Thursday Morning Brews: Tournament season is here

Welcome to the Thursday edition of Morning Brews. It’s a big day and weekend for Michigan, as the men and women’s basketball teams start their Big Ten tournaments today, and hockey team starts theirs on Friday.

We have a wide variety of sports covered for you today, so let’s roll:

Steve Kornacki is a wonderful story-teller, and his writing prowess is on full display here talking about the remarkable Austin Hatch story. Hatch survived two plane crashes in his life, which killed both of his parents and left Hatch with a daunting task if he wanted to walk again. Hatch not only walked again, he ultimately suited up for Michigan and made a free throw. Now, Hatch is graduating in may and getting married in June. This is a great story that will make you want to try a little harder to live and love today.

The Michigan women’s basketball team will be facing Penn State tonight at 9 ET in the Big Ten Tournament. The team was ranked just outside of the Top 25 in the latest rankings. Getting deep into this tourney would be ideal in helping boost not only their confidence, but their ranking in the NCAA Tournament as well.

All Big Ten Women’s basketball honors featured not one, not two, but three Wolverines. Katelynn Flaherty made the first team for the third time in her career, which puts her in a league of her own, as she is the only player in program history to be a first-teamer three times. This is Hallie Thome’s second first team All Big Ten honor, and Jillian Dunston was named to the All Defense first team. Flaherty averaging 23.5 points per game, and Thome has the 8th best field goal percentage in the nation (61.6%).

It’s been a rough go of it early on for Michigan baseball, losing four straight. U-M is now 2-5 on the year and has a four game series at No. 8 Stanford starting on Friday. The series might say a lot about how Michigan fares the rest of the season, and the team can’t afford to leave Palo Alto getting swept by the Cardinal. After finishing 42-17 in 2017 and 2nd in the Big Ten, the team will look to go from being super cold to super hot in a quick manner and all will be well.

A round of applause for the Michigan Women’s Gymnastics team, as they tied No. 12 Denver for the win at the Elevate the Stage Meet. After watching too much Winter Olympics coverage the past few weeks, these gymnastics ladies reminded how much cooler the Summer Olympics are.

This is kind of a big deal? Michigan hockey is arguably the hottest team in the NCAA right now after sweeping Notre Dame and Arizona State in back to back weekend series. If Michigan beats Wisconsin they will be playing Ohio State in round two if the Buckeyes beat Michigan State in their first round tilt. U-M is just short of a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, but going deep in the Big Ten Tournament would help seal the deal even further.