USU hockey team ready for final tuneup before nationals
The Utah State hockey club will play its final regular season games before the national tournament this weekend against BYU and the Weber State Division-I team.
The Aggies will play the Icecats Friday at 8:15 p.m. at the Peaks Ice Arena in Provo and will play the Wildcats Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Ogden Ice Sheet.
USU will use these games to prepare for the competition it will see at nationals.
“Obviously, we’ll try to win the games,” head coach Jerry Crossley said. “But for the most part, we’re going to be working on some specific things for next week’s tournament.”
Aggie Mike Lewandowski said he welcomes a challenge this weekend.
“I’m sure [BYU and WSU] are going to come out and play us hard,” he said. “That’s just better for us. The harder they play, the harder we have to play to beat them.”
Aggie Nate Pierce said he likes not having a week off before nationals.
“I think it’s a good idea to have games right up to nationals,” he said. “It keeps us in the mode of playing hard.”
USU played the WSU D-I squad last Saturday and lost 2-0. Although the Aggies have never beaten the upper-division Wildcats, it was the closest scoring margin ever between the teams.
“I was really impressed with the guys’ effort last Saturday at the Weber game,” Crossley said. “Granted, we lost it, but I finally saw the kind of game that I’ve been looking for all season.”
Pierce said he feels the Aggies are playing their best hockey of the season right now.
“We’ve been meshing together lately better than we have all season,” he said. “Passes are connecting, goals are being scored. We’re having a lot of fun.”
The top four teams in all four regions qualify for the national tournament. They are divided into four pools and play a round-robin format. The winners of the four pools then advance to the semifinals which becomes a single-elimination tournament.
The Aggies have been placed in the same pool as Indiana, the top-ranked team in the Southeast region, Oakland, the second ranked team in the Central region, and Siena, the third ranked team in the Northeast region.
“I think we’ve got a good shot at some success,” Crossley said. “I’ve never gone there yet where the group we had played hard and didn’t have any success. I think the guys really have that mentality right now.”
Lewandowski, who is making his third trip to the national tournament, said this year’s team is the best he has gone with.
“We want to win,” he said. “Most of us have been there before so we know what to expect.”
USU is the lowest ranked team to qualify from the West Region, which is considered to be the weakest region in the country.
“I don’t see that as being as bad thing because that puts in everybody’s mind that we’re a lot worse than we really are,” Pierce said. “We only had one bad loss to San Jose and that was a fluke.”
Lewandowski said rankings are meaningless at this point.
“I don’t really think the seeding matters once you get to nationals,” he said. “I think it comes down to who’s hotter at the moment.”
Pierce said anything can happen at the tournament.
“Sometimes you go there and the teams you think will kill everybody will lose every game,” he said. “I think if we go out and play our game and play like we have lately I think we have a good chance of making it at least into the final four.”
Crossley said USU has played well in the past at nationals.
“We’ve been beaten twice by the national champion with a minute to go,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what position you’re in because you’ve got to win five games in a row no matter what.”
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu