Michigan softball in 2024 NCAA tournament: Opens vs. Kentucky Friday in Oklahoma
Michigan softball will start the 2024 NCAA tournament by facing off against Kentucky at 3 p.m. Friday (ESPN2) in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The Wolverines' draw could go a long way in making the argument for the Big Ten’s potential 2025 ascension to the No. 2 spot in college softball (behind the SEC, which placed all 13 schools into the 64-team field this year).
After winning the Big Ten tournament and finishing second during the regular season, the Wolverines (41-16) will start the NCAA tournament by facing off with the SEC's 12th-place team, the Kentucky Wildcats (30-22). Should U-M win, a stiffer challenge likely awaits in 5-seed Oklahoma State (44-10).
OSU finished third in the Big 12 regular season and is poised to top the conference with the impending departures of Texas and Oklahoma — this year’s top two seeds — for the SEC. (The Big Ten, meanwhile, will be adding Oregon, UCLA and Washington, all of which made the tourney.) OSU will open its tournament run against Northern Colorado at 5:30 p.m. Friday in Stillwater. The winners of Friday’s games will play Saturday, while the losers will also face off Saturday, in an elimination game.
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But first, the Wolverines have to get past Kentucky. The Wildcats went 8-16 in conference play, then fell to Ole Miss in the first round of the SEC tournament last week. Kentucky features a trio of sluggers in Erin Coffel (1.260 OPS), Grace Lorsung (1.015 OPS) and Rylea Smith (.961 OPS). In the pitcher’s circle, the Wildcats will rely on Stephanie Schoonover, who posted a 2.76 ERA in 34 appearances, striking out 169 in 159⅔ innings.
In a matchup of common opponents, the Wolverines went 2-0 against Florida — the SEC tournament champs who wound up as the 4-seed in the NCAA field — with a 2-1 win in February (in Tampa, Florida) and a 10-2 (5 inn.) win in March (in Fullerton, California). Kentucky, meanwhile, dropped all three of its conference games against the Gators, falling by a combined score of 26-4 in Gainesville, Florida, in late March.
The Wolverines bounced back from missing the NCAA tournament in head coach Bonnie Tholl’s first season, posting a 41-16 record after going 26-25 in 2022-23. This season featured two major speed bumps. First up, there was a difficult California trip in late February and early March — which included five straight losses, capped by a 10-0 loss in six innings to eventual NCAA regional host UCLA on March 1.
The Wolverines then won 14 of their next 16 games before stumbling in a visit to Northwestern (the regular-season Big Ten champs and another NCAA team); U-M dropped all three games in Evanston by a combined 24-10 score. Since that April weekend, however, U-M is 17-2, with the only losses coming in the final regular-season series against Ohio State in Ann Arbor. That run included three Big Ten tournament games in which they stomped Maryland, Wisconsin and Indiana by a combined 20-5 score, with rallies in the final two victories.
The catalysts for the Big Ten tourney run were slugger Keke Tholl (Bonnie’s niece), who drove in five runs over the three games, and pitcher Lauren Derkowski, who covered all 19 innings of the tourney, striking out 20 en route to winning Most Outstanding Player honors in Iowa City. Tholl led the Wolverines with 15 homers this season (including a key blast in the Big Ten semifinals), while third baseman Maddie Erickson posted a 1.010 OPS with 11 homers and a team-high 45 RBIs.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?) @theford.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan softball opens vs. Kentucky in 2024 NCAA tournament
