WEST LAFAYETTE — It’s taken two all season.
Ever since the regular season began for the No. 8 seed Michigan softball team in late February, senior right-hander Laruen Derkowski and sophomore right-hander Erin Hoehn have taken care of business together. Posting ERAs within 0.3 of each other and tallying 16 and 15 wins apiece, the pair has quite evenly divided the heavy lifting within each series, and often within a single game.
Such was the case against No. 1 seed Oregon Thursday, where the pair posted a combined shutout against an offense averaging 7.98 runs per game to advance to the Big Ten Tournament semifinals — a game where things were once again a tale of two pitchers.
In a low-scoring and, at times, stagnant affair with No. 12 seed Purdue (30-23, 13-7), the Wolverines (37-19 overall, 14-11 Big Ten) pulled out a 4-2 victory on the backs of their pair of reliable starters in the circle.
It took no time for Derkowski to get settled back in after getting pulled for sophomore Hoehn in the fourth inning of yesterday’s affair with the Ducks. She retired Boilermakers center fielder Khloe Banks on just the second pitch of the game before dealing three consecutive strikes to the next batter for her first strikeout of the game.
Derkowski retired nine of the first 10 batters she faced in just 30 pitches, the only hit coming on a shallow infield fly that just barely escaped the glove of junior second baseman Indiana Langford. Derkowski confidently attacked the zone at different planes to draw a variety of soft contact, all while making frequent use of an offspeed pitch that has been quite rare up to this point in her campaign this year. For a while, it appeared the primary starter was going to get the job done on her own.
But what was quick and easy in the first three innings became a more taxing affair in the fourth and fifth. After a third inning offensive surge from Michigan put it up 4-0, Purdue had an answer. A muffed catch at first put an early baserunner on for the Boilermakers and set up a response in the form of a two-run shot from Purdue right-hander Julia Gossett. For the moment, Derkowski remained unphased, mixing some more offspeed in with her riseball to retire two consecutive batters and getting herself out of the situation.
But when a single, a wild pitch and a walk started the fifth inning, Michigan head coach Bonnie Tholl made the switch. With two runners on base and zero outs, Hoehn immediately began to deal. She recorded her first strikeout in just three pitches, and three consecutive outs shortly after that put a hush back over the home Purdue crowd.
The sixth inning began similarly for Hoehn as the fifth did for Derkowski, with back-to-back singles creating a threatening situation for the Boilermakers. But unlike Derkowski, Hoehn had nobody to save her but herself. Leaning on the reliable fielders behind her, Hoehn worked herself out of a second consecutive tight spot. A pop fly and a double play concluded what became the Boilermakers’ last threat of the night.
For the second time in two days, the two pitchers that headlined the Wolverines’ regular season shut down their opponent’s attack in a combined effort in the postseason. And for the second time in two days, it will be a pair of pitchers stamping Michigan’s nameplate into the next round.
