{"id":1327,"date":"2025-05-16T05:26:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T05:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/michigan-hopes-to-conquer-the-tournament-in-ncaa-regionals\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T05:26:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T05:26:53","slug":"michigan-hopes-to-conquer-the-tournament-in-ncaa-regionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/michigan-hopes-to-conquer-the-tournament-in-ncaa-regionals\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan hopes to \u2018conquer the tournament\u2019 in NCAA Regionals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>After defying odds, the Michigan softball team automatically qualified for the NCAA Tournament after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/softball\/no-8-seed-michigan-leans-on-pitching-to-win-second-consecutive-big-ten-tournament-2-0-over-no-2-seed-ucla\/\">clinching<\/a> the Big Ten Tournament title. The Wolverines will head down to Austin, Texas \u2014 home of host No. 6 Texas\u00a0 \u2014 this weekend for the NCAA Regionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a double-elimination style <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/brackets\/softball\/d1\/2025\">bracket<\/a> that contains the first-seeded Longhorns, No. 2 seed University of Central Florida and No. 4 seed Eastern Illinois, the third-seeded Wolverines hope to continue their postseason success to overcome the challenges their competition may bring.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Michigan\u2019s first matchup is against the Knights, whose strength is in their pitching. UCF has a 2.91 ERA that puts it at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/stats\/softball\/d1\/current\/team\/282\">No. 47<\/a> in the nation. Knights right-hander Isabella Vega is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/stats\/softball\/d1\/current\/individual\/276\">No. 7<\/a>\u00a0 with a 1.35 ERA and the biggest threat to Michigan\u2019s bats heating up. Unlike the Wolverines, UCF has regular season ranked wins taking down then-No. 3 Florida in a 4-0 shutout, then-No. 21 Oklahoma State and then-No. 4 Arizona.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are familiar with (UCF\u2019s) style of play, which is often determined by the players in the program,\u201d Michigan coach Bonnie Tholl said Sunday. \u201cAnd so they\u2019ve had graduation, they\u2019ve had new players filter in, so we\u2019re going to learn a whole bunch more about them as well. And that\u2019s what I said to the team, \u2018Our focus right now is on UCF. That\u2019s who we\u2019re playing.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>The Wolverines will then play either the Longhorns and Panthers game, depending on the game\u2019s outcome. Eastern Illinois was not a projected tournament team but secured its bid by winning the Ohio Valley Conference title. But, it also hasn\u2019t played a team with as much talent as the Longhorns this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Texas, on the other hand, is stacked on the offensive side of the ball. It is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/stats\/softball\/d1\/current\/team\/281\">No. 4<\/a> in batting average with a .354 record \u2014 utility player Mia Scott is No. 27 with a .438\u00a0 \u2014 and is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/stats\/softball\/d1\/current\/team\/345\">No. 27<\/a> in average home runs per game. For reference, the Wolverines are No. 42 in average. The Longhorns also have a leader in catcher Reese Atwood who is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/stats\/softball\/d1\/current\/individual\/343\">No. 22<\/a> nationally with her .855 slugging percentage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Michigan isn\u2019t as close to its competitors in standings as it would like. Senior right-hander Lauren Derkowski has a 2.72 ERA while second-in-command sophomore right-hander Erin Hoehn has a 2.86. On the batting side, junior second baseman Indiana Langford, who leads the Wolverines in batting average, has a .411. Though Michigan\u2019s best don\u2019t align with its competitors, these discrepancies mean nothing in the postseason \u2014 as that\u2019s where the Wolverines have pulled out all the stops.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just beat two top-10 ranked teams,\u201d Tholl said. \u201cAnd even though Oregon was the 16th-seed overall, I think they\u2019ve done enough to be considered a top-10 team. And so I want our kids to remember that we are playing our best ball right now. We have an opportunity ahead of us \u2026 to conquer the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michigan is heating up. Not only has it beat two top-ranked teams, it shut them out. So while the Wolverines are the third seed in this bracket, it can dismantle the two teams right above it. But in order to do so, Michigan must prove that the success sustained in the conference tournament can be extended to the big dance as well.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After defying odds, the Michigan softball team automatically qualified for the NCAA Tournament after clinching the Big Ten Tournament title. The Wolverines will head down to Austin, Texas \u2014 home of host No. 6 Texas\u00a0 \u2014 this weekend for the NCAA Regionals.\u00a0 In a double-elimination style bracket that contains the first-seeded Longhorns, No. 2 seed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1480,1465,222,420,1481,421],"class_list":{"0":"post-1327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-conquer","9":"tag-hopes","10":"tag-michigan","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-regionals","13":"tag-tournament"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}