Michigan Baseball comes back to beat Iowa 4-3.
The team is now 10-8 in the big ten and on the fringe of making the big ten tournament.
Congrats to the baseball team, and here's to hoping they make the B1G tournament!
Never heard of it
B1G Tournament is at Target Field actually. I wish they'd go back to regular season champion hosts. The neutral site tourneys are a horrible idea for anything other than football and MBB.
I played in 2 Big Ten tournaments in MN and they are awesome. Target field would be a great place to play. MN knows what they are doing when it comes to the BTT as they have hosted it a good bit. I strongly preferred MN to anyone else that hosted.
In 2014, the Big Ten Tournament will be in TD Ameritrade Park (where they have the College World Series every year). I think that's a great idea, and I wouldn't mind if it went back there every few years.
Since they seem to be looking for Major League/AAA size parks close to a Big Ten member, and since Indianapolis is probably out of the question Memorial Day weekend, there are only a few options: Columbus, Minneapolis and Omaha are obvious, but it would be great to get the tournament into Wrigley Field or Comerica Park one time.
They seem to want to have it near a B1G baseball "power" (OSU, Minnesota and Nebraska for 2012-14), so once Michigan gets back to the top of the standings I think the Big Ten might want to give Toledo a shot--a Michigan-Ohio State game at 5th/3rd Field in Toledo would be a huge draw, relatively speaking.
Right now it's a 4-team race for the B1G title: Minnesota (11-4), Nebraska (12-5), Indiana (12-5) and Ohio State (13-7) are all within a half game of each other. Nebraska is at Minnesota next week and Indiana is at Ohio State the week after that. The winner will come from those four teams.
The race Michigan is concerned about is the 3-team race for the last 2 playoff spots: Michigan State (9-6), Michigan (10-8) and Illinois (9-9). Michigan State ends the season at Iowa and at Penn State, so they should be favored to get one of the 2 spots in the 6-team tournament. Michigan ends the season hosting Purdue and at Nebraska; Illinois hosts Penn State and is at Minnesota. A sweep of Purdue next weekend should get Michigan into the tournament.
Once the tournament starts, I wouldn't bet against Michigan. They struggle to score runs, but Michigan allows the fewest runs per game in the conference, and has 4 starting pitchers (Szkutnik, Hill, McAnallen, Bourque) who can beat anybody on a good day. It would be a stretch to put together 4 upsets in a row, but they are exactly the type of team that can make it happen--a deep starting staff and an adequate bullpen.