super-regional showdown with the Missouri Tigers, let’s take a quick look back at how Michigan became one of 16 teams in the nation lucky enough to go to practice this week.

Valparaiso

The Wolverines started the weekend off against a Valparaiso team still trying to figure out just how they found their way into the tournament in the first place.  With a record well below .500, the Horizon League tournament champions were one of the strangest sights in regional play in years.  Michigan didn’t wait long to get on the board, with senior super-star Sierra Romero lining what’s known in Ann Arbor as a “Rom-Bomb” over the wall in the first inning.  In addition to giving Michigan an early lead, the solo shot gave Romero her 300th career RBI.  The Wolverines added a couple more in the 2nd, but were not able to fully solve Valpo’s pitching until the 5th inning, when all Hell broke loose.  5 singles earned Michigan 3 runs and brought about a pitching change.  The change didn’t help, as the relief pitcher walked the next three batters on only 14 pitches to drive in the game-ending runs.  Megan Betsa was majestic in the circle, ceding just one hit and one walk while piling up 9 Ks in the 8-0 run-rule walkover.

Miami (NTM)

On Saturday, Michigan was expecting a tougher challenge, and they got one from an unexpected source.  Instead of the presumptive challenger Notre Dame, the Maize & Blue had to square off against Miami (NTM), who had upset the Irish with a controversial 3-2 win on Friday.  Betsa was again phenomenal, but the story of the early part of the game was Redhawks hurler Amber Logemann, who didn’t allow a hit until the 4th inning.  In the 4th, though, Michigan showed a tendency familiar to anyone who watched the 2015 NCAA tournament.  A good pitcher can get through Michigan’s order once, maybe twice.  After that, though, the offense starts to lock in on tendencies & weaknesses, and the runs can come in bunches.  2 runs in the 4th led to 4 more in the 6th, and Michigan finally had the breathing room they wanted.  Hutch took advantage of the extra cushion, resting ace Megan Betsa for the rest of the game.  After a wobbly start put runners on 2nd and 3rd with no outs, Driesenga retired the next 6 batters she faced on 6 consecutive ground-outs, securing a 6-0 win.

Notre Dame

To no one’s surprise, the Irish shook off their Friday funk and emerged from the losers’ bracket to face Michigan in the regional final on Sunday.  The Irish have seen their season end in Ann Arbor again and again in recent years, and would need to take 2 in a row from #2 Michigan to avoid the same fate in 2016.  Sierra Romero sent a message early on that the “luck of the Irish” wasn’t going to apply in Ann Arbor, getting her money’s worth on her 300th career hit, launching a first-inning long ball for the 2nd time on the weekend (the blast was also good for her 299th career run scored, extending her own NCAA record).  Another Sierra home run, this one from Sierra Lawrence, put Michigan up 2-0, but an unexpected blast from Irish lead-off hitter Karley Wester trimmed the lead back down to 1.  Again it took a few innings for Michigan’s bats to acquire target-lock, but when the Irish gifted Romero 1st base on an error to start the 5th, the Wolverines were determined to take advantage.  A bunt single & a walk loaded the bases, and singles from Aidan Falk and Lindsay Montemarano stretched the lead to 6-1.  The Irish would get one back in the 6th, but never seriously threatened to catch up to the heavy favorites.

On the weekend, Michigan outscored their opponents a combined 20-2.  On a historical note, Sierra Romero joined the extremely exclusive 300/300 club (hits & RBIs), and moved to just one run away from creating an entirely new 300/300/300 club (hits, RBIs, & runs-scored).  For a team of Michigan’s caliber, the victories were expected, and celebrations were moderate compared to scenes around the country.  The Wolverines will not be satisfied with anything less than a trip to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series, and they know that just one team stands between them and that goal.

[Hit THE JUMP for a Super-regional preview]

[Bumped (and added some photos) because it's good and so is our softball team. --Seth]

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Sprinkle the cheese

It’s hard to put the experience of Michigan’s 2015 softball season into words.  It was totally unique in so many ways.  Michigan fans were desperate for something to go right after hockey, basketball, and football all came up well short of pre-season expectations.  Jim Harbaugh was making headlines, but concrete results were still months away, and the Michigan community was still convalescing from its long bout of Brandonitis.  It was the perfect time for niche sport to make a bid for mainstream status, as fans needed something, anything to go right, to make things feel like Michigan again.

Into this void stepped a group of twenty young women, swinging bats and making pizza as they blasted their way through the country and the Big Ten, into the record books and Maize and Blue hearts nationwide.  The team combined absurd offensive production and strong pitching with an unmatched rootability factor.  Whether on TV or in person, this team was fun.  When Lauren Haeger’s Gators bounced them in the last game of the season, it felt like an injustice, just like Trey Burke missing out on his crown or the Legend of Shawn Hunwick falling short against Minnesota-Duluth.

The difference between those crimes and this one, however, is that Michigan has a chance to put things right.  Almost everyone is back from the 2015 squad, and there’s no question that they’ve been working harder than ever all offseason to earn what was denied them a year ago.  It’s a new year with fresh faces and stiff competition, but this is a team on a mission.  Below, we’ll break down roster changes, offense and defense, and the opposition Michigan will face in the season ahead.  2016 isn’t going to be 2015 all over again, and Hutch and her crew are smart enough not to try to make it that.  It just might be a little bit better.

[Hit THE JUMP to see what that team lost and what to expect from this one]