NCAA Hockey Tournament Open Thread

Submitted by VCavman24 on

With Boston University and North Dakota already having booked their tickets to Boston, there were/are two games today to decide the other two teams that will make the Frozen Four.   #4 seed and #15 overall seed Providence beat #2 seed Denver 4-1 in Providence to advance to the Frozen four.  Currently, #4 seed and #16 seed overall RIT is losing to Nebraska-Omaha 1-0 with just 8 minutes remaining in South Bend.  This is Providence's first Frozen Four since 1985 and would be RIT's first FF appearance since 2010/Nebraska-Omaha's first FF ever (they started in 1997.)

Also of note, with Providence advancing to the Frozen Four, this is the third straight year that the last at-large team in the tournament (Yale in 2013 and North Dakota last year) made the FF and tournament because Michigan failed to win it's last game.

gwkrlghl

March 29th, 2015 at 10:21 PM ^

They played great. 4-0 doesn't tell the story.

Congrats to UNO though. First frozen four. I'll have to pull for them or Providence to get their first championship (and keep BU and NoDak off our heels)

gwkrlghl

March 30th, 2015 at 5:38 AM ^

It'd be like Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Green Bay or UC-Berkeley, UC-Irvine. Totally different schools, totally different athletic departments.

However, the existence of UNO plus the USHL teams in Nebraska make it a little more likely that Nebraska will join up someday. Their new basketball arena can be used for hockey too so they have a foundation a lot of other schools lack.

OccaM

March 29th, 2015 at 11:44 PM ^

Yeah never really followed it until this year. So it is perplexing to me lol. 

I did watch the championship in 2011, but other than that I was bandwagonish on hockey until now. 

Still learning many teams. Kinda weird to me how these small schools have really good hockey programs. 

chatster

March 30th, 2015 at 9:16 AM ^

Other than the six Big Ten hockey schools, Notre Dame and Boston College, none of the 59 Division One hockey schools play in the major college football and basketball conferences. Next season, Arizona State will become the ninth member of that power conference club to play Division One hockey.
 
Imagine having Butler, Davidson, Florida Gulf Coast, George Mason, Northern Iowa, Valparaiso, VCU and Villanova making the NCAA basketball Elite Eight almost every year, and then you can picture what NCAA Division One hockey is like.
 
But don’t get me wrong. I think that Division One college hockey (much like Division One men's lacrosse) is a great sport with some great traditions; and if you’ve yet to see a game at Michigan’s Yost Ice Arena, then THAT’s an event you should add to your Bucket List (and don't miss the between-the-periods action.)

gwkrlghl

March 30th, 2015 at 10:55 AM ^

And it'll be decades before another Big 5 conference supports hockey, if ever. The only other big 5 schools are BC (ACC), Notre Dame (ACC), and Arizona State (Pac-12). And even if the ACC did magically get four more teams, I'm not sure BC would want to leave Hockey East. I wouldn't if I was a BC fan

gwkrlghl

March 30th, 2015 at 5:43 AM ^

No, but Miami is a bit known for collapsing in the tournament. A lot of great teams they've had in the last decade and only two frozen fours, no titles. So on that theme, they were down 6-2 to Providence after 2 because they gave up 4 straight goals and really had no choice. They pulled the goalie with about 13 mins left and actually got 3 extra-attacker goals to get it to 6-5 but couldn't finish the deal and lost 7-5

Given that every game is win or go home, you'll see crazier stuff like that. RIT pulled their goalie with 4 minutes left yesterday because they were down 3-0

chatster

March 30th, 2015 at 7:12 AM ^

Miami, up 3-1 in the NCAA Championship game, got burned by a team that pulled its goalie for most of the final 3:32 to play in regulation . . . and then lost in overtime 4-3 to Boston University. 

On the Boston University team were nine players who would play at least one game in the NHL (Nick Bonino, Colby Cohen, Matt Gilroy, Eric Gryba, John McCarthy, Brian Strait, David Warsofsky, Colin Wilson and Brandon Yip.)