Softball: Week 1 of Big Ten Season

The Wolverines completed a sweep of Purdue today to open Big Ten competition. They are 20-11 overall, 3-0 in the conference. They won, 7-0 on Saturday, 11-3 in five innings yesterday and 6-2 today (all the games were moved forward a day due to the cold weather last week).

The offense was solid throughout. Home runs powered games one and three, and singles and walks powered game two.

Lauren Derkowski won games one and three, struggling a bit with control on Friday, but not today. As she goes, so goes the team. Her 94 innings pitched are now 40 ahead of freshman Erin Hoehn, and her 105 strikeouts more than the rest of the staff combined. Her ERA is 1.41 and WHIP 1.03. Jessica LeBeau has hardly pitched at all lately. This could be an injury, could be that this is her last year and coach Bonnie Tholl would rather give the rest of the starts to Hoehn.

Freshman Ava Costales has taken over at designated player, and is just as much an all-or-nothing as fellow freshman Jenissa Conway. Costales has a lot of power. Conway and sophomore Maddie Erickson each have five home runs to lead the team. Senior Keke Tholl had a pair of home runs against Purdue and is now next with four. Lilly Vallimont is playing a lot more catcher recently, with Tholl now starting mostly at first base.

Observations: Bonnie Tholl is showing more trust in the freshmen. It's not just an occasional start, and sit forever if they're 0-for-3, as was often the case in the past. It's a young team, and this approach is paying off. They are clearly a better hitting team than they were a month ago.

While this was a nice start to the Big Ten, Purdue is likely the weakest conference competition on their schedule. It's good to gain a little confidence here.

They play Toledo in a non-conference visit on Wednesday, then a crucial series at Indiana. The Hoosiers have the ability to win the league. Moving ahead, they do play pretty much all the conference contenders this season - we'll know a lot more a week from now.