BETWEEN THE PIPES

NCHA title within reach

Posted on Feb 09, 2009

The UW-River Falls women’s hockey team is now two NCHA wins away from its first conference title in six years after defeating Concordia College-Wisconsin last weekend 6-0 and 5-1.

Friday nights win was a dominating one, lead by Emma Nordness’s three goal night. She also had an assist.

UWRF sophomore goalie Cassi Campbell did not see many pucks, as she stopped all 15 shots that came her way.

The Falcons unloaded 45 on Concordia goalie Kari Hunter.

Ashly Berner and Laura Conrad each had multi-point games for the Falcons.

The following afternoon, it took UWRF almost two periods to wake up.

Concordia controlled most of the first half of the game and Sarah Smith gave it a 1-0 lead on a slap shot from just inside the blue line.

UWRF’s Amanda Ryder scored the first of her two goals to tied the game midway through the second period and the score was tied going into the third period.

Berner and Jessica Thompson scored goals in the first five minutes of the period to give the Falcons a 3-1 lead, which was more than enough for goalie Melissa Deardorff, who stopped three breakaways by Concordia.

UWRF coach Joe Cranston said breakaways are one of Deardorff’s strengths, so he was not too surprised to see her stop all of them. Also, he said Concordia’s only offense was the have player’s break and hit them on the long pass to spark breakaways.

Two of the three breakaways were 2-on-0 breaks for Concordia.

UWRF did not play its best game of the season, but Cranston said it showed a lot of character by the Falcons, who were able to win a game despite playing one of its worst games of the season.

He used the word “lethargic,” to describe the first two periods of play and said Concordia outplayed the Falcons for the most part of the weekend.

The only good part to that is UWRF is able to find ways to win when it is not at its best. Problem is, good teams will not let that happen.

If the Falcons win two more NCHA games, the title is theirs and will host the conference tournament for the first time since 2003, also the last season they won the NCHA playoffs.

After tomorrow nights game at the University of St. Thomas (Minn.), UWRF has a good chance at winning the title when it will travel to Finlandia University (Mich.), the last place team in the NCHA with a 1-13-0 record in conference play.

It will play at UW-Eau Claire the following week, which lost to UWRF 5-3 on Dec. 13.

More to come after the game against UST on Wednesday. Also, big feature on the success of the Falcons team coming up in this Friday’s print edition of the Student Voice.