Sunday, May 27, 2007
Obviously, I never should have left Ann Arbor.
The Wolverines won nearly every game I saw in person. I head home for the summer, and they come out on top of the Big 10, but are knocked out of the Big 10 Tournament in the minimum two games. Too bad. They won it all last year, of course, and it would have been nice to see them do so again, especially with a relatively young team.
If they had won the Big 10 tourney they would have an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament... now we don't know. I think the selection is tomorrow (Monday), so I guess we'll find out then. Michigan was nationally ranked for much of the season so our chances of getting in are still OK, but we suffer the permanent baseball-in-the-midwest bias. It's hard to give an at-large bid to a midwestern school when you have schools in the south who live and die by their baseball teams, but who don't win their conference championships simply because every other school in their conference is the same way.
We definitely still deserve it. Uh, not that I'm inclined to lean one way or the other. But really, we WERE nationally ranked (respectably so! I think we were up to 16th in the nation at one point), which is a BIG HONKIN' DEAL for a Big 10 school known infinitely more for football, basketball (even if our basketball team sucks of late), and hockey.
I don't like the double-elimination format of the Big 10 Tournament. It's just not suited to baseball. It's more a football kind of thing... even the AL/NLDS gives teams 3 games before minimum elimination. Baseball games can be so quirky that you need a lot of them to really get at the true skill of a team; this is why baseball seasons are so long and why so many games are played over the course of that season, especially compared to other major sports. To give a team only two games before they get sent home is cruel and unbaseball-like.
In both games Michigan kept it close. The first loss, to OSU, was only by two runs, and the second loss, to PSU, was only by one, in the 10th inning. It's not like Michigan got blown out by vastly superior teams. I know that this is a good baseball team. If they'd been given more games, it would've been completely unsurprising to see them win it all.
Now, I'm not crazy. I know it WOULD be a huge upset if they did well in the NCAA tournament. But I'd like to see them get a shot at it.
Ah well. We'll find out tomorrow.
Relive happier Wolverine baseball times with some photos!
The home opener, which Michigan won over Oakland University 9-2.
A Michigan/OU doubleheader, both of which Michigan won, 4-1 and 4-3.
A Michigan/OU blowout, 17-0 in Michigan's favor.
A Michigan/Eastern Michigan doubleheader. Michigan lost the first game 10-2, but won the second game 10-7.
A Michigan/Purdue doubleheader. Michigan won both, 6-5 and 7-2.
The last game I went to this season, Michigan/Purdue. Michigan won big, 10-1.
Alright. I'll be at the Sox/Indians game tomorrow, assuming it doesn't get rained out and assuming the ticket thing works out (it's complicated). So that'll be Trotter's return, and should be interesting. Hopefully Michigan will get into the NCAA tourney and I'll be in a good mood heading down to Fenway.Labels: baseball, Big 10, college baseball, Michigan, NCAA, Wolverines
10:07 PM
|
|
