ACHA Tournament Open Thread (part 1 of a sad 1)

Illinois leads Stony Brook 1-0 in the 2nd period. It’s been a much closer game than I had anticipated. ISU-KSU just getting underway.

That’s friggen great. I might be able to go! Let’s hope PSU wins today.

Illinois up 2-0 after 2 periods. One of their leaders, J.J. Heredia, did go down late in the period. Not sure how serious the injury is, but that could have serious implications for the rest of the tournament.

Iowa State starting to live up to that #5 ranking and is now leading KSU, 2-1.

did you ever by chance work on that student hockey program in school?

In the ISU-KSU game, they Cyclones have come back from a 5-3 deficit in the 3rd period to take a 6-5 lead with under 5 minutes left in the period. That’s just been an odd, odd game.

Game tied at 1-1 with 2:18 left in the period.

and the ICERS SCORE!

Canton goalie allows a rebound, and Ryan Paradis puts it home. Icers lead 2-1 less than 90 seconds into the 2nd period.

2nd round match-up will be a classic CSCHL match-up of Iowa State vs. Illinois.

Hume gives up another rebound, and the ’Roos tie it up. On the powerplay too, no less.

You got the good team.

After a number of great scoring opportunities, with Canton’s goalie coming up huge, but the Cerutti finally slammed one home after he was hauled down on a breakaway. Icers up 5-3.

Another penalty on SUNY, so another PP oppty for the Icers.

I wanted to bring up this set of first round predictions from the collegian writers. Now, there’s not too much to argue for/against – there are a number of things I align with myself, or could see happening. However, there are a few things I laughed at.

First, that Kent State and Arizona State were viable “darkhorse” picks. Seriously, neither team has been that good this season – Arizona State has been in a tailspin, and Kent State probably shouldn’t have made the tournament at all (Adrian and URI were more capable teams, by far). Kudos to Kent State for pushing ISU to the brink, but that might be more on my over-rating ISU than anything else.

Also, Ohio could be a team that takes down Lindenwood, if, you know, the Bobcats weren’t sucking so much during the second half of this season. After their sweep of LU last semester, they’ve just looked blah, splitting a lot of weekends they should have swept. Icers used to do this a few seasons ago and found themselves bounced after the second round. I still think Ohio is going to be upset this first round – facing the host team is never something you want to do, and this shaky Ohio team will have to be on serious upset watch.

Darkhorse teams? Your pick of the 6/7/8 seeds – Liberty, Oklahoma, Minot State. 3 teams a lot of people aren’t talking about, but all three can surprise some people.

Also, a lot of people picked the upset of Stony Brook over Illinois. That never even crossed my mind, as SB never looked all that solid, and Illinois is still Illinois. To be honest, with the ACHA, sometimes history really is the best predictor of future results.

chances for both teams, but nothing on the scoreboard. Icers still controlling much of the action, as SUNY is just hoping for something to slide to their sticks for an easy goal. Kangaroos are just out of energy.

Central Oklahoma gets a late goal in the 1st period to take a 1-0 lead over Oklahoma into the 1st intermission.

Icers lead 7-3 with about 2:30 left in the game.

First round down, next round will be the winner of the OU/UCO game being played on the other rink right now.

OU/UCO going to OT tied at 4-4. Regardless of who wins, this is good news for the Icers.

Lindenwood destroying Rutgers, 5-1 after 1 period.

Minot State downed Oakland in OT, 3-2. And Ohio hung on to beat host RMU by a 2-1 score. Didn’t realize RMU was playing with a short bench (only 16 skaters I heard on the broadcast), and if they hadn’t been completely drained by the end of the game, Ohio loses.

Last game of the night is Liberty v. ASU – delayed because of the 72 OT games played today. Winner will play Ohio tomorrow. I’ll put up an updated bracket/schedule for tomorrow once this last game is done.

the second big upset of the first round comes down – a 7-4 win for Arizona State over Liberty. Really, this a big one for me, as ASU had a horrible finish to the season and was another team (along with Kent State) I thought didn’t even belong in the tournament. But as it is, they’ve taken down the Flames, setting up the quarterfinal match-ups for tomorrow.

As always, I direct you to the Icers website and the awesome set of brackets the webmaster has set up over there. (Ok, sure – I know the guy, and he’s done a might fine job with up-keeping that website. So I plug it where possible.)

This is also the last post for the first day – Quarterfinals posts start below

and Iowa State has jumped all over the Illini, 2-0 in the first period. But if there’s anything this tournament has taught me, it’s a long game and anything can still happen.

the Icers game will be pushed back slightly from their 2pm start. I’d figure a push back of about 20-30 minutes.

There will be a lot of feeling-out in the first half of this period. Again, it’s the first meeting of these two teams, and I’m sure Penn State will also be trying to get an idea of the energy UCO is hoping to bring.

2:12 into the period, Taylor Cera puts home a rebound, giving the Icers the early 1-0 lead.

As both teams would get great scoring opportunities. UCO goalie is the reason the Icers don’t have more than a 1-0 lead right now after one period of play.

2nd period has been the worst period for the Icers this season, allowing the same number of goals in the 2nd period as they have in the 1st and 3rd periods combined (45).

Lots of energy for both teams, and the Icers seem to be content with dumping the puck deep in the UCO zone and keeping the puck on that half of the ice as much as possible. Not lots of scoring opportunities, but UCO can’t score if the puck is in their defensive zone.

gives UCO a great scoring opportunity. But Hume makes a couple of saves on the breakaway to keep the score at 1-0, about 7 minutes left in the 2nd period.

and doing a very poor job of it.

the video quality is decent, the score-bar at the top is a great feature, and they did a good job in getting an affordable tournament pass. The only downside is that the people doing the video work are apparently high, because they’re constantly 3 seconds behind the puck.

UCO then commits a penalty, and the Icers will go back on the PowerPlay. Hopefully this one will be better than the previous one.

18:11 remaining in the 3rd period

More-own-EEE. The ‘E’ is silent at the end of Morrone.

UCO has had a few chances, but most of their rushes have been stopped before anything can develop. Icers need to score and score soon to put this game away.

Teams are 4-on-4, with the Icers getting a PP soon

and scores on an offensive zone draw with less than 90 seconds left

UCO gets a 2-on-1 break and is able to beat Teddy Hume. Great win for the UCO program, and this entire win is on the back of their goalie. And UCO continues their hot streak.

As for the Icers, it’s a disappointing end to an otherwise solid season. This team is much better than a quarterfinal exit, but such is the beast of the tournament. A lot to look forward to for next season, but a lot of thinking to do until then.

I’ll keep tabs and updates on who wins and all that. But they’ll likely be more in summary at days end.

The semis look like this (will be played on Tuesday):

(#1) Lindenwood vs. (#10) Central Oklahoma
(#3) Ohio vs. (#5) Iowa State

As for the final rankings, Penn State will finish the season 5th (being the highest ranked tournament team not in the semis). Illinois, Minot State, Arizona State, Oklahoma, and Liberty round out the top 10.

Making a prediction for the final games, I’ll take Lindenwood in a tight win over UCO, and ISU over Ohio. In the finals, Lindenwood becomes the first team since Penn State to win back-to-back National Titles.

UCO played hard, and had their chances to make it close game, but Lindenwood came away with the 4-0 victory.

Ohio took a 2-0 lead into the 3rd period, but Iowa State made a huge comeback, scoring 4 goals (one of which was an empty netter) in the final period to beat Ohio, 4-2.

So the championship game tomorrow night will be Lindenwood vs. Iowa State. I’m hoping to catch most of that game (if my internet cooperates), and it should be an interesting one. I still think Lindenwood will be the winner and claim their second straight national title.

The championship game played out as both teams trying not to lose. So the action was slow for the most part, and the scoring was limited. Lindenwood would strike first, with two goals in the second period. That’s all that was necessary, and all either team would get, as Lindenwood would cap their back-to-back titles with a 2-0 win over Iowa State.

I’ll do a recap of the Icers post-season and season over the next few weeks (you know, trying not to interfere with the basketball team’s run at the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments).