ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Michigan and Northwestern settled nothing during Sunday's doubleheader, which was appropriate for two teams with Oklahoma City aspirations.



Behind a rally-starting single from Teddi Ewing and a rally-clinching two-run single from Samantha Findlay, No. 5 Michigan scored three runs in the bottom of the seventh to beat No. 12 Northwestern 3-2 in Sunday's finale and salvage a split of the day's games. As a result, the Big Ten regular-season title and the right to host the conference tournament will come down to a coin flip if both teams hold serve next weekend in two-game sets against Penn State and Michigan State, respectively.


After pitching 21 total innings in a pair of wins against Penn State on Friday and Saturday (and taking the six-hour bus ride from State College, Pa., to Ann Arbor on Saturday night), Lauren Delaney struck out 12 Wolverines on her way to a 2-1 win in Sunday's opener in front of a sellout crowd of 2,491 at Alumni Field. But after going six strong in the second game, Delaney couldn't hold on when Michigan's bats finally came to life.


"We weren't competing, and we're a very competitive team," Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said. "And I think Northwestern's a really competitive team -- I thought they were really within themselves, just playing their game plan and confident in their game. I told [her players] going into it, 'We don't have to do anything different than we've done. Just play the ball you've played all year and you'll be fine.' But we didn't do that. And we did that in the final two innings."


It didn't hurt that Michigan freshman Jordan Taylor matched Delaney pitch for pitch in the finale. Taylor struck out six and allowed just three hits -- one of them a highly controversial RBI double from Robin Thompson that appeared several inches foul. Between Taylor and sophomore Nikki Nemitz, Hutchins has two quality options on days when opposing pitchers slow a lineup that has a collective OPS of nearly .850 -- the kind of days that inevitably come during May and June.


"Our philosophy has always been we need to have two No. 1 pitchers, two good pitchers," Hutchins said. "It certainly should give us an edge to know that I don't have to go into a run here with only Nikki or only Jordan."
The flip side of Michigan's luxury is the dilemma confronting Northwestern. For most of the afternoon, with former aces Courtnay Foster and Eileen Canney looking on from the dugout and broadcast booth, respectively, Delaney looked every bit the program's next great pitcher. Few pitchers throw harder than the tall sophomore, but she was perplexing the Wolverines with refined offspeed pitches just as often as with rise balls. And in truth, Michigan's seventh-inning rally was made up of a bloop infield single, an error at third base and a walk just as much as it was the two hard hits from Ewing and Findlay.


It's just that with Delaney and only Delaney, Northwestern's margin for error on matters over which the Wildcats have some control (an early loss forcing extra games in a regional or potentially a super regional) and over which they have no control (weather-condensed schedules) is smaller than at any point in coach Kate Drohan's tenure.


Alumni Field
Three years ago Michigan won the school's first softball national championship. Now the Wolverines have a home worthy of the program Hutchins crafted over decades. The renovated Alumni Field, which debuted just three weeks ago, is a spectacular facility worth a trip for softball fans, regardless of rooting interest. It's loud, it's intimate and with some finishing touches still being applied at the baseball stadium next door, you even catch a whiff of that new-stadium smell when exiting your car.


"I think this is where college softball has gone … where college athletics has gone," Hutchins said. "Michigan wanted to give the student-athletes, give the fans, an experience that they deserve. And I think that's what this is all about. And honestly, it's pretty hard to compete without it these days."