Spring practice is over, having officially ended with a final practice on Tuesday (yes, after the Spring Game). The players will continue working with Barwis as long as they’re in town, but organized practices have come to an end.

Shall we recap what we know from spring, then?

• Ryan Van Bergen, who was taken off the field on the Med Cart Saturday, should be fine.
• Maize n Blue Nation provides a handy chart of the individual stats from the spring game. Tate Forcier, for the record, graded out with a passer efficiency rating (not a perfect metric, but them’s the ropes) of 270.80. Michigan’s total last year was 95.13, and Steven Threet led with a 105.26 rating. Standard caveats apply about our own defense maybe just being terrible, no contact on QBs, and simulating situations rather than a scrimmage.
• VB Spring Game Recap.
• VB Spring Game Photo Gallery.
• MSC and MGoBlog recaps.

BTN Highlights:

Football news, other than that of the recruiting variety, should slow down in short order around here, unless something significant happens. Focus will shift slightly to baseball, general athletics, and other pursuits.

Posted under Football, Spring Coverage

Per MGoBlue:

Steady rain in the Ann Arbor area all day today (Tuesday, April 14) has forced the cancellation of Michigan’s scheduled contest with Toledo and changed Wednesday’s (April 15) game with Eastern Michigan to a pair of seven-inning contests beginning at 3:05 p.m. No makeup date for the Toledo game has been announced.

So that’s two games versus EMU today to make up for the lost game yesterday.  Just what we need, more innings of midweek pitching.  I say that only half facetiously.  We do need to get some guys work.  I haven’t seen anything about starting pitchers, but I’ll throw my guesses out as Brandon Sinnery and Kevin Vangheluwe.  Kolby Wood threw a few times this weekend, but could be available.  The pitcher I’d like to see get this start is Mike Wilson, just to get him an easy start (7 innings puts less pressure on the starter to go deep into games).  It probably won’t happen, but its an idea.

I’m hoping we get some carnage as Michigan tries to avenge the loss at home last week.  The season series is tied at one a piece, each won by the visiting team.

Update: Miller started first game (just 2 IP).  Paul and Tim went head to head in the Michigan Baseball Tricycle race.  No word yet on who one.  I’ll have them recap later.

Michigan State Weekend

Also in that link from MGoBlue, the start time to Friday’s game has been moved to 3:05 from 6:05pm.  No audio will be available, which blows, but they will have live stats.  Their press box at MSU’s new McLane Stadium (named after Spartan alum and owner of the Astros, Drayton McLane) is just nearing the completion stage, so it appears they don’t have audio installed yet.

Posted under Baseball

Tate Forcier, Denard Robinson, and Nick Sheridan looked to be the only quarterbacks on Michigan’s roster by the time fall camp rolled around, however, recent news abounds that Michigan may add some transfers to the rotation, if only to build up a bit of depth.

First comes Jason Forcier. The former Wolverine and Stanford grad is looking to continue his education in Ann Arbor. Forcier the elder, who backed up Chad Henne for a couple years before Golden Boy Mallett removed any and all hope of future playing time (ha!), is the oldest brother of Tate, the odds-on favorite to be Michigan’s starter this fall. Under normal circumstances, he would be ineligible to spend 2009, his final year of collegiate eligibility, at Michigan. However, he may appeal to the NCAA to use the Mundy Rule (under which Michigan starting safety Ryan Mundy became West Virginia starting safety Ryan Mundy). The rule has since been repealed by the bureaucracy we all know and love, but the NCAA will look at individual cases to determine their merits. In Forcier’s case, he started out at Michigan, then managed to earn his degree at Stanford, and wants to return to Michigan for a post-grad degree (and likely a future in coaching), in addition to helping his little brother adjust to college life. If he is also granted the privilege of playing for the Wolverines, that would be a bonus, though a significant one for both Jason and the Wolverines.

The other transfer news, which was something of a hot topic yesterday, comes in the form of a potential switch by Duke basketball player Greg Paulus. Paulus was among the nation’s top QB recruits in the class of 2005 (in which he was also a 5-star point guard recruit). Paulus visited Ann Arbor for Michigan’s final spring practice on Tuesday, at which time he talked to coach Rod about potentially coming to Michigan as a QB (the Green Bay Packers have similar designs on Paulus). I’m not clear on Paulus’s eligibility status, as he’d be not only transferring schools, but also sports. However, as someone who’d be playing organized football for the first time in over 4 years, it’s safe to say he’d only be adding depth to Michigan’s sparse backfield.

So what’s the most likely outcome? I would assume Jason probably ends up in maize-and-blue either way, be it a uniform or the sweatsuit of a grad assistant. If Paulus wants to come to Michigan, depending on the eligibility status, it must be assumed that the Wolverines wouldn’t hesitate to take him, especially considering they have several scholarships available to hand out for 2009.

What say you, Michigan fans? Are you for these potential moves? Against them?

Posted under Football, Personnel

Posted under Football, Recruiting

…of course, it’s for a road game. This is actually fairly old news, but when the Wolverines travel to Iowa City on October 10th, they wont take the field until nighttime, according to Kirk Ferentz at his press conference last week:

Ferentz said Iowa will be playing three night games during Big Ten play: at Penn State (Sept. 26), vs. Michigan (Oct. 10) and at Michigan State (Oct. 24). 

Members of a certain subset of Michigan fans are undoubtedly saying “How come they’ll play 3, and we aren’t even willing to play a home night game once!” Stay calm, fans (and stop with the idiotic petitioning), it will happen sooner or later, and you’re wasting your breath for now, as the earliest Michigan will play a home night game is when the stadium renovation is complete for the 2010 season.

Posted under Football

Posted under Football, Photo Album, Spring Coverage

This weekend saw Michigan face Illinois at the Fish.  Michigan managed to win only the first game by the grace of the all powerful Chris Fetter… and some guys on offense.  Also, big thanks to all the fans who showed up this weekend.  The spring game overflowed to the baseball field, getting a total of 3871 for the three games this weekend.  As Kartje at the Daily described it on Saturday:

The crowd is nuts here thanks to Spring Game overflow.  You’d think Tate Forcier was making a special appearance in the 7th inning stretch.

And on to the recap.

Game 1

Box Score													R	H	E
Illinois	0	0	0		2	0	0		0	0	0		2	6	1
Michigan	0	2	0		0	0	0		1	1	x		4	9	0

W – Chris Fetter (5-1)   L – Haig (3-2)   Sv – None

BTN Coverage (hopefully embedding this works):

If the embed doesn’t work for you, visit the BTN.com highlight here.  I didn’t catch the game, but just judging by the post game wrap up, I doubt I could have put up with either of these guys calling a game.  People thing Joe Morgan is bad…

The story of this game was Chris Fetter. In his second complete game of the year, Chris struck out 13 batters (about half the outs in the game), including 7 hitters that went down looking. Fetter was economical with most hitters, only throwing 136 pitches (the exact same number as his last complete game against Penn State). He only allowed 6 hits and two walks. Great game overall. Something I’m interested to keep an eye on is how these back to back complete games affect his pitching down the stretch. Fetter has been quoted by the WBCN crew during the IPFW series that he is shooting for only 120 pitches per game. I can’t blame Maloney for letting the kid get his complete game wins, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Fetter left some games sooner just to protect his arm.

On offense, we scraped to get the runs we did. In the second inning, we managed to avoid a fielder’s choice by utilizing the hit and run, we (unofficially) sacrifice flied a runner from second to third, and got the timely singles to score 2 runs. For the go ahead run in the 7th, we used the sacrifice fly to plate the run.

The positive on offense was sticking to single digit strikeouts and getting baserunners on every inning. The bad was we left runners on base every inning as well, including 4 in scoring position. If there ever was an inning to describe Michigan’s season it has to be the 6th:

Michigan 6th – Toth doubled down the lf line (0-0). Lorenz out at first 1b to 2b, SAC, bunt (0-0); Toth advanced to third. Kalczynski struck out swinging (0-2 FFS). Cislo struck out swinging (2-2 KBBSS). 0 runs, 1 hit, 0 errors, 1 LOB.

We get pressure on the other teams early then fade down the stretch. The metaphor works for the season as well. We come out with power, but the power fades as we go along. Sigh…

Notable Stars

• Chris Fetter – CG, W, 6 H, 13 K, 2 BB, 2 ER
• Anthony Toth – 2/4 2 R, 3B, 2B
• Ryan LaMarre – 0/0 R, 4 BB (in 4 at bats, he saw 26 pitches, impressive)
• Fan Attendance: 1056… best this year.

Notable Goats

• This was solid game… everyone gets off the hook

Other Notes

• Other Chris’s daughter caught a fly ball in the Michigan win, quoted to have said this: “This is one of the best days of my life! And if Michigan wins, it will move into the top ten.”
• CollegeBaseballToday.com – Chris gets an Honorable Mention in the Big10 Pitchers segment…”When Chris Fetter is on the mound, Michigan becomes one of the best teams in the nation. But beyond him?…”
• The Daily – Liveblog Redacted. If I find where it went I’ll relink it here. Update: now linked.
• SID Release – Coach Maloney Moves Toth up to 7th in the order: “He was huge for us today. I moved him up in the order to try to keep what we consider our seven best hitters in a row, and he really came through big for us tonight.” This appears to be an attempt to limit the LOB in the middle of the order.

Game 2

Box Score													R	H	E
Illinois	0	0	0		3	2	5		0	0	0		10	9	3
Michigan	3	0	1		2	0	0		1	0	0		8	13	2

W – Zerrusen (2-0) L – Kolby Wood (0-1) Sv – Strack (1)

So remember when I said this:

Katzman has done well lately, but that just means he’s due for a less than stellar start as well.

That happened. While Katzman didn’t have a horrible start, he certainly didn’t have the same stuff he’d had the last two weeks. He worked into a little trouble in the first with back to back singles to open the frame, but managed to eek his way out. He wasn’t so lucky in the fourth inning. Katzman loaded the bases to start the inning (sac bunt in the middle of that). He then hit a batter to force in a run, followed by a 2 RBI single from Bonadonna.

Kolby Wood would enter in relief of Katzman and get a quick out to stop the bleeding. In Wood’s first full inning of work, things started off shaky with a fielding error by Anthony Toth. With two outs and a runner on third (the one to reach on the error), Wood gave up a two run home run (both runs unearned). The next inning started similarly, but this time with a throwing error by John Lorenz. Wood then gave up back to back hits, scoring a pair of runs (one unearned). Miller would relieve him but struggled as well giving up a walk, back-to-back doubles, and a single before striking out the next two batters in the inning. This would put the Illini up 10-6, and their offense went into cruise control to the finish.

The offense was surprisingly good in this game, knocking out the Big10’s top pitcher after just one inning. Ben Reeser, the Illinois starter managed just 1 inning with 3 hits, 3 runs, and a walk. Coley Crank was the only starter without a hit, but 5 starters (Cislo, Fellows, LaMarre, Oaks, Toth) had two a piece.

If you were to tell me Michigan was going to score 8 runs on 13 hits while only stranding 8 and striking out 7 times, I’d feel pretty good about that game. Unfortunately the pitching didn’t hold us in the game. The Illini hit the big inning in the 6th; it was too much to recover from.

Notable Stars

• Ryan LaMarre – 2/3 3 RBI, 2 R, 2 SACF, 2B
• Kevin Cislo – 2/3 2 R, 2 BB, SB, 2B
• Alan Oaks – 2/5 Solo-HR
• Anthony Toth – 2/4 BB
• Kenny Fellows – 2/4 R, 2B, SACB
• Mike Dufek – 1/5 2B (off the top of the Brick Monster to steal a HR)
• Attendance – Woo Spring Game crowd: 1942!
• Coach Maloney – Ejected (see the note below)

Notable Goats

• Toth & Lorenz – The errors to lead off the 5th and 6th innings lead to 3 unearned runs… more than the difference in the game.

Other Notes

• Maloney was ejected in the 6th inning arguing on behalf of Kevin Cislo. There was a close safe call made at second base and the crowd didn’t like it, Cislo didn’t like it, Maloney didn’t like it. He made his way out to the umpire (I believe it was veteran umpire Bruce Doane) to make his case. According to Daily staff writer Ryan Kartje, he went “all “Lou Piniella” on the ump to waves of support from the crowd. No dirt kicking as of yet. But regardless, Maloney gets tossed from the game and the crowd loves it.” I like the move by Maloney to go for the ejection. Sometimes it can light a fire under the team. It didn’t work this time, but hey, sometimes you’ve just got to do that as a manager.
• Daily Live Blog – as linked above in the Maloney note, Kartje live blogged the game. I really like this from the Daily. It definitely supplements the box scores really well.

Game 3

Box Score													R	H	E
Illinois	0	3	0		2	0	0		1	4	1		11	19	0
Michigan	2	0	1		0	2	0		0	0	0		5	10	2

W – Roberts, B (3-0) L – Alan Oaks (0-1) Sv – Martin (2).

Keeping along with our recent Sunday streak, our pitching staff struggled most of the game. This game was back and forth as the scoreboard above shows, but the key came when Alan Oaks out-stayed his welcome. After already throwing 53 pitches, a career high, he trotted out to an eighth inning he wouldn’t make it out of; he gave up 3 singles and a double to start what would be a four run inning for the Illini.

In defense of Oaks, he pitched very well in the 4 innings leading up to this point, giving up just one unearned run in 4 innings of relief of Travis Smith. Speaking of Smith, his start was disappointing as well. He gave up the first 5 runs (4 earned) to the Illini in just over 3 innings of work. We really need someone to step up and earn this starting spot, whether it be Smith, Wilson, Sinnery, Vangheluwe, Wood, or someone new.

Speaking of Wilson and Sinnery, they closed the game out fairly well, throwing 2 innings while giving up only one unearned run.

Offense was top heavy – top of the lineup that is. Fellows, LaMarre, and Dufek each had a pair of hits including a homer and double by Dufek – the only extra base hits of the game. Dufek’s two hits drove in all four Wolverine RBIs in the game, and his grounded into double play also drove. Toth, Lorenz, and Kalczynski each added a hit a piece from the bottom of the lineup, but lead to no runs scored or driven in.

Notable Stars

• Mike Dufek – 2/4 4 RBI, R, HR, 2B
• Ryan LaMarre – 2/3 2 R
• Kenny Fellows – 2/3 R, BB
• Attendance – 873

Notable Goats

• Alan Oaks (at bat) – 0/4 3 Ks, 1 LOB
• DH/PH (Crank, Urban, & Kittle) – 0/4 K
• Fellows & Lorenz – Errors leading to a pair of unearned runs

Other Notes

• The Daily – Relief pitching dooms M. I respectfully disagree. Timely hitting mixed in with a lack of consistency from the bullpen and the defense behind them. There were quite a few errors to start innings for bullpen pitchers.
• The Daily – Live Blog Game 3 is more good stuff. I love how the only comment is by “S. Toth” appealing Kartje’s notion that the team doesn’t turn too many double plays. While we may not be the Big10 leaders, we do turn our fair share of them (.82 per game as of 4/5/09)
• Daily Illini – Haig’s start was disappointing as Fetter was great, but the Illini won the weekend series
• Illinois Baseball Report – Dittman carries Illini this weekend

Wrap Up

While losing 2 of 3 is never a great thing, I don’t think this was too bad of a weekend for the team. Illinois is one of the better teams in the conference this season, especially in the pitching department. There were a few lapses though, especially on defense. After the great effort in game one, we had two errors in each of the last two games leading to four unearned runs. We’ve got to cut those down.

After this weekend’s action, Michigan is now 7th (tied with PSU, but Nittany Lions have the tie breaker) in the Big10 at 4-4. Only the top 6 teams make the BTT, so we’ve got some ground to make up. That starts this weekend with Michigan State. We play in East Lansing at their new ball park on Friday and Sunday, but play the middle game of the series at the Fish. All indications are that Michigan should sweep the Spartans, but they have a pitcher in Nolan Moody who poses quite a challenge.

As for the mid week, we face Toledo on Tuesday and have the rubber match with EMU in Ann Arbor on Wednesday. Toledo could be a challenge, but I don’t expect much from their mid week starter. As for EMU, we’ve already seen what they can do. I can’t see our guys taking the same “oh, its just EMU” mindset as last time.embed>

Posted under Baseball

Paul and I both attended the spring game (with Brian of MGoBlog – we must have missed all of you at the tailgate…), and we worked together to put together a general summary of what we saw. My camera has gone MIA temporarily, so the photos will have to wait until later.

Tate Forcier

The defense wasn’t allowed to hit him, and he made his fair share of freshman mistakes, but anyone who watched the spring game has to be somewhat relieved that there will be a significant upgrade at the quarterback position over last year. Tate is by far a better runner than either Nick Sheridan or Steven Threet, and had better throwing mechanics and accuracy than either, as well. He has a much stronger arm than Sheridan, and by the time fall rolls around, it seems he will be able to better grasp the system than Threet did last year, or at least make fewer big mistakes. Forcier threw for three touchdowns, and ran for one more. He also had a few boneheaded moments, giving up a “safety” by fumbling into the endzone (in live scrimmage, it would have been a defensive touchdown), and throwing a pass right to a wide open… Brandon Herron. Another thing I’d like to see him work on is keeping his eyes downfield when he vacates the pocket. On design rollouts, he was fine, but on packet plays, once he started scrambling, he was going to run the ball. Still, for a high school kid, he wasn’t half bad.

Offense

It’s hard to judge the offensive line when it’s #1s vs #2s and vice versa, but an immediately noticeable improvement is that there are enough offensive line to have three separate teams. Hooray depth! The #1 offensive line was (left to right) Ortmann, Schilling, Molk, Mooseman, Huyge.  Schilling to LG was pretty much a done deal (at least for the spring) for the past for week, but the Huyge thing developed really quickly this week.  Considering the buzz around Omameh, it seems to be a good omen that Huyge was able to beat him out.  The OL looked like they were working well together, and they certainly opened holes, but it was against the #2 defense when the #1 didn’t have 2 of their 3 best D-Linemen.

Odoms didn’t play much (being a known quantity and all), but his play that stood out the most was when he let a punt bounce off his chest pads and out of bounds.  Stonum really struggled for most of the day. He was playing with the #2s, some people think because of his recent legal trouble, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Hemmingway just beat him out. In his defense, Stonum has all the physical tools and made a really nice, difficult catch in the end zone. He has the ability, maybe it will just take a while for it develop.  The real stars were the sophomore slots who didn’t play last year. Terrance Robinson was consistently getting to the open parts of the zone and making good catches. He also had a couple bubble screens and showed good shake.  Roy Roundtree got some playing time and had a few nice catches.  The quality and quantity of the slot ninjas will, hopefully, really make the offense run a bit smoother.

Plenty of different running backs got their turn. Minor started and looked how one would expect him to look. He ran strong and found the holes well, but nothing spectacular. Carlos Brown really stole the show. He broke a 50 or so yard run which featured a nice move to get by Emilien (not Vlad’s fault at all).  Brown definitely looked like the fastest guy out there. Hopefully he can stay healthy.  Smith had at least one big run, and looked pretty comfortable out there. One thing I’ve noticed about him is that I’ve never seen him really get hit. Granted, I’ve only seen him at practice and the Spring Game, but he seems like the kind of runner who is so shifty that he’ll never really get stood up.  It was nice to see Grady have some success out there. He did his pinball routine for a touchdown and didn’t fumble the ball at all.  I really hope he can get something going this year.

Defense

The good news: the offense looked much better than it did last year. The bad news: the offense looked much better than it did last year. The defense was suspect at best on this day. It could have been a particularly bad day for the Michigan defense (and they were missing several starters with injuries of varying severity – including Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen, and Donovan Warren), but even the #2 offense (Coner!) was able to move the ball against the #1 defense. When your #1 defense is giving up 30-yard scrambles to David Cone, they had a bad day. For his part, Cone looked decent for a scout-team quarterback. That is to say, be very afraid if he is ever pressed into serious playing time in a game that matters. For a 6-6 non-mobile guy, you’d think he would have a rocket arm or ridiculous accuracy or something, but this was not the case. The defense has a lot of work to do in the off-season, both in terms of getting healthy and hopefully getting on track with GERG’s schemes. The spring depth is scary, especially considering the #1s couldn’t even stop Michigan’s backups on offense. I can only imagine if the #2s get pressed into playing time during the season.

Format

This was a little more Actual Scrimmage-y than past Michigan Spring Games, but there is still a little ways to go in terms of making it truly interesting for the fans (and the Spring Game is an event that is undoubtedly for the fans, not so much the actual team). There was almost no drilling, and it was all real back-and-forth action between the offense and defense. However, the proprietary scoring system that 1) none of the fans know going in, and 2) most of the fans aren’t going to understand, is no good, and I’d much rather see a real game, played with two teams, 1s-v-1s and 2s-v-2s. The depth this spring didn’t allow for that, but hopefully in the future, that will be an option, and the Spring Game can look more like a, well, game. This, of course, will help out significantly with Atmosphere. As an aside, one thing that I think would be cool to do for next year is basically split the fans in half, and give away t-shirts to everyone, with half getting maize and half getting blue (and all of them saying “Spring Game 2010: I was there” or something equally stupid), and have distinct teams that each side is cheering for, to make it more like a home or away game for players.

Atmosphere

I was very pleasantly surprised with fan turnout. Going in, I got the vibe that nobody really expected the attendance to even approach Rich Rod’s stated goal of 40,000. However, as I rolled up to Michigan Stadium Saturday morning, the Crisler lots were already closed (a huge mistake in judgment by the AD or whoever was in charge of parking, as probably 10% of the parking spaces were still unoccupied), and the line for the locker room tours reached out the tunnel entrance, around the North/East end of Crisler, out the main Stadium Drive entrance, and back past Crisler towards Pioneer, with the end of it nowhere in sight. I skipped said locker room tour (been there, it’s really not worth any wait, much less multiple hours), and didn’t even catch the tail end of the flag football game, which I had been planning to do. The stadium was mostly packed, since the top 40-ish rows on the East side and 25-ish rows on the West side were closed. There was still plenty of open space to stretch out in the upper levels of each end zone, though. Next year, when there isn’t construction to worry about (at least not closing seats), I think Rich Rod’s goal of 92k+ might be attainable – as long as the marketing of the event continues on its current trajectory.

Posted under Football, Spring Coverage

Moved to committed:
TX RB Stephen Hopkins. Commitment Post.

Sam Webb brings the fluff on MI QB Commit Devin Gardner in the Detroit News. Of course, the article wouldn’t be complete without this oft-quoted (in the past week or so) soundbite from Devin:

An Ohio State fan growing up, Gardner said he has had little problem flipping the loyalty switch.

“It’s off,” he said matter-of-factly. “They’re going to get it just like everybody else.”

So, huzzah for that. Speaking of Gardner, Matt Dorsey updates the in-state Top 10 in the Freep. Oddly enough, a Michigan State writer dropped Devin a spot in the rankings after he committed to Michigan. What are the odds?

At least one Rivals writer is pretty confident that TX QB Jeremy Johnson is going to commit to West Virginia after his visit this weekend. He was a “maybe” to visit Michigan this past weekend, but to the best of my knowledge, didn’t show. Stand by for removing him from the board.

Some USA Today fluff on CA RB Brennan Clay, focusing on his relationship with Tate Forcier. The USA Today is much more positive about Michigan’s chances to land Clay than conventional wisdom, for the record.

With the Wolverines in pretty serious need of defensive tackles in this class, but very few elite options out there, it seems as though they should be jumping all over PA DT Sharrif Floyd from Philadelphia. However, at this point, it doesn’t appear that there’s too much mutual interest.

Michigan may be among the favorites for SC RB Marcus Lattimore, but his teammate DT/DE Brandon Willis, does not have Michigan in his top 5.

PA DE Kyle Baublitz is reporting a Michigan offer.

Michigan is joined by 9 other schools in FL DE Lynden Trail‘s list of finalists. The others are Florida, Florida State, Miami, Southern California, Georgia, Alabama, South Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Michigan has been FL S Marvin Robinson‘s leader for quite some time now (even if he hasn’t always articulated his favorites as such), but it appears that he might be almost ready to take the next step in his recruitment. He says he may commit to the Wolverines within a couple weeks or by the end of spring.

Michigan “is recruiting” FL CB Cody Riggs, though the Wolverines haven’t yet offered.

And how about a removal or six while I’m updating?
OH CB Courtney Avery gives a verbal to Stanford.
FL CB Jaylen Watkins committed to Florida.
FL CB Mark Deas committed to Georgia.
FL LB Gideon Ajagbe has committed to Florida.
NC OL Robert Crisp committed to… NC State?
FL RB Antwon Chisholm from Glades Central brandished a knife at a mall security guard, and it is now unlikely he’ll end up at a BCS school, assuming there’s anyone that wants to take him at all.

Posted under Football, Recruiting

The Lacrosse team had yet another undefeated weekend, but I only managed to catch one of the games, so I’ll only report on that one.

Western Michigan
On a cold an blustery night at Vicksburg High School (where Western plays their home games), the Wolverines allowed the Broncos to get on board first, but that was the only time they really threatened the entire night, as Michigan stormed back, eventually taking the 15-4 victory. With fellow goalkeeper Andrew Fowler on the sidelines with a walking boot and crutches, sophomore Mark Stone played the whole game in net, coming up huge a few times for Michigan. The margin of victory could have been much bigger for the Wolverines had the Bronco goalkeeper, Patrick Riley, not made a few spectacular saves of his own. Trevor Yealy led the Wolverines yet again, as he finished his hat trick in the first quarter, and tacked on one more later in the game. Riley Kearns and Kevin Zorovich each put 2 on the board, and sophomore LSM Matt Asperheim was able to notch his second goal of the year as well. Late in the game, the Wolverines played for possession, content to not run up the score (their coach must be less of a dick than Colorado State’s, as JP seemed eager to score as many as possible on the Rams). The fourth quarter passed by scorelessly, and several Michigan bench players got significant playing time. This leads me to the matter of the Western fans, who were… well, they’re what I would expect Western Michigan fans to be. They were actually complaining at the end of the game about Michigan not running up the score, because they wanted to see the teams “just play lacrosse.” Of course, they couldn’t manage to say this without lacing the sentence with profanity. Late in the third quarter, Michigan midfielder Michael Bartomioli was victimized by a very solid (clean) hit right near midfield. He was knocked flat on the ground, but immediately got back up and continued playing. When he came off the field about three minutes later, the Bronco fans were so classy as to yell that he was coming off the field because he couldn’t handle the physical play (which, what? he kept playing after the hit), and call him a “f****** p****.” I assume it was all Barto could do to not turn around and point to the scoreboard in retaliation. You stay classy, Kalamazoo.

Illinois
As this game took place in Lake Forest, Illinois, and I was otherwise occupied with attending football’s spring game, I didn’t manage to catch the 12-5 victory over the #16 Illini. From the sounds of it, the first half was a little contentious, but then the Wolverines were able to pull away in the third quarter.

Up Next
The Wolverines have a weekend off (perhaps much-needed, considering all the players who seem to be banged up), before they face Michigan State April 25th in the Great Lakes Lacrosse Classic in Birmingham at Seaholm High School. The following week, it’s the CCLA conference tournament at Saline High School.

Posted under Other Sports