Michigan
On-the-rise Michigan gets biggest test yet in No. 1 UConn: ‘Our kids want this’
Kim Barnes Arico had plenty of questions about her still-very-young Michigan women’s basketball team heading into last Saturday’s game against then-No 18 Notre Dame, and the Wolverines answered every last one of them.
Michigan was more than ready for Notre Dame, walloping the Fighting Irish, 93-54, at Wayne State Fieldhouse in Detroit, for arguably the signature regular-season victory of Barnes Arico’s 14-year tenure in Ann Arbor.
Now it’s on to the next test ― and, well, this one makes Notre Dame look like a pop quiz.
No. 6 Michigan (4-0) plays No. 1 Connecticut (4-0), the defending national champion, in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut at 8 Friday night. The game will air on Fox, the latest taste of national exposure for a Wolverines team whose win over the Fighting Irish was on NBC.
“It’s really exciting. I think it’s a great opportunity for us,” Barnes Arico said earlier this week. “Our kids want to be in this situation and they want to match up against the best.”
This game marks the first meeting between Michigan and Connecticut, the 12-time national champion, in women’s basketball. But it’s not the first meeting between Barnes Arico and Connecticut legendary head coach Geno Auriemma. When she was coaching at St. John’s, her team beat Connecticut on Feb. 18, 2012, to snap the Huskies’ 99-game home winning streak. That was one of just 22 losses for Connecticut in a 13-year span.
This will be the fourth time Michigan ever has played a top-ranked team, and third time in the last two seasons ― after losing to South Carolina and UCLA last regular season. UM also lost to No. 1 Iowa in 1988.
Michigan did beat No. 5 Baylor in the 2021 Hall of Fame Showcase, a win that first helped signal that the program was starting to arrive. A win over Connecticut ― which has four more national championships than the second-best team (Tennessee, with eight; nobody else has more than three) ― would obviously mean even more than that.
“We’ve kind of been working all year for these kinds of games,” sophomore guard Olivia Olson, last season’s co-freshman of the year in the Big Ten, said after the win over Notre Dame, in which she had 20 points.
“We want these games. We want these top matchups.”
Michigan is led by three sophomores, who also led the team last season as freshmen ― Olson (17.8 points per game) and fellow guards Mila Holloway (14.2) and Syla Swords (12.2). But while the Wolverines often played all guards last season, they’ve got more size and inside presence this season, with the additions of forwards Ashley Sofilkanich, a junior transfer from Bucknell, and Te’Yala Delfosse, a freshman. Both also are averaging in double digits scoring.
Michigan is averaging 92.3 points a game, 11th in the nation, fresh off scoring 120 against Binghamton, the second-most points in program history, and most under Barnes Arico.
In Connecticut, Michigan will face a team that has four players on the watch list for the Wooden Award, which goes to the season’s top college basketball player: grad-student Azzi Fudd, senior Serah Williams and sophomores Sarah Strong and Kayleigh Heckel. Michigan has one, Olson.
Connecticut just scored 100 against Ohio State; it also has wins over No. 20 Louisville, Florida State and Loyola-Chicago, the latter which the Huskies held to 31 points.
“Can we handle their pressure?” Barnes Arico said in listing off the keys to the game. “The defensive intensity in the halfcourt is something that I don’t know if our kids have ever faced. I do have a recollection of it. It’s been a minute, but I still can remember how hard it is to even get in your offense because they’re so physical and so aggressive.
“Can we rebound with them? We’re going to have to have this toughness and this grit about us to do that. I know we did against Notre Dame (50-28), but not it’s even going to be dialed up to No. 1.
“I think it will be an unbelievable test for us.”
To be fair, the same might just hold true for Connecticut. Michigan has moved up to No. 6 in the Associated Press poll, its highest ranking since it was No. 6 in February 2022. (Fun fact: With the UM men’s team ranked No. 7, it’s the first week both teams have been in the top 10 at the same time.)
The Huskies have the tradition, with all those national championships, 24 Final Fours and 36 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
The Wolverines are building something in their own right, with seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances (a program record). They made their first Sweet 16 in 2021, and their first Elite Eight in 2022.
Last season ended up with a second-round loss to Notre Dame, and, well, UM exorcised those demons last weekend.
Now, it’s time for the next test ― and it’s a doozie.
“After seeing what we did today, you know, you want to say, ‘Oh, you know, this is the year,’ but we can’t get comfortable,” Michigan’s Alyssa Crockett, a senior forward, said after the win over Notre Dame. “We know what we want. We’re going to go get it.”
Michigan is one of seven Big Ten teams in the top 25, along with UCLA (3), Maryland (9), Southern Cal (11), Iowa (19), Michigan State (22) and Washington (25).
The Wolverines stay in Connecticut to play Syracuse (4-0) on Sunday (noon; FS1).
They then play next Wednesday against Detroit Mercy at Calihan Hall, the site of Michigan’s WNIT championship win in 2017 ― a major turning point in the program, which hasn’t missed the NCAA Tournament since then. The Wolverines have come so far. Just how far, we might be about to find out.
“They’re really good,” Barnes Arico said of UConn, a little over a year after Michigan narrowly lost to then-No. 1 and defending national champion South Carolina, 68-62. “They will test us in every space, and this early in the season, I think it’s good for us to be tested in that way and for us to see where we need to grow and improve.”
No. 6 Michigan vs. No. 1 Connecticut
➤ Tip-off: 8 Friday, Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Conn.
➤ TV: Fox
➤ Records: Michigan 4-0; Connecticut 4-0
➤ Series: First meeting
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
Michigan
How two Michigan stamping plants power Stellantis turnaround plan
Sterling Stamping Plant is the largest in the world
Ed Daniels, vice president of North America injection and stamping operations, discusses the process of producing metal parts for Stellantis models.
Warren — Hulking metal presses line one wall of Stellantis NV’s cavernous stamping plant here, punching out the raw shapes of Jeep doors, Dodge hoods and Ram tailgates in rapid succession.
Nearby, swinging yellow robots continue the tightly choreographed work, gluing and pressing and welding smaller components to the sheet metal that eventually will start to resemble the shape of a truck or SUV.
Seven miles north, in Sterling Heights, Stellantis operates an even larger stamping plant — the biggest in the world, at 2.7 million square feet — that does much of the same work, churning out various shapes of steel and aluminum 24 hours a day.
Together, these lesser-known links in the manufacturing supply chain support all of Stellantis’ big North American assembly plants — from next-door Warren Truck Assembly Plant, where the Jeep Grand Wagoneer SUV is built, to facilities in Windsor and Mexico that make minivans and pickups.
Inside Stellantis’ Huge Detroit Stamping Plants
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the automaker’s Sterling and Warren stamping plants, which are key to the company’s turnaround plan.
The Metro Detroit stamping plants, the automaker’s only two such facilities in the United States, have at times struggled in recent years, facing major job cuts and worker morale issues amid slowing sales and shifting production plans. But under Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, the facilities are expected to cram in more workload — and add staff — as Stellantis begins a new five-year strategic turnaround plan, which includes a heavy focus on its most profitable North American market.
The carmaker’s goal: grow sales by more than a third to 1.9 million annually by 2030 as it launches 23 vehicles, including 11 all-new models. The company also is directing billions of dollars of investment into its U.S. manufacturing footprint due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Stamping has never really been viewed as the sexy side of automotive manufacturing, we’re relatively invisible,” said Ed Daniels Jr., vice president of North America injection and stamping operations. “Because when you look at the commercials and advertisements, it’s always a beautiful Ram rolling off the assembly line or climbing the side of a mountain.
“But we’re the inception of that vehicle,” he said. “This is where raw materials are turned into commodities and parts.”
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the two plants that combined employ about 3,000 people. The automaker wanted to show off a newly-installed blanking press at Warren Stamping and other machinery like a high-speed transfer press and a robot that spots flaws in the metal.
Hiring expected
The blanking press unspools long coils of metal and chops them up into pieces that can then be shaped into roofs, fenders and floor pans. Stellantis shipped the massive machine to Warren from its idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois last year.
After upgrades to the machine, executives said it’s able to produce as many as 120,000 metal blanks per week. It will save Stellantis money since the plant will no longer need to pay a supplier to break down the coils before the metal arrives there.
The blanker addition is a big deal for the plant and signals that the company wants to bring more work in-house and invest in the facility over the coming years, said Romaine McKinney III, president of United Auto Workers Local 869, which represents workers at the factory.
The plant has already brought back all of its laid-off UAW workers, and McKinney said he anticipates more hiring to get underway if sales grow and new Stellantis vehicles come to market.
In another corner of the Warren facility, one of the fastest press lines in the world — known internally as the Hellcat — pushes as many as 15 pieces of metal through per minute. Dies that weigh up to 50 tons apiece squish the material into the shapes of doors and hoods before robotic arms snatch them out and place them on conveyor belts. Midway through a shift, workers can reconfigure the machine to make a different component, a process that takes just five minutes.
Robots check for quality
Curtis Booth, who manages Warren Stamping, said manual processes inside the plant have become increasingly automated, and safer, over the last couple decades, even as the automaker’s two stamping factories still utilize some presses that were installed in the 1960s.
The latest high-tech addition is the Automated Body Inspection System, or ABIS. It’s a camera system mounted on a robot that automatically checks the quality of components and flags anything in need of repair.
Auto plants of all kinds are increasingly turning to these types of camera systems, infused with artificial intelligence, to catch flaws in sheet metal and other components before they are shipped. Booth said worker visual inspections are still used. But in some cases the human eye has too much subjectivity, and the ABIS removes the guesswork.
Greg Bauer, who manages Sterling Stamping, said his plant has added staff over the past year, and expects to continue hiring as more work is assigned to the facility. There is no space at the plant to add more presses, but officials have figured out how to increase efficiency — quickly toggling back and forth between making doors for a Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger on on a single machine, for example.
“We want to bring high-volume parts into the plant, and we want to maximize the capacity of the equipment,” Daniels said.
lramseth@detroitnews.com
Michigan
Menominee, Michigan man arrested on sexual assault charges involving a minor
MENOMINEE, Mich. (WLUK) — 24-year-old Ethan Raymond Masters of Menominee was arrested on sexual assault charges June 30th, according to the Menominee County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office, deputies learned of an incident involving a 24-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl which happened in Menominee June 22nd. Following a sexual assault investigation, police charged Masters.
Masters was arraigned July 2nd on 2 counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree. He remains in the Menominee County Jail on a $250,000 cash bond.
Menominee City Police and the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory of Marquette assisted with the investigation.
Michigan
Michigan immigration advocates react after Supreme Court ruling on Temporary Protected Status
Twenty-four thousand immigrants in Michigan have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), but a recent Supreme Court decision could put their protection in jeopardy.
TPS is a humanitarian protection granted to U.S. immigrants fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries, often from natural disasters or political instability. The status allows immigrants from the designated countries to live and work in the U.S.
The Supreme Court overturned those for 356,000 Haitians and Syrians in a recent decision. While the court’s decision directly impacted Haitian and Syrian immigrants, it also established that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to determine TPS status without judicial review or input from the courts.
That means that the Secretary of Homeland Security can eliminate TPS for any immigrant group that is currently in the U.S. under protection. That puts 1.3 million immigrants in the U.S. at risk of deportation. In Florida, 113,000 healthcare workers with TPS are at risk of deportation. The Haitian population in Philadelphia is also expressing concerns about what comes next for them.
“The Supreme Court turned its back on our moral and legal commitments to people seeking safety,” said Christine Sauvé, manager of Policy and Communication at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “The decision eliminates legal protections for people fleeing danger and allows the Trump Administration to really advance its mass deportation agenda.”
Left without the ability to live or work in the U.S., these Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS now face deportation. But going back home could still be incredibly dangerous.
“It’s not really an option to go back to their home country,” said Melanie Goldberg, immigration attorney with the Institute of Metro Detroit. “In the case of Haiti, they don’t even have an airport in Port-au-Prince that’s operational. Yet they say it’s safe for these citizens to go back.”
In Michigan, immigrants with TPS have contributed $349 million to the state’s economy, a sign that they are deeply embedded in the community, according to Sauvé.
“Many TPS holders have been in our communities for a very long time,” Sauvé said. “They’ve really spent decades building their lives here in Michigan. We welcomed them here, only to see that completely ripped away with the stroke of a pen.”
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center encourages Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS, as well as any immigrants in the U.S. with a TPS designation, to seek out a qualified legal service provider and review the “Know Your Rights” Materials on the MIRC’s website
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