Last Sunday when junior right-hander Brandon Sinnery took the mound against Illinois, the Michigan baseball team stood even with Iowa in last place in the Big Ten Standings, and the Wolverines had gone two years without pitching a complete game.

They were struggling just to stay in the pack to qualify for the Big Ten Tournament.

Exactly one week and two Sinnery complete games later, Michigan (6-6 Big Ten, 13-25 overall) now finds itself one game out of first place in the Big Ten thanks to Sinnery’s complete-game victory over Iowa (4-8, 15-22) on Sunday.

The 5-2 win capped Michigan’s second consecutive series victory after having failed to win a series all season. The Wolverines lost Friday’s opener against the Hawkeyes, 13-7, but squeaked out a 2-1 win on Saturday before taking the series on Sunday.

Michigan held a 3-2 lead in the third inning, thanks to an RBI from both freshman right fielder Michael O’Neill and redshirt sophomore first baseman Kevin Krantz.

That's when Michigan coach Rich Maloney felt he needed to remind his team what was at stake.

“I just told the guys, 'this is one of those games right here, the way this league is set up this year, this is one where we could throw ourselves into the thick of the race,' ” Maloney said. “ 'So if you want to do it, this is when you got to do it.' ”

Sinnery didn’t give up another run all game, as Michigan held on for the win.

The Wolverines even added some insurance runs in the ninth when Krantz recorded his third RBI of the day.

“Earlier in the year we wouldn’t have gotten that,” O’Neill said. “We would’ve had to go into the (bottom of the) ninth inning with a one-run lead. But now stuff is starting to go our way, we’re getting some calls, we’re getting some breaks, guys are coming up with some timely hits.”

At the midway point of the Big Ten season, Michigan sits just one game out of first place but is still stuck in a five-way tie for fourth place in what has become a gridlocked conference race.

In a conference where just one game separates the top eight teams, every inch matters. And finally, the bounces just may be going Michigan’s way.

For the final run of Sunday’s game, Crank ripped an RBI single between past two diving Hawkeyes. Iowa was playing a defensive shift against Crank, but he found a hole in the overloaded side.

“If he’d have hit it three or four inches either way, their guy was probably going to get it,” Maloney said. “So that was kind of cool because we haven’t caught much luck up to this point. But reality is, some of it, you make your own luck.”

Part of that luck has been the reemergence of redshirt senior second baseman Anthony Toth and sophomore shortstop Derek Dennis.

Dennis missed over three weeks with a broken foot while Toth barely produced anything offensively, batting .082 in 13 games with Dennis out of the lineup.

Dennis returned to game action on Wednesday against Eastern Michigan, and Toth returned to his previous form, going 5-for-12 with three RBI.

Along with improved hitting, the Wolverines also got two great performances out of Sinnery and sophomore right-hander Kyle Clark.

Clark went 7.2 innings on Saturday, giving up just one run in the first inning before pitching over seven innings of scoreless ball.

Iowa’s Matt Dermody matched Clark’s performance until O’Neill hit an opposite-way homerun in the eighth that squeaked over the right-field fence to give Michigan a deciding 2-1 lead.

“I’d been getting pitched away all day,” O’Neill said. “He threw me a fastball basically right on the outside corner, and I put a good swing on it, but I didn’t know if it was going to get out. With the wind the way it was this weekend blowing to right, I knew I had a chance. And I looked up and saw the umpire signal home run.”

Clark provided some stability for a pitching staff that got roughed up in a rollercoaster of a game Friday.

Sophomores Bobby Brosnahan and Ben Ballantine surrendered a six-run lead when they combined to allow seven runs in the fourth. Iowa went on to win 13-7.

But the performances by Clark and Sinnery salvaged the weekend.

“We’re confident now,” Sinnery said. “We’ve won two series in a row, so we have all the momentum, and a lot of guys are starting to turn it around. So, we’re feeling good.”