10/9 Michigan Sports Weekend

Sorry for those who just now realized I took last weekend off who missed last weekend's coverage.  Real life beckoned and I wasn't around a computer. So a brief recap of last weekend:

• Bree Evans was seriously injured in a softball exhibition. Last I heard, she was up and walking, but had a neck brace. Grapevine says her facebook status had some jokes about it, so she sounds like she'll be alright.
• Volleyball split a pair at home, including a 3-0 sweep of NU and a 2-3 loss to Illinois.
• Field Hockey swept a pair of games at Evanston, IL, defeating NU 3-1 and Saint Louis 7-0. NU was ranked #17, giving UM it's first win over a ranked opponent this season.
• Men's x-country placed 9th out of 13 in Madison for an 8k this weekend. Michigan was short 4 of their top 7 runners with sickness, and it took it's toll. Michigan's top finisher was Bobby Aprill at #35.
• Women's x-country was also in Madison for a 5k and finished 5th of 12. Kaitlyn Peale finished 4th overall with a time of 17:11.3, 11 seconds behind the leader. Kaitlyn Patterson also finished in the top 20 at #16.
• Men's soccer shut out Wisconsin in their BigTen home opener by a score of 3-0. Fuzetti netted the game winner for this 8th goal of the season.
• Women's soccer tied Northwestern 2-2. Michigan let a 2-0 lead slip late. Amy Klippert lead Michigan in points with a goal and her first career assist.
• Women's tennis hosted a non-scoring invitational. senior Tania Mahtani and junior Denise Muresan both won their brackets in the singles, including Muresan's victory over the #29 player in the NCAA.
• Women's rowing scrimmaged Ohio State and swept all 5 first place finishes. Michigan ran 3 boats while OSU only ran two. Michigan placed (1,4,5), (1,4,5), (1,4,5), (1,3,T4), and (1,2,5). Editorial note: I'm still trying to figure out a better way of writing that out rather than listing the full results. For those of you who can't figure it out, each set of parenthesis is a race, and each number is one of Michigan's places.
• Men's golf played in Glencoe, IL over the weekend, and was in contention until the final day. Just 3 shots behind the leader (Illinois), they went stagnant in the last day to fall to 5th.
• Women's golf was in Chicago and posted a 6th place team finish. Ashley Bauer finished second overall with a –4 71-72-69/212.
• Baseball obliterated a lower level Canadian select team by the tune of 27-1.

Okay, now that we got all caught up, let's look at the weekend ahead. Updates may come periodically throughout the weekend depending on my schedule. Those of you who make it out to a game, drop a comment.  Chronologically by start time (all pictures from MGoBlue.com):

Men's X-Country

• 5pm ET Michigan Intercollegiate @ Grand Rapids, MI

Eleven, including two unattached runners, are headed to Grand Rapids this weekend for an 8k. This will be the first scoring meet for the Wolverines this years. The runners for Michigan: Bobby Aprill, Brendon Blacklaws, Geoff Burns, Peter Christmas, Brandon Fellows, Derek Henning, Sean McNamara, Zach Ornelas, Dan Tyler, Craig Forys*, and Dallas Bowden*. Asterisks are unattached/non-scoring.

Swimming

• 5pm ET Dennis Stark Relays @ Notre Dame

The men and women are both headed to Notre Dame this weekend for a dual meet. On the women's side, Notre Dame comes in as the 13 time defending BigEast champion. Michigan has it's share of returning players with 25, so we have plenty of veteran leaders this season. This opening match should be a good litmus test for the upcoming year.

On the men's side, Michigan is looking to continue its success from last year when it went 8-1 and 7-0 in the BigTen, placing 4th at the NCAA championships. The three captains for this year are seniors Chris Brady, Andre Schultz, and Shaun Weinberg.

"Sandler for 3", drop some info if you have time.

Ice Hockey

Record (Ranks): No Record (#3 USHCO/#4 USA Hockey)

Games:

• Friday 5:07pm AT(Alaska Time?) @Alaska (in Anchorage)
• Saturday 7:07 ATK (is there a difference?) @Alaska-Anchorage (in Anchorage)

I'm leaving hockey to the professionals. YostBuilt has his 10 Things to Know About the Alaska Schools. Him on Alaska:

Alaska was picked 6th and 7th in the two preseason polls. Coach Dallas Ferguson, in his second year, is 1-2-0 against Michigan. Despite a very solid record last season, the Nanooks were shut out on eleven occasions. They shut their opponents out eight times. Michigan leads the all-time series 37-7-0.

Sounds promising. MGoBlue has a CiL here. Both teams receive one vote in the USCHO poll, FWIW.

Volleyball

Record (Ranks): 15-2 (#8 AVCA, #16 RPI)

Games:

• Friday 7pm CT @Iowa
• Saturday 7pm CT @Wisconsin

Michigan takes on Iowa first, in what should be a fairly easy match, all things considered. Iowa is only 1-3 in the BigTen, with the lone win coming at Wisconsin. They were swept by Ohio State and Minnesota. The one high point for the Hawkeyes might not even be the win at Wisconsin, it might be that they handed Penn State their first set loss in over two years of regular season play. Iowa still lost that match 3-1.

Wisconsin should be a bit tougher of a test, if not just mentally for the Wolverines. Michigan has lost 16 straight matches at Wisconsin, including a 5 set come from behind victory for the Badgers last season. The Badgers aren't so tough looking this season, with a 6-7 record (1-3 in Big10).

Both of these games are very winnable, and Michigan needs to close out both opponents for Ws.

There will be Michigan audio available on Friday and a CiL on Saturday, for those looking for coverage. Radio will feature former player Erin Moore as the color analyst. I believe it's her Michigan radio debut.

Field Hockey

Record (Ranks): 5-7, 2-1 BigTen (#26 others receiving votes NFCHA, #27 RPI)

Games:

• Saturday 12pm @Harvard
• Sunday 1pm vs New Hampshire (@Harvard)

Meredith Wey continues to carry Michigan this season, earning BigTen offensive player of the week this last weekend with 3 goals. Michigan should be able to beat both these opponents, who are both coming in around .500 on the season. Do I smell a potential 5-game winning streak?

Soccer

Men's Record (Ranks): 8-2-1 Overall, 1-1-0 BigTen (#34 in other receiving votes, #9 RPI)

Games:

• Saturday 3:30pm vs #14 Indiana (BTN tape delay at 7:30pm Saturday)

Women's Record (Ranks): 5-6-1, 0-1-1 Big Ten (#101 RPI)

Games:

• Sunday 1pm @ Michigan State

The men are the featured game this weekend on the BigTenNetwork as they take on Indiana, in what is starting to become a rather competitive series in the short term. While IU holds a 11-1-1 record against Michigan, the last three years has seen Michigan go 1-1-1 against the Hoosiers. Indiana comes in 5-3-1 and 1-0-0 in the BigTen, but they are on a 2 game slide with losses to UC Santa Barbara and Butler (double overtime). This will be the highest ranked team Michigan will have faced so far this season, and a great chance to move up in the polls.

The women are in for a tough battle as well as they take on a Michigan State team that just dropped out of the coaches' poll this week. The Spartans are 7-1-3, but are 6-0-0 in East Lansing. Michigan has hung tough with the Spartans every year of late. No team has scored more than one goal as the series has gone 1-0-3 in the Spartans favor. In the series, since 1999, the home team has never lost. MSU holds a 3-0-2 record in that time.

On that note, Megan Bowery is the only Wolverine to score in this series since 2004, netting one in each of the last two seasons.

Men's Golf

Ranks: #16 (Golf Week)  #29 (Golf World) 

Games:

• Brickyard Collegiate @Macon, GA, Saturday-Monday

The men's tournament at the Brickyard at Riverdale is a 15 team par 72 at 7,128 yards, each day being 18 holes. Michigan's team of 5 (lowest four scores count) are Matt Thompson, Lion Kim, Jack Schultz, Rahul Bakshi, and Alex Frankel. Freshman Miguel Echavarria will also make the trip as "the individual."

Tennis

Both men's and women's are in action this weekend, but I'm not finding much out there to report to you guys.

Updates

Friday 11:00pm:

At the Dennis Stark relays, the women's swim team dominated to the tune of 9 wins in 10 races. Michigan won the 200-yard Freestyle, 400-yard Medley Relay, 800-yard Freestyle, 400-yard Butterfly, 400-yard Backstroke, 400-yard Breaststroke, and 1000-yard Freestyle. The single non-1st place finish was 2nd in the 400-yard Freestyle by only .94 seconds. Michigan won the 5 team match handily, and will face off against Notre Dame again tomorrow.

The men's swim team, also at Notre Dame, out did the women, registering the top time in all 10 events. The men are off until October 23 when they take on U of Ontario at Canham.

On the cross country paths, the men were back at full strength this week, and boy did it show. Michigan finished first out of 25 teams with 4 top ten (three of top 4) finishers this week in Grand Rapids. Peter Christmas was the top overall finisher with a 25:07.8 time. Sean McNamara (3, 25:13.4), Brendon Blacklaws (4, 25:16.0), Bobby Aprill (9, 25:39.7) all finish in the top ten.

Volleyball was pushed to the limit tonight in Iowa City as the Hawkeyes took games 1 and 3. Michigan played particularly sloppy in those games, giving away point after point. So after going down 2 sets to 1, Michigan came alive. Veronica Rood took over the game, and Michigan took set 4 by a score of 25-13. That momentum carried over to the 5th and decisive set, seeing Michigan win 15-11.

Going to 5 with Iowa isn't where this team should be this season, but it's encouraging to see the girls fight to stay in the game is more than encouraging. Rood taking over a game is also a good sign as Michigan tries to balance their attack.

Radio color analyst and former M volleyball player Erin Moore talked a bit about Rood working in a middle slide into her attack over the last week, and it came out quite a bit tonight. The idea is that instead of taking a quick set or a normal set, she takes a quick step right to get around blocks. It really seemed to catch the Hawkeyes by surprise.

Hockey is still going, but they are down 0-2 with 16 minutes to go. They outshot Alaska 12-3 in the first period, but it's evened closer to 20-11. I'll update the final later. That update is a 0-2 loss for Michigan.