Michigan advances to the semifinals with a 22-6 victory over the SSU Seawolves. They’ll have a day off, then face Colorado, whom they beat 13-4 earlier this season.
More comprehensive recap (of each of the past 2 games), along with a Colorado preview, coming tomorrow.
Posted under Other Sports
Comments Off on Michigan 22, Sonoma State 6
After defeating the Texas Longhorns 11-5 tonight, the Michigan Wolverines have advanced to the quarterfinal round of the 2009 MCLA National Championship, where they will face #9 seed Sonoma State, who beat Lindenwood 10-9. Tomorrow’s game takes place at 7PM MDT (9 Eastern) at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Denver.
I’ll post a more comprehensive recap of the Texas game (in addition to the Sonoma State game) on Thursday, which is either the day between the quarters and semis for the team, or the day after their season comes to a (most unexpected) conclusion. For now, though, a brief preview of Sonoma State.
The Sonoma State Seawolves hail from the West Coast Lacrosse League. Sonoma State, a Cal State University, is located in Sonoma, CA, north of San Fransisco. The Seawolves finished tied for fifth in the WCLL, and upset regular season champion Cal in the conference tournament 1st round before being upended by Cal Poly 17-9.
Freshman Attack Marcus Silva paced the team in scoring with 36 goals and 27 assists. After Silva, there is a cavernous gaping hole in terms of amount of production, then a group of three players all within 4 points of each other. Junior Midfielder Jordan Ambler scored the same number of goals as Silva, but finished with only 45 points because he only notched 9 assists on the year. Attacks Clatin Kuhns and Casey Wood, a senior and a sophomore, respectively, each tallied 41 points for the Seawolves. After that group of 4 players, nobody scored more than 18 goals for Sonoma State.
The Seawolves played 3 goalies over the course of the year, with senior Mike D’Angelo the main man between the pipes. He stopped 58.8% of the shots he faced on the year, and allowed 6.8 goals per game. The other options in net are freshmen David Massey and Michael Clothier.
Sonoma State played several of the same opponents as Michigan in 2009. SSU defeated UC-Santa Barbara 8-7 (Michigan prevailed 7-5 over the Gauchos), lost to Minnesota-Duluth 16-4 (Michigan beat the Bulldogs 18-10), beat Colorado State 9-8 (Michigan won a 16-3 contest over the Rams), and won against Colorado 8-7 (Michigan beat the Buffs 13-4). On the basis of that information, since club lacrosse stuff isn’t particularly easy to come by, they certainly should be a much tougher test than Texas was.
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MCLA Lacrosse National Tournament. 1st Round.
You can review my preview here.
Pump-up video, via MFlowBlue, covers the CCLA tournament championship:
CCLA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament from Wes McGowan on Vimeo.
CoverItLive (no, I’m serious) will include the UMichLacrosse Twitter feed, which will be able to give some play-by-play and scoring updates. I’ll be in and out a bit, but if you participate, please try to keep this particular chat on-topic (that can include asking questions of me if you have no idea what the hell certain things are). We can talk about other sports some other time. The chat will start around 5:45, the game starts at 6, and should last about 2 hours.
Posted under Other Sports, Video
Comments Off on Michigan v. Texas, 6PM ET
The first game just started. If you’re in Ann Arbor, make it out to the double header. The second game should start around 6:30pm. If you’re not in Ann Arbor, the game is on WCBN’s stream. The two announcers are admittedly “not quite into it yet” and “having a tough time here.” There’s been some less than awesome announcing, but it appears to be getting better here in the 3rd inning. Live stats are also available, but they added another set of ads to it – a floating blimp between innings and another annoying side bar pop up. Uggh… CBS College Sports, I hate you so much right now.
This is the last home game of the season so make it out before its too late.
Posted under Baseball
Update: I fixed the spelling. Apparently I started the article one way and finished another. It is DiLaura.
from De La Salle's picasa
The newest preferred walk-on to the Michigan baseball team is reported to be John DiLaura. DiLaura is a catcher for De La Salle Collegiate High School. I haven’t found much as far as stats on the internet. The MaxPrep page for De La Salle hasn’t been updated with player stats this year. So we’re left with just what the report of his preferred walk-on status tells me.
DiLaura is a four-year starter in baseball, the last two as a catcher. This season he’s batting .442 with two home runs.
That sounds pretty solid. DiLaura had played second base (and occasionally third) before the move to catcher. I’m not sure where Maloney has him slated in the future lineup. We recruited 2 catchers last season and we’re unlikely to lose Berset this year. He may fill the role of Timmy Kal. The utility player extraordinaire. Who knows.
Not really important but also interesting is the fact DiLaura is more known for his bowling on campus than his baseball. He’s been Catholic High School League All-League or Honor list each of the last 3 years. Impressive.
On a side note, those looking for my recap of Indiana, I had a death in the family yesterday morning, and I just haven’t felt up to it yet. I’ll get it out when I get to it. I’ll also be missing most of this weekend’s series due to the funeral. Don’t expect too much from be between now and then.
Posted under Baseball
Via The Ann Arbor News – Softball earned another regional hosting gig this year for the NCAA tournament. They are the #5 overall seed and will host MAC auto-bid Miami (not-that-Miami). Notre Dame will be the 2 seed and Cleveland State the 3. ND could be tough. Games start Saturday, with Michigan playing the night cap, 7pm. ND and CSU start at 4:30. No word on if any of it will be televised.
If Michigan wins, they potentially go on to face Northwestern in the Super-Regional.
Posted under Other Sports
Michigan managed to take one from Minnesota today. Michigan got lucky with a Garrett Stephens hit knocking the pitcher out Rosin out of the game early. I heard it was hard shot off his leg, but I’ll leave that up to someone in the comments to clarify. While I never wish injury upon anyone, it worked very well for Michigan, giving them a chance to go through Minnesota’s bullpen.
The final score was 10-4 and I’ll recap it in full tomorrow. The 6th place standings as of this moment are:
| Team | W | L | % |
| Purdue | 8 | 11 | .421 |
| Michigan | 8 | 13 | .381 |
| Penn State | 7 | 14 | .333 |
Purdue plays again tomorrow against Michigan State. I’m not sure what’s up with the Saturday through Monday series, but its there at least. We really need Michigan State to win tomorrow. We REALLY need Illinois to win their series @Purdue next weekend. AND we really, really need to take care of Northwestern next weekend in Evanston. I’m not too concerned about Penn State. They have to sweep Minnesota and sacrifice a goat to some sort of pagan Nittany god that Purdue loses at least 3 games and Michigan only takes 2 in the series against Northwestern. That would put them tied with us for 6th, but they hold the tie breaker. I don’t think that’s likely, but it is still a potential situation.
Our “magic tournament number” is currently 5. That’s any combination of Michigan wins or Purdue losses.
And because this is one of those few situations where this is applicable: Go Sparty! Beat Purdue!
Posted under Baseball
Michigan lost game one to Minnesota 9-5. I’m still reeling in from last night, so just a couple links in this post.
Game 2 in the series is today, in about 40 minutes (1:05pm). Get to the Fish. We need all the support we can get against Buske.
Posted under Baseball
Yes, I’m writing a preview for a lacrosse game. That’s dedication, homes.
The Texas Longhorns captured the #16 seed in the MCLA National Tournament, granting them the right to face #1 overall seed Michigan. Hooray Texas! So, how did the Longhorns get to this point, and what should we expect from them on Tuesday?
Texas earned their bid to the MCLA Tournament by winning the Lonestar Alliance, a conference composed, predictably, mostly of teams from Texas. They are 16-3 entering the Michigan game, with the losses coming to SMU, Chapman, and Illinois (Michigan fans might recognize two of those teams – more on that later). In the LSA Playoffs, they gained revenge on SMU in the semifinals before defeating the Mean Green of North Texas in the finals. Judging by the fact that their auto-bid was for the dead last spot in the tournament, and no other team from the conference managed to make the field, it’s safe to say that the LSA is not one of the stronger conferences out there.
Chapman and Illinois, as hinted above, are common opponents for the Wolverines and Longhorns. Michigan fared better, to say the least. Against Chapman, Michigan played in front of a crowd of 2500 fans in Chapman’s own house (which, coincidentally, only has a listed capacity of 2000). On the road in a hostile environment, the Wolverines were able to mount a second-half comeback and take a 13-10 victory. When the Longhorns played Chapman, it was at a neutral site in San Diego, and the Panthers were able to hold Texas to just 4 goals all game, winning 14-4. In their respective games against the Illini, the situation is somewhat similar. Texas lost a 10-7 home game to the Illini, while Michigan came away with a 12-5 neutral-site victory (Lake Forest High School is closer to Illinois, and in their own state, but it is also the alma mater of Wolverines Anthony Hrusovsky and We McGowan). So, based on common opponents, Michigan is the better team. Of course, performance against common opponents is far from a perfect metric, but when Texas was essentially dominated by the teams, while Michigan did the dominating in their matchups, it’s a testament to perhaps a different level of team ability.
Texas had 7 players named to All-Conference teams. Freshman Attack Mid Johnny McKnight paced the team in scoring, with 42 goals and 11 assists on the year. He was named 1st-team All-LSA and is an All-American candidate. Joining him on the first team was Senior Defenseman Max Atherton. Three Longhorns landed on the second team. Senior Attack Evans Swann was the team’s second-leading scorer, with 37 goals and 15 assists, while sophomore midfielder William Lawson was third on the team with 23 goals and 24 assist. Joining them was senior defensman Mark Anderlik. Making all-conference honorable mention were Junior Attack Doug Boyer (38 pts) and Senior Midfielder Alex Kroviak (26 pts). The main man in goal for Texas was Senior Towers Wilen, who allowed 6.9 goals per game, and saved 59% of the shots he faced.
The game takes place at 4PM (local, 6PM Eastern) on Tuesday at Dick’s Sporting Good Park. If you aren’t able to make it to the Denver area (which I assume is the case for just about everyone), you can follow play-by-play on GameTracker at the Lacrosse Website, or on Twitter @UmichLacrosse.
Posted under Other Sports
The six seniors on the Michigan Baseball team had a round table discussion reflecting on their time here in Ann Arbor recently, and it was posted today on MGoBlue. Some quality stuff came from all six: Ben Jenzen, Timmy Kal, Mike Wilson, Kevin Cislo, Kenny Fellows, and Chris Fetter. They covered topics from greatest memories, to how injuries changed their season, to their thoughts on Coach Maloney, to momentos from the lockerroom, and finally, to legacy. It’s a great read. I’ll just quote the humor here, but the whole thing is worth the read.
On what they would take from “The Fish” as a memento…
Cislo: “This plasma TV” (laughter)
Kalczynski: “I would take my locker. I have had some of the best conversations with my teammates at this locker and that is something I would love to have.”
Wilson: “I want one of these couches (large blue leather couch with a M logo embroidered in the middle cushion)… these things are so comfortable.”
Jenzen: “I would either take the ping pong table or Kim (athletic trainer Kim Hill).” … (loud laughter)
Go read it now. Make it out to the last BigTen weekend series of these Michigan Men™. Go Blue.
Side note: I guess this means Ben Jenzen won’t be returning after a medical redshirt season. Bummer, he was a great pitcher.
Posted under Baseball