Bowdoin at Utica: An NCAA Quarterfinal in tweets and pics

 Pre-Game 

Hyped up for tomorrow! #UCHockey #SeeYouAtTheAud twitter.com/melissajmorrow…
— Melissa Morrow (@melissajmorrow) March 8, 2013

Watch hs hockey online today on Sun Journal and Bowdoin D3 game vs Utica is here @8:30.empire8.tv/play/index.cfm…
— Rob Munzing (@MunzingMedia) March 9, 2013

Cannot wait for Saturday. Playing for a chance to head back to Lake Placid and play in the old home barn #UChockey #Nwood #cantbestopped
— Jordan Hobaica (@Hoby15) March 7, 2013

Tell em game was moved to Clinton arena. RT @pb_reporter Large group of Bowdoin fans at Delmonico's
— Caz (@cazzball) March 9, 2013

Locker room is ready to go. It's the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history! twitter.com/UCMensHockey/s…
— UC Men's Hockey (@UCMensHockey) March 9, 2013

NCAA Tournament Quarterfinal Roundup: Utica 4/Bowdoin 2

Bowdoin Polar Bears (23-4-2)      2
Utica Pioneers (21-5-2)              4

It was over when...: Utica's Eric Peterson (F, SR.) netted an empty net goal with 53.4 seconds remaining to cap off four unanswered tallies and send the Pioneers to their first ever NCAA D-III men's ice hockey Final Four in what Utica Coach Gary Heenan called a "win by committee." Bowdoin's most successful season in program history came to an end after the Polar Bears carried a 2-0 lead into the first intermission for the third time in the last four games.

Neither team seemed to find their rhythm in the first ten minutes of play, as the Utica radio announcers said it was "blue line to blue line." For Utica, it was their first game in twenty days, so there may have been a bit of getting the rust off. For Bowdoin, as Coach Meagher said, "the first ten minutes were about feeling out the sheet of ice itself."

The ECAC-West: The little conference that could

by Benet Pols 

Here’s a primer for the ECAC-West, the home conference of the Utica College Pioneers, Bowdoin’s host for this weekend's NCAA quarterfinals. The puck will be dropped at 8:30 PM in the famed Utica Auditorium----that is, if each of the four high school games set to be played at the Aud Saturday finish on schedule.   

The ECAC-West has just six teams and so does not have an Automatic Qualifier, or AQ, for the NCAA tournament. The NCAA requires a conference to field at least seven teams before it can send an AQ to the NCAA Div. III men’s ice hockey tournament. Thus, this year, any team from the ECAC-West with realistic hopes for the NCAA had to wait for the NCAA to designate its three Pool-C, or at-large, qualifiers before learning whether they’d make the tournament.

The conference members, in order of the final regular season standings, are: Utica, Hobart, Neumann, Manhattanville, Elmira and Nazareth.  Utica finished the season 11-3-1 in conference and 20-5-1 overall.

Utica and Hobart were consistently ranked high all season in media polls such as USCHO.com and D3Hockey rankings (links found on left sidebar). However, the hockey media is not used to determine which three teams qualify for the at large bids. Instead, the NCAA uses its own regional rankings, which were released publicly on February 12, 19 and 27.  The NCAA regional rankings rate 16 teams from the east and 8 from the west. A fourth set of rankings was generated on Selection Sunday, March 3rd, but those were not released to the public.

Bowdoin at Utica: A Coach's Perspective

We invited Colby Assistant Coach Chris Hall to breakdown the match-up for this Saturday's NCAA D-III Tournament Quarterfinals between Bowdoin and Utica. 

by Chris Hall 

  

Overall Record  (23-3-2)      Overall Record (20-5-1)                

Away Record    (9-1-1)        Home Record (13-3-0)

Offense: 4.32 GPG              Offense: 4.5 GPG

Defense:  2.5 GAPG            Defense: 2.19 GAPG        

Power Play: 27.2%              Power Play: 18.4%

Penalty Kill: 82.7%             Penalty Kill: 85.8%

Bowdoin at Utica promises to be a well-played and hard-fought NCAA Quarterfinal match-up on Saturday night at the Auditorium in Utica. Looking at how close these records and statistics are, it should be a very good match-up. In the high stakes one and done world of the NCAA Tournament, you can throw the records out. Both teams feature potent offenses in a time of year when defense wins championships.

Similarities 

The Polar Bears and Pioneers each have rosters full of forwards with good skating ability and some explosive speed. They both have a handful of high-end goal scorers and players who can make plays to win the game. For Bowdoin, keep an eye on #20 John McGinnis and #12 Harry Matheson - they were two impact players from Wednesday night against UMass-Dartmouth. Utica has one of the best young scorers in the country in sophomore  #25 Louie Educate (77 points in two seasons) and the Pioneers carry a strong junior class.

The Utica Memorial Auditorium: Historic "Aud" hosts Bowdoin/Utica NCAA Tournament Quarterfinal

Images of "The Aud" Courtesy of www.ucpioneers.com

After beating U-Mass Darmouth in the play in round of the 2013 NCAA Division-III NCAA men's ice hockey tournament, the Polar Bears of Bowdoin travel to upstate New York to face the Pionners of Utica College at the Utica Memorial Auditorium. While their classmates will be off sipping wine at study abroad campuses or pounding beers on Spring Break, Dan Weiniger and the rest of the Bowdoin team will be sweating away in the NCAAs at one of the most storied stadiums in all of D-III hockey.        

The Utica Memorial Auditorium, or "Aud", was the vision of former Utica mayor John McKennan. In 1956, the city of Utica hired the architectural firm of Gehron & Seltzer to build a stadium, and the team soon found out the task was more complicated than your run of the mill arena construction. For starters, the site was small, necessitating a round design, and the building required a colorless roof that wasn't too high because that would make it too difficult to heat and cool the building.