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UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

UNO currently still #8 in the utterly meaningless USCHO poll and sits at #5 in Pairwise.

UNO's record against the 7 teams ahead of it in the poll? 6-5-3

UNO's record against the 4 teams ahead of it in Pairwise (all of which are ahead of them in the poll)? 4-5-1

8 of the 14 "poll games" have been at home.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

It's a little depressing that I have to root for UND this weekend for playoff placement reasons
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

A compilation of recently filmed (30 second) ads for UNO hockey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSNOZrMWOfU&list=PL7tfLy4QIaexlsy1L68ayeVa7U1Gyoazq&index=3

By the way, arena progress is now miles ahead of what is depicted in the above URL.

A couple of these are kinda funny.

This one was filmed (some of it) during the recent series here with North Dakota:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q-nQwVhO0c&index=4&list=PL7tfLy4QIaeyroQIBbTuLjYD4KzAdkfXq

More:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxguDxpSp6U&index=3&list=PL7tfLy4QIaeyroQIBbTuLjYD4KzAdkfXq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkxzH5yRWw&index=2&list=PL7tfLy4QIaeyroQIBbTuLjYD4KzAdkfXq
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Red Cows said:
WOWT, the NBC affiliate here in Omaha, announces some sort of affiliation/partnership with UNO Hockey and will also, apparently, be televising our season ending series next weekend with CC:

http://www.wowt.com/fortheheartland/headlines/Omaha-Mavericks-290221571.html

I saw an ad on their station about this today, as well.

This is sort of odd since the press release about this is dated the 20th, but there has been not a peep about it on the school's own Athletic Department web site, nor in the Mavpuck forum or the associated Facebook or Twitter pages that I have seen, nor at @RedArmyUNO.

Somebody know something that I don't, here?
Click to expand...

I edited this post today as I just saw I pasted the wrong link in it. I have serious doubts this ad is some sort of allusion to WOWT televising the games this weekend. The channel guide here on Directv sure doesn't say this is so and, I still have yet to see any other posting, anywhere, about the content of this link or what it might mean. No discussion about it all. The station has been running a sort of odd TV ad that I only saw once, in this same vein, and, I didn't hear all of it because I was at a public place where there was fair amount of noise around me.

For what other purpose other than televising games would they have some sort of "partnership"?

I'd be interested in anything more somebody might know about this just-over-a-week-old "partnership" between WOWT and the UNO hockey.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Ticket special running all this week for this weekend's series with CC.

$15 lower bowl/$10 upper bowl tickets available. Use promo code BEATCC here: http://bit.ly/1AxUIKv
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Big push for fannies in seats for this upcoming weekend's home regular season ending series with CC, besides the ticket special already denoted in my previous post:

http://www.unomaha.edu/news/2015/03/homepage/hockey.php

I think some of the luster is off this series since UNO can no longer win the regular season NCHC Championship and because of who the opponent is. I think a lot of our fans are thinking "We are going to win at least one of these games and clinch home ice".

We can still finish 2nd, though, which would be the highest conference finish in school history. That's something.

That said, ticket sales for Friday night's game are borderline phenomenal, under the circumstances, if the ones I cited really exist in the minds of UNO fan. Looking at Ticketmaster, I can see something like 8,000 for that game. And, the weather will be decent this weekend, too.

The crowd for Saturday night, however, very surprisingly, at this writing, looks quite a bit smaller. That is quite odd for UNO hockey since we almost always have bigger crowds on Saturday nights than on Friday nights unless weather is an issue, or, during football season, a Husker game competes for attention on a Saturday, particularly if said Husker game is actually played on the Saturday night of a UNO home game and even more so if the Huskers are at home.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

And the end of season epic fails continue. We have to win tomorrow to guarantee home ice. Not confident with how we have been playing the last month.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

I thought a lot about what I saw tonight on the way home.

If you weren't at the game, here is the scenario. It's senior night, UNO is at home, playing the worst team in the conference, one with only 6 wins all season, a team that had been outscored 122-69 so far this season, in front of one of the larger March crowds UNO has ever played in front of in the CenturyLink Center. Further, UNO only needs to win to secure home ice in the upcoming NCHC playoffs, and, if they could win tonight and tomorrow, sweep next weekend in the first round of the NCHC playoffs and get to Minneapolis and win at least one game there, UNO might be looking at a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney.

So, what happens? The Mavs comes out in the first period and the game looks exactly like the scenario I outlined. They look like what they are. The # 5 team (at the time) in Pairwise, the 3rd place team in the conference, and, the #8 team in the country in the poll. UNO came super close to scoring just 8 seconds into the game. CC looks like they don't even belong on the same ice with us. Their goalie stops a ton of quality shots, some spectacularly, and at the end of the first, CC is miraculously only down 1-0 as UNO outshoots CC 12-5 in the 1st.

After that, a completely different game breaks out in the 2nd, but not until after the shot margin gets to 17-5 in the first couple minutes. From that point forward, UNO gets outshot 19-17 and outscored 2-1.

All the intensity, urgency, and playing with purpose that was there in the 1st period totally disappeared and really never came back at any point in the rest of the game.

FYI, this was a horrendously officiated game (thank you, Todd Lacina & company for, yet again, not letting us down), but, that didn't really manifestly affect the outcome. If we'd played the 2nd and 3rd periods like the 1st period, the bad officiating in this game would have been moot and there never would have even been an overtime or a shootout.

Which leads us to, what is going on here?

I thought back to something that Coach Blais said about this team on his radio show earlier in the season. And that was that every freshman player on this team was a captain from wherever he came here from. That got me to wondering if the prima donna effect is somewhat in play as far as this team is concerned. If you are thoroughly dominating someone as we did in the first period, and you are young, inexperienced, and you think you're "all that" and have read a few too many of your own press clippings since you are a part of the "greatest recruiting class in school history", replete with the winner of the Mr. Minnesota Hockey Award and another guy that was a finalist for it, I suppose the natural tendency is to come out in the 2nd and say to yourself, "We have this one in the bag" and "We're way better than these guys and we are gonna win this game, easy".

I have news for our guys. The other team, no matter how bad they are (and they are, we spent the rest of the game playing down to their level) have other ideas about this. Kudos to CC for never quitting and keeping on keeping on. They really didn't play any better after the first period, we just stopped competing and looked like we mailed in every second of what remained of the game. Frankly, it was pretty disgusting.

UNO has 17 underclassman on this team, and, it shows. Of the 5 seniors on this team, only two of them are really "quality" players, Massa and Zombo. Zombo, our captain, is hurt and didn't play (and is a huge loss to this team) and Massa is the only reason we got out of there with a tie tonight. Without his utterly sterling effort tonight, this one is a loss. O'Rourke, Polk, and Mountain, the other seniors, are just plain lousy and are a collective -11 on the season (Polk is -19 over the entirety of his career). And, they are that in front of the one of the best goalies in college hockey. One who is in the middle of what is easily, statistically and otherwise, the finest season in goal in school history.

Which leads me to this. The ultimate responsibility for this is Dean Blais. No matter how young and inexperienced this team is. I'd be inclined to give him a flyer here because of the youth thing, except that, over the past 4 seasons, including tonight, his teams are collectively 53-28-11 before February 1st and 14-26-5 after February 1st. A .636 winning percentage before February 1st and a .367 winning percentage after February 1st over 4 seasons? Really? I find that a VERY alarming trend. That isn't an accident, its gotta be coaching. I mean, think about that. Each of the past 4 seasons, UNO has started off very strong and been in contention for big things and gotten worse instead of better, as the season has gone on. And, I'm not talking about a little worse, I am talking epically worse.

Coach Blais seems to have lost his mojo since winning the World Juniors.

I have little hope for this team making much headway in either in the NCHC tournament or the NCAA tourney (and, it is no lock they are getting there, either). I think this team is too young and inexperienced and Coach Blais, after February 1st, anyway, can't coach his way out of a paper bag.

Hope they make me look like a fool here, but I rather doubt it.
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

This refrain is, frankly, getting old:

http://www.omaha.com/uno/shutout-in...cle_eae613c2-c485-11e4-9f89-eb087755e3f5.html

One of the biggest problems in this article are the words, "Senior Co-Captain Brian O'Rourke".

He, who is -1 on the season.

The second biggest problem is this quote from Dean Blais: "But the ultimate goal, like a month ago, was to get home ice."

Wrong. The goal at that time, when we were still in first place in the NCHC, was to win a conference championship. That statement speaks volumes about the mindset in that locker room to me.

The "undisciplined penalties" Coach Blais spoke of are polite way of referring to how badly officiated this game was. One of the worst I have seen in a very long time. As I said in my post above, though, I don't think it affected the outcome of the game had UNO played the last two periods at anything remotely approaching their play level in the first.

This was two games. The 1st period and everything that came after.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

O.K., for the moment, I have talked myself off the ledge, but, I had a lot of company out there:

http://www.mavpuck.com/mpboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9864

The admin posts (Bridget or Jon, I don't know which, exactly) make some decent points, many of which I have some level of agreement with but, nothing can disguise what this program has done under Coach Blais before and after February 1st over the past 4 seasons.

Looks like tonight's game, as important as any the school has ever played, really, when you think about it, is going to be played in front of a teeming throng of about 6,000 or so. It's a beautiful day here in Omaha. Maybe a few people will get a wild hair and decide the UNO hockey game sounds like a good Saturday night idea.

If we lose this game tonight our fans are going to be talking about it for a some time to come. Dean Blais is now an old-school-64-years-old and he is making me wonder just what he has left in the tank as far as getting his players motivated and keeping them there in this day and age. He has yet to win a game here that we absolutely needed to win. Ever. And, here we have a case where we should win (and, really, should have last night). We'll find out in a few hours.
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

If you are a UNO fan, as far as our NCAA aspirations are concerned, here's your wish list for tonight.

1. UNO to win.
2. North Dakota to defeat Miami.
3. Mankato to beat Bemidji State. (remember, we own a split with the Purple Cows)
4. Minnesota Duluth to beat Western Michigan.
5. Michigan Tech to lose to Northern Michigan.

Looking at the DU/SCSU game, that one is a tough call in this scenario. I don't know if DU losing to SCSU would lower DU's RPI enough to flip that comparison with us or not. I rather doubt it. Conversely, if it won't, them winning would help our RPI, BUT, it would also "taint" our losses to SCSU to some degree, as well. Too many other factors are involved to make this one an easy call.

If my list of 5 things happen, though, that would flip the UNO/Miami comparison that Miami is now winning. I don't know if a Tech loss to NMU and a win by us against CC would be enough to flip the comparison with them, but, it would be close. Item #'s 1, 2, 3, happening all would help our RPI and we aren't catching any of these teams in Pairwise tonight, period. An aside, BU doesn't play and I don't know if my little scenario gets our RPI high enough to flip the comparison with them, either.

So, I can see us jumping at least 1 spot in Pairwise, maybe 2, or even 3 if the math breaks right and this plays out the way I want. But, we gotta start by taking care of our own business.

If UNO loses tonight, they are going to fall to bubble-land. A loss to the #48 team in Pairwise at this point would be a big, big blow.
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

UNO's NCHC scenario for finishing in 2nd place (the best possible finish):

1. UNO must win.
2. Denver must lose or lose an overtime shootout.
3. Same with Miami. They must lose or lose an overtime shootout.
4. A UNO win would keep UMD behind UNO, no matter what UMD does, obviously.


Home ice scenarios?

1. Win and in.

2. UNO can get home ice if they lose, but, UMD then must as well. The teams in front of them wouldn't matter at all, then.

3. If UNO were to win a shootout tonight, DU & Miami could then both lose a shootout and still win their tiebreakers with us as they both would have more conference wins than us despite having the same number of points in this scenario. Then, if UMD won in this scenario, UNO would finish 5th since UNO would also lose the tiebreaker with them for the same reason. But, if UMD lost, UNO would then finish 4th and get home ice.

4. If UNO lost a shootout tonight, they'd need UMD to lose or for them to lose a shootout. And, if UNO lost a shootout tonight, it would make whatever Miami and DU does moot since they'd be tied or worse in points and we'd lose the tiebreaker against either one if we did tie either of them.

I think that covers it.
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

O.K., we got the job done and, the end result happened in as stylish a way as could be possibly imagined as Austin Ortega nets the game winner with 1:55 remaining and sets the all time NCAA record for game winning goals in a season with 11, almost certainly the only all time NCAA D-1 record the school now holds in any sport.

http://www.omaha.com/uno/ortega-set...cle_31838aaa-c547-11e4-979f-2f262869bc71.html

That said, we really didn't play a lot better than we did last night. The effort last night or tonight are not going to strike fear into SCSU next weekend, who swept us up there weekend before last and against whom we got what was really a pretty lucky sweep against here at home earlier in the season.

I don't know what happened to Massa in warm-ups. I was there, and I saw him lead the team onto the ice for the warm-up, but, I didn't pay enough attention to see what happened to him thereafter. My understanding is that he took a direct hit to, as Steve Martin would put it, "his special purpose" and that was the end of his night. Doesn't the guy wear a cup?

Anyway, Thompson (who I can't see being the everyday goalie next season looking at his juniors numbers as well as his numbers this season) gave up a lousy goal but was otherwise pretty good and it was enough on this night as Thompson avenged his loss from the last time he played, to CC in Colorado Springs on January 16th.

Must have been a great walk-up tonight in very nice weather in Omaha as there were actually 21 more people in the building tonight than there was last night. 7,955 tonight as opposed to 7,934 last night, despite the fact that advance ticket sales on Ticketmaster for tonight paled in comparison to last night. Plus, Creighton was playing Minnesota in baseball right across the street from the Clink at TD Ameritrade at the same time. Made for a more congested than usual parking situation tonight.

Besides Ortega's game winner, the best moment of the night was the dust-up at the end of the 2nd period, after the horn, and Coach Blais actually coming out onto the ice and grabbing Grant Gallo and physically pulling him off the ice. That was an all time first. The only penalty that arose out of that, and, it was after the horn, was to CC. I have heard, vicariously, that Gallo is a locker room favorite but is also a hothead. This was far from his first pushing-and-shoving-in-the-other-guy's-face thing for him this season. FYI, he is also the biggest player on the current UNO roster.

UNO equaled it's best finish in (any) conference history tonight by finishing in 3rd. This, after being voted 6th in the coaches poll, pre-season, and, 7th, by the media.

The UMD final score was announced to the crowd when that game ended (and it was well prior to the end of our game) but I don't know how many people in the arena understood the significance of it since there was not a lot of reaction. I had to explain it to our seat neighbors who have held season tickets longer than we (me and Mrs. Red Cows) have!

We'll have to play much better than we did this weekend to take things any further in the NCHC. St. Cloud State is a Frozen Four team from last season with 16 upperclassmen and 7 seniors. 6th place or not, they are far from slouches. If we beat them we are going to have to earn it, home ice or not. And, beating us would get them off the Pairwise bubble, where they are currently ranked 16th. Ain't gonna be any kind of easy. I'll go so far as to say that if they prevail in our series, they get into the NCAA's. The kooky thing is, if they do, because they are 16th, I don't know that UNO still wouldn't be a tourney team as well, still. That scenario might even come down to UNO losing 2 out of 3 versus being swept, even. God forbid. Let's not go there.

On the flip side, a UNO sweep and at least one win in Minneapolis would certainly make UNO's Pairwise lot in life very interesting.

Let the games begin.
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Red Cows said:
If you are a UNO fan, as far as our NCAA aspirations are concerned, here's your wish list for tonight.

1. UNO to win.
2. North Dakota to defeat Miami.
3. Mankato to beat Bemidji State. (remember, we own a split with the Purple Cows)
4. Minnesota Duluth to beat Western Michigan.
5. Michigan Tech to lose to Northern Michigan.

Looking at the DU/SCSU game, that one is a tough call in this scenario. I don't know if DU losing to SCSU would lower DU's RPI enough to flip that comparison with us or not. I rather doubt it. Conversely, if it won't, them winning would help our RPI, BUT, it would also "taint" our losses to SCSU to some degree, as well. Too many other factors are involved to make this one an easy call.

If my list of 5 things happen, though, that would flip the UNO/Miami comparison that Miami is now winning. I don't know if a Tech loss to NMU and a win by us against CC would be enough to flip the comparison with them, but, it would be close. Item #'s 1, 2, 3, happening all would help our RPI and we aren't catching any of these teams in Pairwise tonight, period. An aside, BU doesn't play and I don't know if my little scenario gets our RPI high enough to flip the comparison with them, either.

So, I can see us jumping at least 1 spot in Pairwise, maybe 2, or even 3 if the math breaks right and this plays out the way I want. But, we gotta start by taking care of our own business.

If UNO loses tonight, they are going to fall to bubble-land. A loss to the #48 team in Pairwise at this point would be a big, big blow.
Click to expand...

Well, we only got items 1 and 3 from my little list.

I was wrong about DU losing and our winning maybe not being enough to flip the comparison with them. It just does. Sure would have been nice had Miami lost because that would have for sure flipped that comparison with us, too, had they done so. Anyway, I am happy with moving up at all after playing and beating the now 51st ranked team in Pairwise.

Now, the question is: If UNO gets swept this upcoming weekend, would they still be "in"? My guess here is "maybe".

Or, if the lost 2 out of 3, would they still be in? My guess here is "probably".

If they go to Minneapolis, nothing that happens there is knocking them out, not even losing to CC or Western in the semi (and I have not yet looked at the brackets), a seemingly unlikely scenario, to say the least but, who knows in this league?

If we get to Minneapolis, then the question becomes, how high would at least one win there get us? It seems unlikely to me that we are capable of much more than that but, maybe not. We'd have to be playing pretty darn well to get to the title game so at that point almost anything is possible. I still think "just" getting a win in Minneapolis is going to have us in #1 seed territory.
 
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Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

If you hate the polls and are glad that we at least have Pairwise (KRACH, where are you?) then UNO fan should be doubly glad today.

I find it amusing that DU is ahead of us in the poll, despite finishing behind us in the NCHC standings. And, let's not forget that we swept DU this season, too, to say nothing of the fact that we are also ahead of them in Pairwise.

Other than that, apparently, the voters think they are the better team. Maybe they are, but, on paper they aren't. To each his own, I guess.

Of course, I have just set in motion DU winning the NCHC tourney again by even bringing this up. :D
 
Re: UNO '14 -'15 season thread. Will the sleeper awaken?

Red Cows said:
If they go to Minneapolis, nothing that happens there is knocking them out, not even losing to CC or Western in the semi (and I have not yet looked at the brackets), a seemingly unlikely scenario, to say the least but, who knows in this league?

Don't forget that there is a 3rd place game in Minneapolis so UNO could potentially lose 2 games in Minneapolis, although I believe UNO makes the tournament regardless of any outcome in the next 2 weeks. The 3rd place game was the saving grace for North Dakota last year as they needed the win(and Wisconsin and UMass-Lowell to win) against WMU to make the tournament.
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