College Hockey Update:  Last weekend featured a top-ten vs. top-twenty matchup, and #12 ranked and host Bowling Green State was ready and up to the task as they swept visiting and #3 ranked Mankato State with a pair of convincing wins, 4-1 and 4-1.  Because there were very few games last weekend there was no new poll this week, we’ll provide our guess at what would have happened in a new poll, and we’ll provide the results of all thirteen games played.  First, I would imagine if a new poll had come out that Bowling Green would have moved up a couple of spots to #10, and that Mankato would have dropped a couple of pegs to #5, and that just about everything else would have remained the same.  Now — #9 Pennsylvania State settled on a 4-4 tie at Princeton; #15 Arizona State hosted and swept Colorado College 4-2 and 4-0; and Boston University hosted and beat Dartmouth 4-1.  RIT hosted and beat Niagara 8-4; Alaska-Anchorage managed a split weekend at Bemidji State; Alabama-Huntsville managed a split weekend at Michigan Tech; and Northern Michigan hosted and swept Ferris State 4-1 and 4-2.

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Last Saturday night Bowling Green State had huge help from its junior forward Lukas Craggs, of Elmhurst, IL., who scored two goals in his team’s 4-1 win over visiting Mankato State, completing the weekend sweep of the #3 ranked Mavericks.  Tim Theorcharidis got Bowling Green on the board for the 1-0 lead with four minutes left in a first period that was very evenly played.  In the second, another evenly played period, Lukas Craggs scored with two minutes left to make it 2-0, Bowling Green.  Bowling Green took over the momentum in the third, and Lukas Craggs scored again, four minutes into the period to give Bowling Green a 3-0 lead.  With two minutes left, Mankato scored on a power play to make it 3-1, but only a minute later Taylor Schneider scored, giving Bowling Green the last word of the night and the weekend, for the final score of 4-1.  The win gave Bowling Green a sweep on the weekend, and Friday night’s game was similar as the periods were very evenly played.  However, while Mankato scored first on Friday night, the Falcons then scored four unanswered goals for the 4-1 win.

Craggs is first on his team in goals scored, with twelve, and is tied for tenth on the team in assists, with four.  As a sophomore he tied for third in goals, with ten, and was eighth in assists, with nine; as a freshman he tied for seventh in goals with seven, and tied for sixteenth in assists, with three.  Before Bowling Green he played two season with the Youngstown Phantoms of the USHL, where he scored seventeen goals and added twenty assists over 104 games in his two seasons there from 2014 to 2016.  His younger brother, Sam, is a sophomore forward teammate on the Bowling Green team.  Elmhurst, IL., a suburb on the west side of Chicago, and home to 47,000 in its ten square miles, was incorporated in 1882.  It is the birthplace of Rick Nielsen, the songwriter and lead guitarist of Cheap Trick.

Bowling Green State, founded in 1910, enrolls 17,000 undergraduates and 2,500 graduate students on its 1,300 acre campus fifteen miles south of Toledo, OH.  It offers 200 undergraduate programs and master’s and doctoral degrees through its eight academic colleges.  Bowling Green’s sports teams are called the Falcons and their colors are orange and black.  Bowling Green entered NCAA Hockey in the 1969-70 season as a member of the Midwest Collegiate Hockey Association, winning the conference championship the first two seasons, before being a driving force and founding member of the CCHA in 1971, winning the conference championship in the second 1972-73 season.  The following year Ron Mason took over as head coach and they won the conference championship and appeared in the NCAA tournament in each of his first three seasons.  He coached the team to a 37-6-2 record in 1978-79 season, and was replaced, when he left to coach Michigan State in the 1979-80 season, by Jerry York.

Bowling Green won the CCHA and appeared in the NCAA Tournament in York’s third season, and in his fifth season they won the 1984 NCAA Championship against Minnesota-Duluth in the longest championship game to date, in the fourth OT at 97:11.  York’s teams posted five 25+ win seasons from 1985-90, and he left in 1994 to coach at Boston College.  His successor, Buddy Powers, brought success to the team with two 25+ win seasons in his first two seasons, from 1994-96, but the next six were far less successful.  He was succeeded by Scott Paluch for seven seasons from 2002 to 2009, during which the teams never posted a winning season.  By 2009 there were rumors the hockey program would be cancelled, which would have made them the first ever NCAA Championship program to be shut down; they had not had a wining season at that point since the 1996-97 season.  One five win year under one-year coach Dennis Williams in 2009-10 happened to be the same year key alumni stepped in and spearheaded a $4 million renovation to the then aged Bowling Green Ice Arena, a key step to saving the hockey program.

The alumni included former hockey players and former NHL’ers Rob Blake and Gary Galley, and former ice skaters and then professional ice skaters, Scott Hamilton and Alissa Czisny.  Chris Bergeron, at the time an assistant at Miami of Ohio, was hired to be the new head coach in 2010.  In the last four of his eight seasons the team has had four twenty game seasons, and now the team is 13-3-3.  Coincidentally, since he left his previous job as an assistant, Miami had four twenty win seasons in the first five years, but in the last three have won only 15, 9, and 12,  and have only nine wins so far this season.  Two members of the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team, Mark Wells, and Ken Morrow, played at Bowling Green.  Bowling Green also boasts a number of NHL players past and present, including Brian MacLellan, General Manager of the Washington Capitals, and George McPhee, General Manager of the Las Vegas Golden Knights.  McPhee and MacLellan played at Bowling Green at the same time, and had been childhood friends, and teammates in Guelph, Ontario.  Chris Bergeron currently has his team, as mentioned, 13-3-3, and ranked #12.  They play next on Thursday and Friday, January 3rd and 4th, when they host Bemdji State.

No games will be played this weekend, and the next games will be played on Friday, December 28th.  During that weekend there will be one top ten matchup, as currently #3 ranked Mankato State will face currently ranked #4 Minnesota-Duluth on Friday, December 28th, at 3:30pm Pacific Time, at the Desert Hockey Classic in Glendale, AZ.  Then on Saturday the 29th, the Mankato/Duluth winner will face the winner of Friday’s game between #15 Arizona State and #19 Clarkson (the Arizona State game will be telecast on the Pac-12 Channel on Friday the 28th at 6:30pm Pacific Time) .  That Friday through Wednesday, the 28th through the 2nd, will be dominated by a number of non-conference, or inter-conference, games.  Some of them you can see without attending. These include, Friday, December 28th, #8 Denver at Merrimack on NESN at 4pm Pacific Time; and Ferris State at Minnesota on Fox Sports North+ at 5pm Pacific Time.

Also, Saturday, December 29th, #15 Arizona State vs. the winner of the Mankato/Duluth game on the Pac-12 Channel (if it is the Desert Hockey Championship game it will be on at 6:30pm Pacific Time; if it is the consolation game it will be on at 3:30pm Pacific Time); and Ferris State at Minnesota at 5pm Pacific Time on Big Ten Channel.  Then Sunday the 30th, Bentley at New Hampshire at 2pm Pacific Time on NESN.  Also on Monday the 31st, the Great Lakes Invitational Championship and Consolation Games will be on Fox Sports Detroit at 8:30am and 11:30am Pacific Time (these pit the winners/losers of Sunday’s opening round games, which will be Michigan vs. Michigan Tech; and Lake Superior State vs. Michigan State).  Lastly, Wednesday, January 2nd at 3pm Pacific Time, Colorado College at Maine, on Fox College Sports, and Channel 7 in Bangor Maine.

This provides the top 12 teams as of the 12/10 poll from last week, rankings, and records:

[table id=184 /]

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned and go Terriers!

There will be no post next week, since no games will be played over this weekend.  We’ll be back after the weekend of the 27th and 28th.  I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a great and Happy New Year.

— Tom