The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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46 THE WOLVERINE AUGUST 2021 BIGGEST UPSETS Best Male Team Upset Tennis Tops No. 8 Ohio State March 14 Ohio State was cruising through the competition. The Buckeyes had won their first eight Big Ten matches … until they ran into U-M in Ann Arbor March 14 and lost, 4-3. While the Wolverines certainly weren't huge underdogs coming in, they were ranked No. 13 nationally while OSU resided at No. 8. Addition- ally, before the triumph, U-M hadn't beaten the Buckeyes since 2001. The win propelled the Wolverines into the pole position in the Big Ten standings at that time and they wound up-co- champs in the East Division. Best Female Team Upset Basketball Busts Brackets, Tennessee In The Tourney U-M is a program on the rise, and there was no better way to prove it than by beating No. 3 seed Tennes- see — the winningest program in the history of the sport — in the NCAA Tournament's Round of 32, 70-55. Michigan, which held Tennessee to a season-low 19 first-half points, used a 20-5 run over the course of the second and third quarters to extend a lead it never relinquished. With the triumph, the Wolverines advanced to their first-ever Sweet 16. The Volunteers were 6.5-point favor- ites coming in, according to DraftK- ings Sportsbook. ROOKIES OF THE YEAR Male Rookie Of The Year Hunter Dickinson, Basketball Rated as the No. 40 recruit and No. 7 center in his class, Dickinson was well-regarded, but nobody knew he'd be that good — one of the na- tion's top players — that fast. The Alexandria, Va., native actually came off the bench in his first five games, and only joined the starting lineup once fifth-year senior forward Austin Davis was sidelined with an injury. But he proved from game one that he was the main man in the mid- dle, and played like it all season long. The 7-1, 260-pounder was flat-out dominant in the post, finishing the year shooting 59.8 percent from the field and averaging team highs in points (14.1) and rebounds per tilt (7.4). He was key in helping lead the Wolverines to the outright Big Ten title and an Elite Eight appearance. Naturally, Dickinson racked up the accolades. He was named a second- team All-American by the Associated Press, Sporting News, USA Today, the United States Basketball Writers' As- sociation (USBWA) and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), along with earning Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. He was selected to the All-Big Ten first team by the media and tabbed to the sec- ond team by the league's coaches. Dickinson was good enough to garner attention from NBA fran- chises. He opted to test the waters for the 2021 NBA Draft and participated in the NBA G-League Elite Camp, be- fore ultimately deciding to return for at least one more collegiate season. Female Rookie Of The Year Ziyah Holman, Track In her first year in Ann Arbor, the Hyattsville, Md., product shattered school records and became one of the top sprinters in the country. Holman had plenty of accolades — including breaking the world Un- der-20 record while running a leg of the gold-medal-winning 4x400 relay for Team USA at the 2019 Pan-American U20 Championships — before even ar- riving on campus, and she carried that success right over to her college career. In her first-ever competition for U-M, Holman set the sports world on fire. The anchor for the 4x400 re- lay at the Simmons-Harvey Invita- tional Jan. 16, Holman started out with a four-second disadvantage, yet still managed to win the race for her team, posting an incredible 51.79-sec- ond split, with the video of her leg of the race going viral in the process. Later that indoor season, she earned first-team All-America hon- ors for running the 400-meter leg of the fifth-place distance medley relay team at the NCAA Indoor Champi- onships that clocked 11:04.65. Hol- man holds two school records for indoor track — in the 400 (52.55) and 600 meters (1:28.08) — and won the Big Ten title in the former event. She continued to shine during the outdoor season, where the Wolver- ines finished second in the Big Ten and 35th nationally. In the outdoor 400, Holman won the conference ti- tle, set the school record with a 51.41 and placed 18th nationally. ❏ Michigan basketball freshman center Hunter Dickinson finished the 2020-21 season eighth on KenPom.com's ranking of the top players in the country. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL