Badger Hockey puts one foot in grave

Home ice would've been nice. The Badgers went on the road and were shut out by St. Cloud State tonight, 3-0. This marked the first postseason shutout for the Badgers since 1997. 88% of teams who win the first game of a WCHA postseason series wind up advancing to the Final Five, so the Badgers have their work cut out for them. Just a couple items here from Minnesota-Duluth radio dude Bruce Ciskie:

Wisconsin needs to win this series to get in the NCAAs in all likelihood, as they are firmly on the bubble right now. With Boston University, UMD, and Notre Dame - among others - knocking on the door, Bucky better find a way to win two games this weekend, or the Kohl Center may end up being mighty empty in two weeks.

...

If you're a UMD fan, root for ... SCSU [to beat] Wisconsin. A sweep and a UMD sweep likely would swing the UMD/UW PWR comparison for UMD.

Uh oh.

Ticket info for St. Cloud State

Thanks to intrepid reader Brent for bringing this up: there is no UW allotment for tickets for this weekend's WCHA playoff series at St. Cloud State. However, all seats at their rink are $12 reserved. You can get ticket info here; the number to call is 1-877-SCSUTIX. A call placed to the ticket office moments ago revealed that despite a flood of calls this morning (which Brent confirmed) the arena is "not close" to being sold out, so if you need to sit on the decision for a couple days you'll probably be OK.

Go support the Badgers! See what St. Cloud is all about! Check out the quarries! Yeah!

Hockey Badgers lose home ice

Just like last night, North Dakota and St. Cloud State skated to a tie on Saturday, giving St. Cloud one point and putting them in a tie for fourth place in the WCHA with Minnesota State. Since MSU-Mankato went 2-0-0 against St. Cloud, the Mavericks will be the #4 seed and St. Cloud will be #5. That means Wisconsin will be #6 ... and will be riding a bus to St. Cloud, Minnesota, next weekend. If you want to follow the team, just hop on I-94 west and keep going till you're about an hour past the Twin Cities.

The Badgers lost their last meeting with the Huskies but were unbeaten in the previous fourteen games in the teams' series. They'll have to win two of three on the road to advance to the WCHA Final Five in St. Paul which will wrap up two weeks from tonight.

Badger Hockey loses, home ice in doubt

The Badgers picked a bad time to lose their first game in fifteen tries to St. Cloud State. They lost 3-2 after being up by a goal to close out their regular season. They sit precariously in fourth place in the conference, just one point ahead of St. Cloud and Minnesota State, the latter of which came up with an overtime upset victory over Colorado College last night. Since each of the two fifth-place teams have two regular season games to go, the Badgers could conceivably fall to sixth place in the conference. If that happens, they'll find themselves on the road for the conference tournament.

However, there could be a bright spot for Badger fans this afternoon if Michigan State manages to beat Indiana and keep Purdue and Wisconsin as the only two first-place teams in the conference. Go Spartans!

Badger Hockey gets an important win at St. Cloud State

Wisconsin got two rapid-fire goals within the first 1:18 of the second period, and that was all they needed to beat St. Cloud State on the road last night, 2-1. Wisconsin is now an impressive 11-0-3 in their last 14 tries against St. Cloud.

Importantly, the two points that accompany that win put the Badgers three points ahead of St. Cloud and Minnesota State, which are tied for fifth place in the WCHA at the moment. A win today would mean a five-point lead and would almost certainly wrap up fourth place in the conference and, along with that, home ice in the playoffs. Minnesota State would have to pick up five points in three games -- one against Colorado College and two next weekend against Michigan Tech. St. Cloud would not be able to catch the Badgers if they lose today.

And, FWIW, the Badgers now show up at #10 in the PairWise Rankings. If that's how they end the season, they're solidly in, almost definitely as a three-seed. But much can and will change in the next few weeks.

Badger Hockey is playing itself out of contention

With two full weekends to play before the conference tournament, the Badgers had one task in front of them: get a couple points from the faltering Gophers in order to improve upon or maintain their twelfth-place ranking in the PairWise Rankings.

Sadly, the Gophers found their offense again this weekend and blasted home four goals on Friday and on Saturday. The Badgers only managed a pair of goals on Friday (WWWWWW and $nake of Down With Goldy were at the game), but didn't walk away completely empty-handed, coming back from a one-goal deficit four times on Saturday night to force a 4-4 tie. In the end, the Gophers gained three prized points and the Badgers only picked up one.

This is bad not just because it's the Gophers but because, as of this very moment, the Badgers are in a tie for 14th place in the PairWise Rankings with Notre Dame and the Gophers. By scoring that final, game-tying goal, Patrick Johnson kept Wisconsin's PWR advantage over Minnesota alive; had the Gophers won the game, the 2-2 tie in the PairWise would've been broken by RPI, which might've swung things in Minnesota's favor. Incidentally, the RPI tiebreaker is keeping Notre Dame ahead of the Badgers as we speak.

The upshot is that when you're in a tie for 14th place, if you're not the primus inter pares you're out of the NCAA field. The fifteenth and sixteenth slots are currently occupied by the conference leaders from Atlantic Hockey and the CHA (currently Army and Bemidji State, respectively), which means that if the season was over with right now, Wisconsin would be the best team in the nation to watch the NCAA tournament from their couch. (You know, on their laptop via GameTracker. Not on TV, don't be silly; this is college hockey after all.)

The good and bad news is that next weekend's series is at St. Cloud State. The good news is that the Badgers are 2-0-0 against St. Cloud State this year, and since Wisconsin is well behind St. Cloud in the PairWise, a victory or two would go a long way to shuffling the Badgers back into the tournament field, especially with some help. The bad news is that although Wisconsin owns the head-to-head portion of the PWR, St. Cloud tops them in RPI, TUC, and record against common opponents, and all three of those numbers are out of reach for UW, so in order to wrest the PairWise comparison with St. Cloud State, a sweep will be necessary.

The end of the season is a crazy time with the odd mechanism the NCAA uses to include and exclude teams. The Badgers aren't in control of their own destiny, but every win will get them closer to a tournament berth and every loss will hurt more than the one that preceded it. And you can take consolation in the fact that even though this weekend was pretty miserable, the Badgers did just enough to keep Minnesota out of the postseason -- for the time being.

Cow-tipping, UW Hockey-style

Cow-tipping. After beer-pong, Wisconsin's most popular sport. A sacred tradition, a rite of passage, an easy go-to insult for the most slack-jawed out-of-state dunderheads to fall back upon.

Well, it really appears that Badger defenseman Kyle Klubertanz is living the dream. The Anaheim Ducks prospect was fined $200 Thursday for cow-tipping. But, as always seems to be the case with Badgers who run afoul of John Law, the story comes with a humorous, embarrassing twist:

It wasn't an actual cow.

No, it was a cow sculpture, as the Capital Times story helpfully illustrates:



The cow in question is called "Looking for Bucky" and stood, for a longer time than it should've, outside of the Kohl Center during last summer's Cow Parade. Over a hundred of these damned things took up space and helped bring stereotypes to life for an unbearable stretch of months last year, and then almost all of them sold for inexplicable five-figure amounts at a charity auction.

Reading the article, though, it certainly seems that Klubertanz and his nerdy sidekick, Badger alum Jeffery Slinde, picked on the least offensive cow in the vicinity. "Looking for Bucky" was accompanied by "Moo Rah Rah Wisconsin" (groan) and "If You Want to Be a Moosaic, Come Along with Me" (straight up WTF!?). Bill Wineke wrote, "the names alone make one want to damage the cow," and sure enough as I was typing all that in my tippin' shoulder was starting to get that telltale twitch.

So, $200 fine, 30 hours' community service, no mark on the permanent record. And Badger hockey once again gives people all around the internets something to talk about.

Midweek update

Dead air kills ... here are a few juicy links:

Brian Butch is out 4 to 6 weeks. A quick recovery, then, gets him into some Final Four matchups. A slow recovery might have him ready for the national title game, or could keep him out of the season completely. What a rough break, not for the Badgers, but for him. You work so hard to be part of a high-achieving team ... and then this. I feel for you, Brian. I really do.

The hockey team got swept at Michigan Tech. All that buildup from a couple weekends ago is gone now. Hopefully they can close out the regular season in graceful fashion this weekend when they visit Minnesota-Duluth.

Big Ten Wonk thinks that Ohio State is overachieving. Their raw talent does indeed make them a prime candidate to be that 1-seed or 2-seed that doesn't make the Sweet 16.

The Sports Frog watched the OSU game and (surprise!) takes issue with something Billy Packer said!

The Wisconsin Sports Bar, with no trace of sour grapes, ranks the reasons why the Badgers lost to the Buckeyes:

1. Luck

2. They were on the road.

3. {An injury}

4. Home court officiating, again. Had the Badgers enjoyed their normal foul-shooting advantage they would have won.

5. Stupidity. How did they not get the ball at half court for the final play?

6. Bad free throw shooting. Kammron Taylor, you could have won the game.

Also, guys ... they got outplayed by one of the best teams in the nation. Just sayin'.

Michael David Smith at the AOL Fanhouse has a post all about Thad Matta's gum situation.

Nicole at Cute Sports wants you to join her March Madness Challenge.

Finally, why couldn't Drew Neitzel have caught the flu a week earlier than he did?

Women's hockey: in a position for huge embarrassment

I might be late to the party on this one, but I just noticed that women's hockey is hosting North Dakota this weekend for some WCHA playoff action. And guess what:

Wisconsin won the WCHA regular season crown with 50 points and a 23-1-4 record in conference play. North Dakota finished the regular season 0-27-1 in the WCHA.

Can you imagine if the Sioux were able to knock off Wisconsin this weekend? What an enormous embarrassment.

Go get 'em, Badgers!

Two seasons get interesting down the stretch

The men's basketball season is getting out of hand. With their 26-point walloping of Penn State, these Badgers became the first in school history to win 26 games, they've run the all-time record at the Kohl Center under Bo Ryan to a ridiculous 90-5, and with the Gators losing, there's an outside chance that the Badgers' play this week will help them leapfrog Ohio State to get the #1 ranking in the nation. (I suspect, though, that the Buckeyes will trounce Minnesota on national TV this afternoon, and the voters will see that and give them the top spot.) Even if they don't, only the Michigan State Spartans stand in the way of an epic clash between #1 and #2 on February 25. But the Badgers did it with three-point shooting yesterday, connecting on shots that had simply not been there for them most of the season. The last thing they need to do is convince Alando Tucker that free throws are worth sinking, and this team will be ready to go.

Meanwhile, the Spartans bombed Iowa back to the Stone Age, and Michigan stole a victory from Indiana in Ann Arbor. What once looked like a clear-cut postseason picture became muddled in a couple hours' time yesterday. The team with the best conference record outside of Madison and Columbus is Indiana, whose 7-5 stands a hair above Iowa's 7-6 mark. Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue all come in at 6-6. If a couple of those teams ends the season on a tear, we might see very different teams dancing than those whose fates were declared certain a couple weeks ago.

And speaking of interesting conclusions to the season, the hockey Badgers did it again this weekend, using their last home series of the year to take 3 of 4 points from #4 St. Cloud State. Last night's 2-2 tie, coupled with other key league results, put the sixth-place Badgers two points out of a tie for fourth place in the WCHA with Colorado College and North Dakota. The Badgers close out the season with series against teams that are below them in the conference standings -- on the road against Michigan Tech and Minnesota-Duluth. However, given the fight that Minnesota-Duluth put up against North Dakota this weekend, this is very much an uphill battle, though a winnable one.

Here's to watchable endings!

Hockey and Football ... together at last!

Much as I'd like to see those 300-pound linemen strap on some skates or see a field goal kicker try to convert from forty yards out on a sheet of ice, this post is actually just a collection of links about hockey and football. Sorry for any disappointment.

As far as hockey goes, the Badgers basically need to with the WCHA tournament to have a shot at defending their crown. They're well out of this tournament projection (thanks Western College Hockey) and would probably be a 4-seed even if all the necessary miracles were to occur. Maybe the world's worst refs could see us into the field of 16. Or maybe one of the people/computers/coin-flipping machines that create the bad bad naughty Pairwise Rankings could maybe forget to carry a 1 somewhere and let us in. Given the odds, I'd advise the hockey fans out there to simply enjoy the end of the regular season.

On to football: National Signing Day is coming up on Wednesday, and I know zilch about recruiting. Well, a little more than zilch; I know that a certain percentage of zealous fans will hate a high school kid forever if he chooses the wrong school, and a certain percentage of those actually seem to enjoy recruiting more than the actual football. But Wisconsin isn't hemorrhaging in-state talent as it has in years past, although the very large O-line recruit Josh Oglesby is going to need time to heal. He'll be on the shelf with Andy Crooks and PJ Hill. For up-to-the-minute recruiting, rumor-trading, and panicking, this is your link.

The latest

The basketball team won on Saturday, beating Northwestern 69-52. You wouldn't figure they'd won by 17 based on this headline from ESPN: "Wisconsin avoids upset bid." Upset bid? Evidently, the only part of the game the writers saw was the 14-0 run that Northwestern put together in the second half. What they should've taken into account was that at the beginning of that run, the Badgers were up by 24, and when the Cats pulled to within 10, they came back to life and pulled away again. That 14-0 run, in my opinion, doesn't say as much about UW as the 24-point lead that preceded it. Don't sweat the technique.

The hockey team got swept by Colorado College, so they'll need to win the WCHA tournament to secure an NCAA tourney berth. If I have time I'll take a look at how the tourney (the Big Skate?) is shaping up. Don't hold your breath.

Also, PJ Hill will be having surgery on his shoulder. Come back stronger, big guy.

Badger Hockey: Wisconsin upsets Minnesota, 2-1

Sounds like it was an exciting one. Ross Carlson of Duluth, Minnesota scored both Badger goals. Must've been extra sweet for them.

The Badgers go for the sweep at the Kohl Center tonight at 7:07 pm.

Here's the UWbadgers.com report.