Any so-called Michigan fan must be living under a rock if they didn't hear about Michigan's Big Ten Tournament championship by now. The fifth-seeded Wolverines burst onto the scene last weekend and won four of five games to claim the program's 10th conference tournament championship.

"I woke up this morning and had to go make sure I still had that Big Ten Championship hat, make sure this is real. I can't believe it," head coach Erik Bakich said on WTKA earlier this week. "I'm so proud of the guys."

The Wolverines started the weekend with a late-night victory over Illinois. The 7-5 victory was good for the latest game to ever finish at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska, at least for a couple of days. The game ended at 2:16 a.m. local time.

Clark Elliott and Joe Stewart led off the game with back-to-back home runs, and Michigan never trailed. Jimmy Obertop added a home run of his own in the fifth inning, and the Michigan pitchers held off the Fighting Illini as Michigan advanced.

"[Elliott] has been Mr. Consistent. He's done it all year, he did it in the summer, a good player since his freshman year here, he's just a model of consistency," said Bakich. "Joe Stewart is a Ferrari, and it's like he didn't know he was a Ferrari for five years and wasn't allowed to drive fast and now this guy is just playing with a smile on his face. And like, watching him hit that home run against Illinois, and he's going around the bases, pumping his fist, like that's what this game is about."

Following the 7-5 victory over Illinois, Michigan had a date with Maryland, which hung 43 runs on Michigan in a three-game series just two weeks prior. However, Michigan flipped the script and dropped 15 runs on the Terrapins to advance to the Big Ten Tournament semifinals.

"That was kind of our rock bottom point of the season when we were there a couple of weeks ago," Bakich said. "Our guys made a lot of adjustments after that weekend... I think our offense was extremely dialed in that 'you know what, we need to return the favor a little bit and do some scoring of our own.'"

The Wolverines definitely returned the favor in a game in which many fans, and maybe even players and coaches, realized that winning the whole tournament might actually be in the realm of possibility.

Michigan then dropped its one and only game of the tournament to Iowa on Saturday. The bats cooled off quite a bit, and the Wolverines were put on the brink of elimination. Michigan didn't plate a run until the sixth inning, and Iowa's four-run seventh inning set up a rematch which would take place early Sunday afternoon.

Although the Wolverines won Sunday's rematch with the Hawkeyes, it didn't come without drama. In the fifth inning, with Michigan leading 4-1, Willie Weiss entered the game for the Wolverines. After throwing five pitches, Weiss was ejected for having a foreign substance on his glove.

"I understand that sticky stuff on the glove, pine tar whatever it's part of baseball, maybe, but that's just not going to be part of our program," Bakich said. "When we make a mistake like that, we have to own it, we have to apologize for it and move on."

"For Willie, unfortunately, I love him as much as anyone, but he's going to have to serve a four-game suspension. So he'll miss the first three games of the regional," said Bakich. "But the message to the team is: 'that's not going to be the thing that derails us.'"

The ejection certainly didn't derail Michigan on Sunday afternoon. The Wolverines dropped nine runs on the Hawkeyes in the seventh inning to advance to the Big Ten Championship via a 13-1 run-rule.

Following the 13-1 thrashing of Iowa, Michigan met Rutgers in a winner-take-all Big Ten Tournament championship game on Sunday night. Michigan claimed an early lead, and Rutgers continued to hang around, but an Obertop three-run home run, followed by a two-RBI suicide squeeze from Jack VanRemortel, ended the Scarlet Knights' hopes at a championship, and Michigan took home the trophy.

"This game against Rutgers was 100% about mental toughness," Bakich said. "[Obertop's] hit, he's hit 12 home runs this year and none of them were bigger than that one right there. He's banged up, catching five games in four days, the wind is blowing straight in, 20 miles an hour, and he hits an absolute missile, into the wind, through the teeth of the wind, into the bleachers, too, for a three-run jack to extend our lead, that was awesome."

The Big Ten Tournament championship sent Michigan through to the NCAA Tournament via an automatic bid. The 2022 national tournament appearance will be Michigan's fifth under Bakich, and its 26th in program history.

The Wolverines will take on Oregon in the Louisville Region on Friday at 7 p.m. If Michigan wins, it will take on the winner of Louisville and Southeast Missouri State.

"The guys will grab their bats and gloves, and they'll march out there," Bakich said, prior to the regional weekend. "They'll compete with anybody, and that's why I love them. They get up after they get knocked down every time."

Michigan will undoubtedly be knocked down at some point in this weekend's regional. It's up to them whether they get back up from it, or bow down and surrender their season in the regional round.

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