Wisconsin, Boston College to meet for NCAA title
April 9, 2010
DETROIT (AP)—Wisconsin and Boston College advanced in the Frozen Four with apair of routs.
They don’t expect it to be as easy to win the NCAA hockey championship.
The Badgers beat Rochester Institute of Technology 8-1, then the Eaglespulled away from Miami of Ohio to win 7-1 in the nightcap at Ford Field onThursday.
When the teams meet Saturday night in a rematch of the 2006 finals, BostonCollege’s Ben Smith expects the game to be much different than the semifinalswere for the traditional powers.
“It won’t be as high scoring,” Smith said.
The Badgers got past Boston College 2-1 for their sixth national title fouryears ago and their first since 1990.
“I wasn’t here in ’06, but I know it was a pretty tough loss for a lot ofthe guys,” Smith said. “It’s exciting to be back in the national championshipgame.”
Unless you were rooting for the winning teams, there weren’t many thrills inthis year’s Frozen Four. The combined margin of victory of 13 tied the 1953semifinals for the second largest in NCAA hockey history, two fewer than thedifferential from the 1954 tournament.
One rout didn’t come as a surprise.
One did.
Wisconsin wasted little time showing why it has an elite college hockeyprogram and that Rochester Institute of Technology isn’t quite ready for thesport’s biggest stage.
The Badgers scored in the opening minutes of the first two periods.
“Like a snowball, it just got rolling and got bigger and bigger,” saidDerek Stepan, who scored Wisconsin’s second and eighth goals.
RIT, seeded 15th in the 16-team field just five years after moving toDivision I, ended its first Frozen Four appearance with a thud.
“We ran into a powerhouse,” Tigers coach Wayne Wilson said.
Smith put the Eagles ahead of top-seeded Miami 1-0 on a power-play goal with1:28 left in the opening period. Boston College began to pull away with JimmyHayes’ power-play goal early in the second and Joe Whitney’s goal a minutelater. The Eagles turned it into a lopsided affair with four goals in the third.
“We feel very good about playing Wisconsin on Saturday night, that’s forsure,” said Boston College coach Jerry York, whose 30th NCAA tournament wintied the career record set by Boston University’s Jack Parker.
Boston College is in the championship game for the fourth time in five yearsand seeks its second title in three seasons and the fourth in school history.
The Frozen Four set a world indoor attendance record for hockey, drawing anannounced crowd of 34,954 for the two games.
Ford Field—home of the NFL’s Detroit Lions—was prepared for a recordcrowd with a rink set up near an end zone and portable seats along the boardsopposite the team benches.
The two-game session smashed the Frozen Four attendance record of 19,432 setin St. Louis three years ago and hockey’s indoor mark of 28,183 from Tampa Bay’shome game at Tropicana Field against Philadelphia during the 1996 NHL playoffs.
