With a 12-11 victory over Chapman in a game that was eerily similar to the teams’ first meeting this year, the Michigan Wolverines have been crowned the 2009 MCLA National Champions.
More analysis to come tomorrow, but the comeback victory was thrilling, can’t-miss television. Here’s to a 3-peat in 2010!
Posted under Other Sports
Michigan v. Chapman, 9PM ET. Video on Fox College Sports Atlantic, or at this site.
Posted under Other Sports
Comments Off on MCLA Finals Liveblog
We lost to Northwestern 10-6. I just got home from my grandfather’s funeral, so I’m in no position to look anywhere past the score. We cannot make the BigTen Tournament. The season is now over. I’ll have some more post over the next week to week and a half looking over the season, including the Northwestern and Minnesota series that I’ve laxed up on the last few days.
Posted under Baseball
For the first time in the MCLA Tournament, Michigan’s offense didn’t allow the opposing team to get an early lead. Trevor Yealy got on board within a minute and a half of the game’s start, and Clark McIntyre added a tally of his own within another minute. The teams traded goals before Michigan finally got a little bit of space, taking an 8-4 lead into the halftime break. After the half, it was all Michigan. The Wolverines put 9 more goals on the board, while only allowing 3 more tallies by Colorado (2 of which came within a minute of the end of the game, when the outcome was no longer in question). In net, Mark Stone played the first half, while Andrew Fowler played a strong second half for the Wolverines. Though he didn’t tally a point for the Wolverines, David Reinhard was one of the most important pieces in the game, winning almost 70% of his faceoffs and helping the Wolverines keep possession as much as possible. Offensively, Riley Kearns led the way with 3 goals (one of which was quite the highlight: a jump shot from a very tight angle coming around the back of the net) and assists on goals by Jordan Kirshner and Svet Tintchev. David Rogers, Trevor Yealy, and Clark McIntyre also scored multiple goals for Michigan.
MFlowBlue Recap – Official Recap
Another round, another past opponent for the Wolverines. They’ll face Chapman at 7PM Mountain (9 Eastern) on the stadium field at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
At A Glance. Chapman enters the contest with a 16-2 record. The Panthers’ only losses on the year came at the hands of Michigan and BYU, so they’re attempting to work the revenge tour in reverse order during the MCLA tournament. They went 5-0 in the Southwest Lacrosse Conference, and won the conference tournament by downing Arizona and San Diego State by lopsided counts.
Common Opponents. Michigan and Chapman, on top of playing each other (more on that later), faced several of the same teams over the course of the year. The Wolverines and Panthers both played the University of Arizona at neutral site, and each came away with a lopsided win (Chapman won 17-3, Michigan won 14-3). Chapman beat Texas 14-4 at a neutral site in Southern California (Michigan beat the Longhorns 11-5 on Tuesday in Denver). The Panthers took down Colorado State 15-5 at home and 9-8 in Denver (Michigan took down the Rams 16-3 in Oosterbaan). Michigan’s rival BYU Cougars were the only other team to beat Chapman, winning 10-7 in Provo, but losing in the MCLA Tournament yesterday in a 10-9 overtime thriller (Michigan beat BYU 14-11 in their only meeting this year). Michigan and Chapman both beat UC-Santa Barbara by identical 7-5 scores.
Stars. Chapman’s attack is led by the SLC Offensive Player of the Year in Connor Martin, who notched 46 goals and 29 assists for the Panthers this year. He was joined on the All-SLC first team by fellow attack Marcus Wooden, who scored 34 goals and dished 16 assists. At midfield on the all-conference team, Derek Mills and Mike Clayton, who scored 41 and 27 points, respectively, represent the Panthers. Andrew Salcido represented the team on defense. David Reinhard should have quite the challenge at the “X,” as Chapman’s faceoff specialist, Chris Small, also landed on the first team. Neither of Chapman’s goalies, Daniel Kirkpatrick and Jason Kho, landed on the top 3 all-conference teams.
When Last We Met. In a game televised nationally on ESPNU (albeit on tape delay of a couple months), Michigan took down the Panthers at Chapman Stadium. The Wolverines trailed 8-4 minutes before halftime, but Riley Kearns brought the score within 3 just before the half expired. Michigan took over in the second half, outscoring Chapman 8-2. Faceoff specialist David Reinhard can be credited with helping the Wolverines maintain momentum, winning faceoff after faceoff in the second half, and giving his team a “make-it, take-it” advantage. Against SLC 1st-teamer Christopher Small, he won 62.5% of the time, an outstanding success rate. Trevor Yealy (5), Kevin Zorovich and Anthony Hrusovsky all notched hat tricks for Michigan in the game, with all of Hrusovsky’s goals coming in the second half. Marcus Wilson scored 5 goals and Connor Martin scored 2 for the Panthers.
Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, 7MDT/9EDT. The crowd at last night’s game was a little sparse, so I encourage any Michigan alumni or fans in the Denver area to head out and support the team tonight. If you can’t watch in person, the game will be televise once again on Fox College Sports Atlantic, or streaming on the FCS website. I plan to host another CoverItLive chat here.
Posted under Other Sports
Comments Off on Michigan Beats Colorado, On to Final
Game was washed out this afternoon (Friday). They’re playing a double header beginning at noon eastern (11am in Evanston). Illinois got the job done against Purdue as well, keeping Michigan’s BigTen Tournament hopes alive for another day. We have to sweep and Purdue must lose in order for Michigan to advance.
And as commenter JJ pointed out, Fetter is looking tired. I picked up on this last week. His pitch counts have been VERY high compared to his last few seasons. Instead of 7 inning complete games at best, he’s been throwing into the 8th and 9th innings a lot this season. I think the fatigue is catching up. Hopefully he can recover fully for next week (that is, if tomorrow goes well).
Posted under Baseball
Game starts at 10PM EST, and can be seen on Fox College Sports Atlantic. If you can’t catch the game on TV, follow it here.
Posted under Other Sports
Comments Off on Liveblog: Michigan v. Colorado
Right now on Fox College Sports Atlantic: Last year’s championship win over Chapman.
Tonight at 7: The other national semifinal, Chapman v. BYU.
Tonight at 10: Michigan v. Colorado in a national semifinal.
Since it’ll be on TV for all to see, hows about a CIL chat during the Michigan game?
Posted under Other Sports
Comments Off on Lacrosse on TV
The good news is Michigan took game 1 despite Chris Fetter having another rough outing. The final score was UM 16, NU 6. Fetter had a way high pitch count but did manage to strike out 9 hitters in 6.2 innings pitched. The low spot had to be the 6 run 4th inning.
Offensively, the high was the 9 run 7th inning for Michigan. Dufek had a pair of bombs, six different batters had at least 2 hits. The NU bullpen was just horrid.
The bad news is out of West Lafayette. Purdue won 12-5 to decrease their magic number to one. We must win out and Illinois must take the remaining two games at Purdue in order for Michigan to make the tournament.
As mentioned by Other Chris, NU is streaming a video feed of tomorrows game. Its pretty crappy feed, but it is available.
Gotta love that chain link fence in the way. And yes, that’s the only camera angle you really get. Occasionally it gets blurry as they move slightly right or left. But its at least available (and for free if you search hard enough).
As I’m headed to Austin now, you can catch my thoughts and a less than play by play at @Varsityblue. I apologize to those that may consider it twitter spam. If I ever do it again, I’ll try to do it CiL instead of there. It was just available at the time. So deal with it.
Game 2 starts at 4pm EDT tomorrow. The Purdue/Illinois game should be wrapping up right as Michigan starts. Hopefully it’ll feature a big L for Purdue.
Go Illini! Go Blue!
Posted under Baseball
As I’ve been posting about over the past couple days, the Michigan lacrosse team is not only participating in the MCLA National Tournament, but also excelling in Denver. They defeated Texas and Sonoma State over the first two rounds, and will face Colorado in the semifinal game. Before we start to look forward, let’s recap the past couple games.
Michigan 11-5 Texas
Has has been the case several times this season, the Wolverines got off to a slow offensive start when they faced the Longhorns. However, the defense was similarly slow-starting on this day, allowing Texas to take a 3-1 lead before the Michigan team started humming. Michigan scored the next 5 goals and never looked back. In the second half, Michigan got off to another slow start offensively, but they didn’t allow Texas to score and were able to work through the offensive slump, scoring 3 in the quarter. Though Trevor Yealy led the team (and the nation) in scoring this season, it was senior Peter Vasher who was the offensive star on this day, scoring 5 goals for Michigan. It’s a shame he was hurt for much of the year, because the Michigan offense could have benefitted from another bigtime scorer. Mark Stone played the first 3 quarters in net for Michigan, and Andrew Fowler played the fourth.
MFlowBlue recap – Official recap
Michigan 22-6 Sonoma State
Perhaps inspired by their own lackadaisical first half effort against Texas, Michigan was determined not to have a slow start in round 2 against the Seawolves of Sonoma State. As the sun set on Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Michigan led 3-1 just 5 minutes into the game, on their way to a stunning 17-4 lead… at halftime. Michigan’s defense was operating as efficiently as its offense, and to quote @UMichLacrosse “Eylachar: One man clearing machine.” Trevor Yealy scored 5 for the Wolverines, Riley Kearns and Wes McGowan each completed hat tricks, Kevin Zorovich had 4 points for Michigan, and 11 different Michigan players scored in all. Mark Stone and Andrew Fowler split time in net, with Stone getting the starting nod. Michigan scored their second-highest output of the year, trailing only their 33-8 pounding of Eastern Michigan on March 20th, by putting 22 goals on the Seawolves. Of course, they probably could have scored many more, given the uneven distribution of goals over the halves.
MFlowBlue recap – Official recap
Colorado
As we enter the third round of the tournament, Michigan will finally face an opponent that they’ve already seen before in the Colorado Buffaloes. The game will take place tomorrow night at 8PM Mountain time (10Pm Eastern) in the stadium at Dick’s Sporting Good Park.
Colorado finished the season 15-6, with a 5-0 record in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Conference, with a nailbiter 11-10 loss to BYU in the conference final. Their body of work over the season earned them an at-large bid to the MCLA Tournament, and the national #5 seed. An 11-3 decision over UCSB got them through the first round, and they took down #4 Minnesota-Duluth in round 2 for the right to face Michigan.
Michigan thrashed the then-#4 Buffs 13-4 in the home opener at Oosterbaan Fieldhouse. Michigan led 9-2 at halftime, adding a 4-2 second-half advantage as well. Trevor Yealy, Aaron Hodari, and Riley Kearns had 5, 3, and 2 goals for Michigan, respectively. 4 different Colorado players scored. In addition to facing each other earlier this year, Michigan and Colorado also had several opponents in common. CU lost 11-3 to Michigan State (Michigan pounded the Spartans 21-9), beat BYU 10-8 in Provo and lost 11-0 at a neutral site (Michigan prevailed 14-11 in Ann Arbor over the Cougs), lost a home game 8-7 to Sonoma State (Michigan beat them on a neutral field yesterday by a rather lopsided score – see above), and beat Colorado State 11-4 (Michigan won 16-3 against the Rams).
James Blackburn led Colorado in scoring on the year, notching 36 goals and 14 assists. Behind him were Darren Hulick and Joel Packer with 33 and 31 goals, respectively. Josh Albrecht and Tyler Snyder each had 23 point for Colorado. In net, senior Kevin Moriarty played the majority of the year, but 3 freshmen also saw duty for the Buffaloes. Against Michigan, Blackburn, Hulick, Snyder, and Michael Emerson each scored a goal. Moriarty played almost the entire game, before taking a penalty with just over a minute to go, and Will Brown was placed between the pipes.
Who’s Left?
One of the advantages of playing a tough schedule over the course of the year is that Michigan has already faced every team left in the bracket. Aside from Colorado, who they’ll play tomorrow, (2) BYU and (3) Chapman will square off in the other semifinal game. Michigan beat Chapman 13-10 in Orange, CA, and took down BYU 14-11 at Oosterbaan. Neither team will be a mystery to Michigan, nor are they a mystery to each other. They played in Provo at the end of the regular season, and Chapman walked away victims of a 10-7 defeat at the hands of the Cougars. BYU and Michigan are the only two teams Chapman lost to this year.
Posted under Other Sports
Northwestern isn’t really very good at all. They have a 3-16 BigTen record (12-34-1 overall). Michigan is playing and praying. We need Purdue to lose at least two against Illinois at home. We must take care of Northwestern. If Purdue wins two we’re done. If they win one, we must sweep. If they get swept, we must win 2. We have to hope the weather works in our favor. That is all.
Rocky Miller Park
Evanston, IL
Game 1 Thursday:4pm Live Stats
Probable Starters: Chris Fetter (6-3) vs. TBA
Game 2 Friday: 4pm Live Stats
Probable Starters: Eric Katzman (7-4) vs. Eric Jokish (3-7)
Game 3 Saturday: 2pm Live Stats
Probable Starters: TBA vs. Joe Muraski (3-5)
No word on audio. I’m guessing there may not be any. I’m headed to Austin today to pick up my little sister and head to a funeral. I should be back by Sunday to hopefully have a post on making the tournament. We’ll see.
Posted under Baseball