BETWEEN THE PIPES

It’s official, Gusties in the first round

Posted on Mar 11, 2009

Everything is set and ready to go. The UW-River Falls women’s hockey team will play No. 1 Gustavus Adolphus College (Minn.) in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 2 p.m. on March 14 at Gustavus in St. Peter, Minn.

The winner will earn a trip to the Div. III women’s Frozen Four, which will be held at Middlebury College (Vt.) the following weekend. Middlebury is the host school of the tournament and has the overall No. 1 seed even though it is the fourth-ranked team in the nation.

Reason for that is all the other teams in the tournament, except for UWRF and Gustavus, are on the east coast and the NCAA has been attempting to cut travel costs throughout the years, so this is the logical way of doing so. It is just a cost effective way to have one team from the Midwest travel east rather than having several teams come here.

For the Falcons, none of that will matter unless they take care of Gustavus on Saturday.

The Gusties have not allowed a goal in seven straight games. The last time they allowed more than one goal was against UWRF. The Falcons were able to get 3 goals by freshman Emily Klatt. Positive thing for UWRF is it only had 14 shots on goal for the whole game, so it knows goals can go in if there are more shots.

Imperative that the Falcons get off to a fast start on Saturday. Gustavus is known for jumping on teams early and making teams play catch up the rest of the game. This makes for harder breakouts, errant passes and opens the ice for more odd man rushes and breakaways.

UWRF will also need to get the puck out of the zone on the first opportunity it gets.

In the O’Brien Cup final against UW-Stevens Point there were too many giveaways. It was evident during the game that this bothered Head Coach Joe Cranston.

The Pointers had some chances, but could not score on some quality chances. Against Gustavus, I do not think the Falcons will be as lucky. Too many weapons up and down the Gusties lineup could be chaos in the Falcon end of the rink.

Expect to see Cassi Campbell in net for UWRF this weekend. She has been a horse in net all season. The bigger the game, the better she has played.

In the NCHA final, she made several amazing saves. Some diving stops to compliment her superb positioning, which prevented a lot of screened and tipped shots to get past her.

Campbell faced a lot of rubber in loss on Jan. 27 and will need to have her best game of the season if that is the case again.

For the Falcons to win they will need to keep the game low scoring. The Gusties have the firepower to put teams away if the game turns into a high scoring affair. A 2-1, 3-2 game is one that would fit for a UWRF win.

Thursday or Friday will have some more input from several players and coaches. Be sure to check back later.