NCAA Tournament Live

1st Period
Good Colby contingent made the trip down from Waterville. After Ben Churchfield gave up five goals and was yanked from the Commonwealth Coast Conference championship game, Tate Sproxton got the start in net.  Colby went with Sean Lawrence, of course, and the Rudolf, Macdonald, Grillo line, with Dupont and Stahlhuth at the blue line.

Two minutes in Joe Schuler was called for a trip and the best power play in D-III - that went 4/7 against Colby in two regular season games - went to work. In general the kill was good, but at the very end, on a bang-bang play, Tyler Selterneich from behind the net sent it to Brady Fleurent who threw it over to Ryan Bloom for the 1-0 lead four minutes in. Colby would get their own power play later int he period butsdu were not able to do much with it. Nor'EAsters led 13-4 in shots by the end of the opening frame.


2nd Period
If the 1st period was a New Hope for the Nor'Easters, the second period was the Mules Strike Back.  Colby scored three goals, including a power play light lamper and a short handed tally, to take a 3-2 lead into the 2nd intermission.

About 4:30 into the 2nd, a Mule defender broke up a pass in the defensive zone and Nick O'Connor was off to he races on a 2-on-1 into the Nor'Easter zone. O'Connor faked the shot and found Kienan Scott in front of Sproxton for the equalizer, Scott's tenth of the season. The Nor'Easters would respond less than six minutes later, when one of the Macrones twins for UNE fired in a wrister from just inside the blue line, which Liam Neuman followed up to beat Lawrence for the 2-1 lead.

The Mules would respond a little over three minutes later on their second power play of the game, when Cam MacDonald couldn't put in a wrap around but Mike Rudolf was there for the follow-up knock in. Another three minutes later, Colby almost scored short handed when Grillo pick-pocketed a Nor'Easter and fed it to Scott, who could not beat Sproxton one-on-one with the backhand. Shortly after the ensuing faceoff, Nick O'Connor outhustled UNE behind the net and found Scott to the right of Sproxton and this time Scott buried it for his second of the game.  By the end of the period, Colby had fought back to cut the shots lead to 25-21 in favor of UNE.

3rd Period
Schuler gave the Mules some insurance with a single handed effort nine minutes in. Schuler took the puck from a UNE player in the neutral zone, skated down to the goal line, toodled back to the far edge of the circle and beat an unexpecting goaltender. The Mules killed off another penalty and almost scored another short handed goal when a giant block on a slap shot led to a Nick O'Connor breakaway that Sproxton turned aside.

The rest of the period was what a large part of the game was, blocked shots by Mules like Dan Dupont and timely saves by Sean Lawrence. The Colby faithful travelled well again as they did for the NESCAC title game. The "Let's Go Colby" chant was audible in person in Hartford and it was audible down the stretch again on webcast tonight.

When the buzzer sounded Lawrence ended an eighth straight game with 30+ saves and the Mules were on their way to the NCAA Quarterfinals, for which they will travel to SUNY Geneseo, who defeated Hobart on the road, also 4-2 tonight. The Knights ended Williams season in 2016 in the NCAA Quarterfinals as well. That was one of five losses so far in the NCAA tournament for the NESCAC since 2015. In that time span, the CAC is 11-5 with five different teams winning at least one game (Trinity, Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, Colby).