Michigan Wolverines weekly headlines: New recruit, hockey sweep, and more

It has been an eventful week for the Michigan Wolverines. Here are the highlights from this past week — from new football recruits to a hockey sweep, there has been a lot going on in Ann Arbor.

Michigan football

Michigan football had itself a great, yet quiet, week thus far. Obviously, tonight’s Super Bowl features four former Wolverines, though Michigan landed some more important news earlier in the week.

On Saturday, Michigan football received its second commitment in the 2025 class. The Wolverines landed Mantrez Walker, whom they pulled straight from SEC country. The Georgia native chose the Wolverines over an extensive offer list and will likely be a foundational part of Michigan’s next recruiting class.

In the 2024 class, the Wolverines just landed four-star Jacob Oden (two weeks ago) and could be trending for more big-name players. Oden has been hard at work recruiting some of the nation’s other top prospects to Ann Arbor; additionally, Jim Harbaugh and his staff are still hot on the trail with five-star 2024 quarterback Jadyn Davis.

Once the recruiting dead period ends, look for the Wolverines to make more waves with some of the biggest names nationally.

Michigan hockey sweeps Michigan State

On Friday and Saturday nights, the Michigan Wolverines hockey team took the ice against bitter rival Michigan State, and boy, did the series live up to the hype. On Friday night, Michigan faced off with Michigan State in game one of the weekend series and game three of the season series — the Wolverines’ dominant first period proved to be fruitful in the end as Michigan escaped with a 4-2 victory.

After the game, the Wolverines and Spartans saw a massive, hate-fueled brawl on the ice. Following the postgame fights, Michigan hockey coach Brandon Naurato had some interesting comments about the Spartans: “[Michigan State] can’t play with us — they can’t play with us unless they goon it up.”

The comments sparked an even tighter matchup on Saturday — the annual ‘Dual in the D’ game. Still, with 0.6 seconds remaining in overtime, the Michigan Wolverines buried a game-winning goal to make the final score 4-3 and take the season series 3-1. The Wolverines’ next series will be at Ohio State — Michigan hockey looks to take the season series from the Buckeyes as well, as their series currently sits at 1-1.

Michigan softball starts season on the right foot (kinda)

Well, it’s that time of year again! The Michigan softball and baseball seasons are upon us, and the Wolverines are already off to a great start. Despite coming into this season unranked with a ton of youth and inexperience (not to mention a new head coach for the first time since the 1980s), there is a mixed bag of expectations for the Michigan Wolverines this year.

In game one of the Bonnie Tholl era, the Wolverines narrowly lost to USF, 2-1. That is the only bad news I have regarding Michigan softball thus far. The Wolverines won their next four games in a row and sit at 4-1 overall. Michigan has claimed victories over Colgate (10-0), WKU (5-2), WKU again (5-2), and Portland State (9-1).

Michigan’s next contest will be this Friday at 3:00 PM (EST) against the University of Central Florida in the St. Pete Clearwater Elite Invitational.

Michigan basketball disappoints, is likely out of tournament picture

The 2022-23 Michigan Wolverines basketball season has been disappointing thus far, and it got a little bit worse on Saturday night. Despite leading for most of the game, Michigan could not hang on and was eventually bested by the 18th-ranked Indiana Hoosiers.

The loss was the Wolverines’ 11th of the season (in 25 games) and essentially eliminates Michigan from NCAA tournament contention later this March. With a few regular-season games remaining and the Big Ten tournament looming, Michigan has two unlikely paths to a tournament berth: win out, or win the conference tournament and secure the automatic bid.

Michigan basketball is not done just yet, but honestly, it seems like the Wolverines’ season has already ended. At this point, the best we could realistically ask for would be a deep run in the NIT to build momentum into the next season.

Michigan women’s basketball earns 20th victory of 2022-23

Unlike the men’s team, the women’s team has seen a stellar season thus far and is looking like one of the best teams in the country right now. Throughout the week (both Sundays), the Michigan Wolverines took down two Big Ten foes and improved to 20-5 on the season.

Last weekend, Michigan went into East Lansing and earned a gritty 10-point victory over the Michigan State Spartans. This Sunday, the Wolverines performed similarly, taking down the Nebraska Cornhuskers at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor.

The Michigan women’s basketball team has now won four in a row heading into their contest at Indiana — a huge, top-ranked matchup, to say the least.

Michigan wrestling splits weekend, 1-1

It was an up-and-down weekend for the Michigan wrestling team, which currently sits at 10-4 overall and 5-3 in Big Ten play. As of late, the Wolverines have been dominating some of the lesser programs in the Big Ten yet being relatively uncompetitive with the nation’s best teams.

A few weekends ago, Michigan ranked in the top 3, though it has lost thrice since and continues to fall. This weekend, the Wolverines were dominated at No. 2 Iowa, though they edged out a victory over a ranked Indiana team and earned their 10th dual meet victory of the season.

The Michigan Wolverines return home next weekend for their final dual meet of the season — a senior day meet at the Crisler Center against Central Michigan. The meet is scheduled for 5:00 PM (EST) on Sunday, February 19th.

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