Softball Super-Regional Preview

Roll the dough!

THE ESSENTIALS

THE SCHEDULE

The NCAA super-regional is a best-of-three series. There will be one game Thursday and one Friday, with a third game following a half-hour after the second if needed.

REGIONAL REVIEW

Last year in Tempe, the regional was an emotional thrill-ride.  Shoot-outs, come-backs, and one of the greatest games in Michigan softball history combined to put the Wolverines past Arizona State.  Cardiologists throughout Southeast Michigan were probably happy to see this year’s affair cause the Maize & Blue spectators a great deal less anxiety.  Apart from a spot of indigestion when Cal briefly took a 1-0 lead on Saturday, there was not much to raise heart rates or drive up blood pressure as the big Blue machine cruised to their regional coronation.

As the top seed in the region, Michigan drew the Oakland Golden Grizzlies in the opener, a middling team that snagged an auto-bid out of a lower-tier conference.  Michigan was not as sharp as they could have been in their first playoff appearance, which Carol Hutchins attributed to the nervous energy of the first game of the playoffs.  Even so, Michigan breezed by a badly out-matched Oakland team.  The Grizzlies played into Michigan’s hands, handing out 6 walks, committing 2 errors, and plunking a pair of Wolverine batters.  As she has done so often, Sierra Romero led the way on offense, going 2-3 with 2 RBIs as Michigan secured a 9-1 mercy-rule win.

Michigan had to shake off the jitters that slowed them down in game 1 quickly, as a tested California team came knocking on the door on Saturday.  As mentioned, Cal took an early lead with a home run in the top of the 2nd.  The first time through the line-up, Michigan continually made contact against Cal starter Stephanie Trzcinski, but couldn’t get much going beyond a manufactured run in the 2nd to level the score.  Once they’d had a look at her, though, Michigan’s deadly line-up zeroed in and showed no mercy.  Romero gave Michigan the lead on a deep solo-blast in the third, and in the 4th the rest of the team blew the doors down.  Falk, Lawrence, and Christner each launched long-balls, and Cal was down 7-1 before they came back to the plate.  Cal would continue to threaten throughout the day, but Betsa worked out of several jams with a little help from her friends.  Abby Ramirez highlighted the defensive performance with a dynamite diving grab to rob a base hit.  A two-run double in the 6th from senior catcher Lauren Sweet allowed Michigan to walk off early for the second day in a row, also by a 9-1 margin.

On Sunday, Michigan unexpectedly faced the Pittsburgh Panthers, who used a grand slam and some good freshman pitching to oust the Bears in the Saturday late game.  As the away team on the scoreboard, Michigan batted first, and by the time they were done, the game was almost out of reach.  Sierra Lawrence sprinkled the cheese from the lead-off spot, reaching 2nd base on a hard-hit ball down the right-field line.  She would come in to score after two illegal-pitch calls.  Pitt’s hurler hit Romero and walked Christner before giving up a 3-run blast to Susalla.  Clearly flustered, she left the game without retiring a single Michigan batter.  Aidan Falk added another run, and it was 5-0 by the time Pitt picked up their bats.  It briefly looked as though Michigan might grab yet another mercy-rule win when the lead swelled to 8 runs in the 3rd, but Pitt got 3 back in the bottom of the same inning.  Neither starter Wagner nor reliever Betsa had her best stuff today, as on-and-off drizzles, fatigue, and perhaps just a little complacency with the big lead kept them off-balance.  They did what they needed to do, however, and the offense removed any doubt with a pair of insurance runs in the 5th inning.  Alumni Field rose as one to cheer on Betsa as she gunned down the final Pitt hitter in the 7th, and Michigan could celebrate a 10-3 win and a regional championship.

The stats throughout the weekend were impressive to say the least for the Maize & Blue.  Michigan went 3-0, outscoring their opponents 28-5 along the way and posting a combined 1.84 ERA with a 26-5 K to BB ratio.  5 home runs on the weekend pushed Michigan’s season total to a staggering 112, now well past the 2005 team’s program record in that category.  Junior wonder-worker Sierra Romero showed the full range of her abilities, going 5-9 at the plate, showing power with a home-run and blazing speed with a triple and a cheeky bunt-single against a backed-off infield.  Freshman Aidan Falk made a big impression as well – as Hutch says, at this point in the year, they’re not freshmen anymore!  She hit .600 on the weekend, grabbing 3 hits against both Cal and Pitt.

SUPER-REGIONAL PREVIEW

After Sunday’s game, Carol Hutchins told her team what she always does after a regional win – that they are one of only 16 teams in the country that gets to have practice on Tuesday.  For a coach that wants nothing more than a chance to help her players get better, that is reason enough to be excited.  One of those other 15 teams will be thinking along the same lines, however, and is headed for Ann Arbor with no intentions of bowing out early.  Now it’s time for us to look ahead to our opponents in the next round, the Georgia Bulldogs out of the ESS-EEE-SEE!

Georgia tore through a thoroughly mediocre non-conference schedule, littered with the Elons and Winthrops of the world.  The Mary Nutter Collegiate Challenge was their only real foray into serious opposition prior to conference play.  There Georgia notched a shiny win over Oklahoma, but suffered losses to Texas and Notre Dame – tourney teams, but ones a real contender should be able to handle.  The Bulldogs added a few more non-conference games in the midst of their conference slate, and did not fare so well in those match-ups, dropping a wild 15-9 affair to UNC and taking a surprise 4-3 loss against USC Upstate.

Within the SEC, Georgia’s season went largely according to plan, with few major upsets in either direction.  A home win against Alabama and a road sweep of Kentucky mark the most impressive achievements of the Dogs on the season thus far.  With the rise of the conference as a whole, however, simply navigating the schedule without excessive humiliation now buys a team not only a ticket to the big dance, but the right to host a regional as well.

Once in the regional, things got dicey for Georgia.  Fans that came to Athens on Saturday got to watch MUCH more than they paid to see.  Western Kentucky went 14 innings with Georgia, eventually winning a 2-1 pitchers’ duel on the arm of Miranda Kramer, who struck out 19, allowing only 5 hits and 1 run over the equivalent of two back-to-back games.  After that, Georgia was pushed to the very edge of elimination, salvaging a 2-run deficit in the 5th inning against UNC before walking off in the 7th.  Sunday went by more easily, as Kramer was unable to recapture the magic of her earlier performance, and Georgia cruised to back-to-back double-digit mercy-rule wins.  They escaped ignominy and earned the right to travel north to Ann Arbor where, according to their football coach, they will surely freeze to death.

Digging into the stats, we see a Georgia team with a respectable defense and an elite offense.  Chelsea Wilkinson is clearly the work-horse for Georgia in the circle, having hurled over 100 more innings than back-up Brittany Gray, and leading the team in ERA, strike-outs, and a number of other categories.  She is a strike-out merchant, averaging a little over one per inning – not Betsa-level, but quite good.  The one real knock on her is that she is significantly more inclined to give up the long-ball compared to her partner, ceding over 5 times more on the season.  While this may be attributable to having faced better opposition, Georgia may want to consider giving Gray an opportunity if the home runs start piling up.

Meanwhile, at the plate, Georgia stands squarely among the nation’s elite.  The Dogs .346 team batting average is actually a hair ahead of Michigan’s .344 number, and is tied for 10th nation-wide.  While Michigan more than makes up the difference with a better on-base and more home runs, there is no doubt that the Bulldogs can plate runs when they need to.  At the end of the day, what matters on offense is scoring runs, and Georgia is again tied for 10th in the country at 7.31 per game (Michigan, meanwhile, is in 2nd at 8.30).

The star of the line-up is Alex Hugo without a doubt.  She hits over .400, gets on base over half the time she steps to the plate, and leads the team with an impressive 21 homers.  Limiting her opportunities to get multiple RBIs will be essential for Michigan’s defense.  That won’t be easy to do, however, as almost every major contributor on Georgia hits over .330.  Sisters Cortni and Sydni Emanuel are both over .400 on the year (there are two other girls in the Emanuel family, Brittni and Whitni, which … ok).  For one of the first times this season, Betsa and Wagner will really get a sense of what other pitchers feel like going up against our line-up – there simply are no easy outs available.

The one weakness in this buzz-saw of an attack is a dearth of true power hitters.  Apart from Hugo, only one other hitter has double-digit homers on the year (Anna Swafford, a strike-out prone .342 slugger).  After her, only one more player has more than 5 long balls.  This team is almost certainly going to get hits, but as long as we can scatter them and get the timely K or double-play, we just might escape without too much damage.  If they get on a roll and the hitting becomes contagious, however, the wheels can come off in a hurry, as WKU’s Miranda Kramer found out on Sunday.

PLAYERS TO WATCH

Like last week, I’ll peg a couple Michigan names for newer fans to keep an eye on.  It would be a little too easy to just name superstar Sierra Romero and ace pitcher Megan Betsa every time, so this week, let’s put the spotlight on a couple players who have been coming on strong of late – Lindsey Montemarano and Aidan Falk.  In addition to starting the team’s pizza obsession, Montemarano has been a spark plug in the line-up in recent weeks after having to fight for her spot earlier in the season.  She has become a highly disciplined hitter, using her diminutive stature (and accompanying smaller strike-zone) to draw more than her fair share of walks.  Aidan Falk starred in the “regional review” above, and deservedly so.  She has been dialed in of late, and is beginning to show more and more of the power she used to set state records in New York in her high school days.  Carol Hutchins has often spoken about the importance of hitting through the line-up, 1-9 rather than just 1-4.  Keep an eye on this pair as we look to continue that trend.

OUTLOOK

As much as I hate to do it, even a superstitious fan like myself has to make some predictions at the end of a write-up.  Looking at Georgia’s numbers, it’s impossible for me to believe that we will hold them down all weekend.  At some point they’ll string things together, somewhere along the line, Michigan’s defense will be stretched to the limit.  All the same, when you stack things up, and as much as I hate to jinx anything with over-confidence, I just can’t see them beating us out.  We hit just as well as they do for average, better for on-base, and vastly better for power.  Their ace is very good; our back-up has better numbers than her and our ace is among the nation’s best.  I see Georgia getting hot and winning a game, but Michigan will pull through in the end and return to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series next week.