Hockey Thoughts

With the CCHA title clinched, Michigan started backup goalie Bryan Hogan at Ferris State Saturday night.  Ferris scored on a bad-angle shot in OT, sending Michigan into the postseason with a bad taste in its mouth, and a 5-3-4 run to cap off a season that started 22-2. Michigan now gets a week off along with Miami, MSU, and Notre Dame while seeds 5-12 play best of three series at the higher-seeded teams.

Although the game meant nothing for UM, it was huge for Ferris.  The added two points moved Ferris from seventh to fifth in the standings.  Western Michigan is a far easier matchup than Lake State (though don't tell Notre Dame that - the Irish suffered an ignominious 3-0 loss to Western on Friday).

Here are the matchups:

Western Michigan @ Ferris State
Ohio State @ Northern Michigan
Lake Superior @ Bowling Green
Alaska @ Nebraska-Omaha

The teams will be re-seeded after this round, meaning that Michigan will play the lowest-seeded team to advance, Miami the second-lowest, and so on.

I have been reading some analyses of the Pairwise rankings that the NCAA uses as the basis for the tournament seedings.  From what I understand, it does not look good for Notre Dame to give the CCHA a fourth team in the NCAA tournament unless they win the CCHA tournament.  The WCHA looks to have as many as 7 teams in the tournament, and both Colorado College and North Dakota could conceivably wind up ahead of UM in the seedings unless UM wins the CCHA title.  More on that later in the week.

With UM having an off week, I'll post a midweek breakdown of likely tournament pairings, and then have a recap of the CCHA first round on Sunday morning.  I'll also be trying to handicap the race for the Hobey Baker Award

In other news, the 12th-ranked softball team improved its record to 17-2 with a 9-0 win over 16th-ranked Louisiana-Lafayette this afternoon to clinch the NFCA Leadoff Classic in Columbus, Georgia.  2005 College World Series hero Samantha Findlay had a grand slam in the third inning to break the game open.  With the home run, Findlay becomes the all-time home run leader at Michigan.  The ladies now take two weeks off before resuming their schedule at the Louisville Tournament on March 14-16.

Things haven't started off quite so well for the baseball team.  Following a sweep of Villanova and an exhibition tie with the Mets, UM was blown out by no. 1 Arizona State, and then went 1-2 in the ASU Coca-Cola Classic with a win over Hawaii and losses to Portland and another loss to ASU.  The team heads to North Carolina this weekend for the Keith LeClaire Tournament at East Carolina University.

Go Blue!