Facing a 3-2 count with two runners on base, senior MacKenzie Nemitz swung hard, finding a gap between center and right field that propelled the Wolverines to a 7-6 walk-off victory over Indiana.
Akul Vijayvargiya
Daily Sports Writer
Softball
Freshman right-hander Alex Storako set the tone right away for the Michigan pitching staff, striking out eight Indiana batters in 3.2 innings en route to a 3-2 victory for the No. 23 Wolverines (26-10) over Indiana (28-12).
With two outs on the board in the last inning of the game, sophomore left-hander Meghan Beaubien threw two pitches straight into the center of the batters box. The third ended up in the dirt, but that didn’t matter in the end as the Indiana batter had already started her swing.
With that, Beaubien was able to start and end the game with a strikeout.
The No. 23 Michigan softball team (24-10) defeated Indiana (28-10) 4-0 in the first game of this weekend’s series.
On the next pitch, Carson swung hard, sending a line drive over the right-field wall — the first home run of her collegiate career. The grand slam increased Michigan’s lead to 19.
Because the ball was so low, Carson didn’t even know whether it went out of the field.
The four-strikeout inning is a rarity. On Wednesday, Storako achieved the feat during the No. 23 Michigan softball team’s 24-3 victory over the Rockets (10-19), an onslaught that marked the Wolverines’ (24-10) 12th consecutive win.
Early in the first inning, senior first baseman Alex Sobczak hit a line drive single to right field to move senior second baseman Faith Canfield to home plate.
And the runs kept coming.
When Sobczak took over permanently, her batting average sat at a lackluster .125. Today, her .385 clip is the 11th-best in the Big Ten. She’s been locked in at the plate during the Wolverines’ current 11-game win streak, racking up 15 hits in 29 at-bats during this stretch — good for a batting average of .517. And that’s no small sample size, considering she has a total of 65 at-bats on the season.
With her steal, Blair created the run that gave Michigan that lead early, and her contributions to the Wolverines’ dominant series didn’t stop at that run. Blair led the Michigan offense all weekend, a common trend for the freshman.
Over the weekend, Hutchins put her unblemished record on the line when the 23rd-ranked Wolverines (23-10 overall, 6-0 Big Ten) traveled to Piscataway for a three-game set. Led by first-year head coach and former SEC Player of the Year Kristen Butler, the new-look Scarlet Knights (16-17, 0-6) looked to tarnish Hutchins’ perfect mark against them.
In the bottom of the fourth inning in Tuesday’s game against Central Michigan, Alex Storako found herself in a jam.