Saints get back to work for Raiders
CANTON — St. Lawrence University men's hockey team experienced a quick turnaround from an unforgettable three-game series against Clarkson this week.
The Saints advanced to the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals against Colgate this weekend after playing two overtime games and winning the decisive third game in the final 90 seconds.
"It was such an intense series," coach Joe Marsh said. "That alone prepares you for what you need to have. It's worth probably a month of practice."
Forced to play through Sunday, the Saints have a shortened week of practice before traveling to Colgate to start their next series.
"We're trying to recover from the weekend," St. Lawrence forward Mike McKenzie said. "Usually you get a Sunday off throughout the year. It tires you out a little more, but we're all ready to go."
The Raiders, however, earned a bye and haven't played since Feb. 27. Marsh said that doesn't necessarily matter as long as the Saints continue to practice well.
"You try and establish some sort of pattern or agenda to stick to," he said. "It's about getting hot and sustaining it."
Practice this week was short — little more than an hour each day — and the team worked on minor execution and fundamentals more than any changes in game plan.
"We want to emphasize the quality, not the quantity of the practice," Marsh said. "We had a good skate on Monday to kind of flush out the weekend a little bit. We're not going to affect any monumental changes in strategy."
Nor should St. Lawrence. What it's done against Colgate in the last two years seems to work. The Saints beat Colgate twice last season. This year, it was more of the same. St. Lawrence won 4-0 at Appleton Arena and finished Colgate in overtime, 3-2, at Starr Rink.
"We definitely have confidence going into Colgate's place," McKenzie said. "We've played pretty well at Starr the last couple years."
The last time St. Lawrence faced Colgate in the playoffs was in 2008. The Saints won Game 1 but lost the next two at Colgate to end the season. Marsh doesn't believe Colgate is that different a team from two years ago and sweeping the Raiders in consecutive regular seasons means nothing.
"You can't say 'Hey, we beat them twice,'" Marsh said. "It's hard to beat a team four times (in a season). I think our guys know it's a whole new ballgame."
That doesn't mean the confidence is lacking. Travis Vermeulen, a finalist for the ECAC Defensive Forward of the Year award, said winning will be a matter of consistency.
"We just have to maintain the things we did right (against Clarkson)," he said. "We understand that Colgate's a pretty good team and they finished the season on a pretty good note."
The Raiders overtook St. Lawrence in the final four games of the season to earn fourth place in the conference and a first-round bye. The Saints aren't worried about that now, having won three of their last four games heading into the Colgate series.
"We're confident but not overconfident," McKenzie said. "We enjoyed (the Clarkson win) for a day or so. It's in the back of our heads still, but we gotta move on from that and keep things rolling."
AWARDS SEASON
The ECAC award nominations continue to trickle in as the conference championship approaches.
So far, three awards have been announced and St. Lawrence has a man in the running in all of them.
Vermeulen was selected as a finalist for the Defensive Forward of the Year after setting career highs in goals (17), assists (23) and points (40) this season. Marsh has called him "the best defensive forward I've ever coached."
"I think that's a strong part of my game," Vermeulen said. "It's nice to get recognition for that."
Derek Keller is in the hunt for Best Defensive Defenseman, and coach Joe Marsh is up for Coach of the Year.
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TROUBLE FINDS SYRACUSE
BIG EAST OUSTER:
Georgetown rallies
for quarterfinal win
By JOHN DAY
TIMES SPORTSWRITER
NEW YORK — Syracuse's magic at Madison Square Garden disappeared Thursday. And perhaps, too, did the Orange's promising prospects for the NCAA Tournament.
Eighth-seeded Georgetown used a huge run midway through the second half to pull ahead, and the Hoyas refused to allow top-seeded SU to mount a major comeback in dealing the regular-season champs a 91-84 loss in the Big East Conference tournament quarterfinals.
Besides dealing with a second straight loss for the first time this season, third-ranked SU (28-4) has a major concern about the health of senior center Arinze Onuaku. He injured his right knee late in the game trying to block a Greg Monroe shot. Onuaku was helped to the locker room in obvious pain.
ESPN.com reported X-rays were negative. SU coach Jim Boeheim said Onuaku will be evaluated when the team returns home. "We're hoping it's just a strain," Boeheim said. "We won't know more until he has a MRI. Hopefully, he'll be fine."
Georgetown (22-9), which plays Marquette in tonight's semifinals, had dropped both regular-season meetings to SU. But the Hoyas sliced and diced through the Orange 2-3 zone at will, especially in the second half when they shot 69 percent from the floor.
Senior guard Chris Wright led Georgetown with 27 points, while senior Austin Freeman added 18, and sophomore center Greg Monroe finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.
"Georgetown played a tremendous game," Boeheim said. "Teams in our league know how to attack our zone because they've seen it so many times. We had trouble keeping the ball out of Monroe's hands. And even though he didn't score that much, he found open men all the time."
Monroe said Syracuse was "collapsing on me a lot more than the last game. When they double-teamed me, I just tried to find the open man."
Conference Player of the Year Wes Johnson scored 24 points to lead the Orange. Reserves Scoop Jardine and Kris Joseph added 19 and 18 points, respectively, and Andy Rautins scored 14.
SU's big guys, Onuaku and Rick Jackson, were a nonfactor with just seven points combined.
"It's a strange feeling losing two in a row," said Johnson, who shot 10 of 17 from the floor and grabbed seven rebounds. "But we can't dwell on that. We've got to go home, get a little rest, and prepare as hard as we can for our first NCAA opponent."
SU won four straight games here last year, including a heroic six-overtime win versus Connecticut, before falling in the final to Louisville. The Orange added two more wins during the Coaches vs. Cancer event at MSG in the fall.
But after leading 40-37 at halftime, and 59-51 with 12 1/2 minutes left in the game, SU went cold for nearly four minutes. The Hoyas, meanwhile, turned up the defensive pressure and began executing to perfection on offense.
"They threw a lot more bodies at Greg," said Georgetown coach John Thompson III. "But he is so unselfish, he just found cutters. We did a really good job of just trying to hunt and peck and make good decisions against their zone."
Wright capped off an 11-0 Georgetown run with a 15-footer as the shot clock buzzed to put his club ahead for good (60-59). The Hoyas lead ballooned to 64-59 before Johnson's follow shot with 8:53 left.
"Our offense bogged down for a few key minutes," said Rautins, who finished with four 3-point baskets. "And they penetrated a lot better than the first half. We just couldn't slow them down."
Freeman capped off a 19-2 Georgetown run with a 15-footer, boosting the lead to 70-61 at 7:22.
Ounce was hurt with 5:07 remaining, bringing a hush to the partisan Orange faithful. But trailing 73-66, SU fought back to within 73-70 after another Joseph driving bucket as the clock read 4:31.
"We got a little bit careless against their press," Thompson said. "We knew they wouldn't just lay down, so we had to keep making plays."
Monroe converted a huge 3-point play, Freeman contributed two huge buckets and made four free throws in the final minute to seal the win.
"We just didn't get enough stops on defense," Boeheim said. "We battled hard, but today wasn't our day."
Georgetown recorded nine first-half hoops close to the basket, but shot only 3-for-11 on 3-pointers.
SU had more success from the outside, dropping five 3-pointers, and shooting nearly 60 percent as a team. However, SU was sloppy, committing 11 turnovers, which led to 16 Georgetown points.
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Well-tested Larries ready for semifinals
STATE TOURNAMENT: St. Lawrence Central shows resilience on way to first Utica trip since 1990
By CAP CAREY
TIMES SPORTSWRITER
It is hard to imagine any scenario the St. Lawrence Central hockey team could face this weekend in Utica that would alarm the squad.
While some of the eight teams who have made it this far have cruised through dominant seasons, the Larries have found themselves in just about every position imaginable.
SLC (17-7 overall) will face Section 2's Queensbury (16-7-1) in a Division II semifinal at 5:45 p.m. Saturday at the Utica Memorial Auditorium.
Should the Larries win, they'd face either Section 7's Plattsburgh or Section 3's New Hartford for the state championship at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
But just to reach Utica for the first time since 1990, SLC overcame a second-period deficit in the Section 10 championship game and then a 3-0 deficit on the road in a state quarterfinal game last Saturday.
The Larries trailed OFA 2-1 after two periods in the Section 10 title game, then scored three quick goals early in the third and wound up winning 5-3.
Last weekend they fell behind host Burke Catholic 3-0 early in the first period in Newburgh, then rattled off five straight goals before the period ended and cruised to a 7-3 win.
"This group has been very resilient," said SLC coach Mickey Locke. "I just think it speaks to the maturity of our leadership. We have a great core of leaders and nothing has fazed this group, really, from the second half of the year."
The trials the Larries have endured to get to this weekend could prove beneficial. While some of the teams have not faced much adversity, the Larries would hardly panic should they find themselves down by two or three goals at some point of Saturday's semifinal.
"One of the things I told the kids on Monday is that they've faced just about every virtual scenario you can imagine this year," Locke said. "Whatever transpires on Saturday they've been prepared for through the season.
"Every game tells a different story. When we play Salmon River, it's always a physical, grinding game, and we've proved we can play that way. If someone wants to skate down the ice, we can play that game. If they want to play a low-scoring game, we can do that as well. We've seen all different kinds of styles this year."
The players echo the confidence of their coach.
"We don't really have any mental breakdowns," said Jack Keenan. "It always seems to work out. We're mainly calm. We just start playing. We've had a lot of different situations, and we're pretty prepared."
Said Charlie Dullea, "Once we get rolling, it's not very easy for us to stop. I think we are a close-knit team. I just kind of think nothing is going to get us down."
The Larries are also a very balanced team.
Brady Helmer leads the squad with 21 goals and 19 assists, but SLC has six other players with at least 20 points this season and two other players in double figures in goals.
Queensbury also has overcome some adversity to reach this weekend's game. The Spartans have won 10 straight games but were only the No. 3 seed in the Section 2 playoffs, upsetting top-seeded Bethlehem 4-2 in the championship game.
The Spartans beat Rye 5-3 in a quarterfinal game last weekend and are led by goalie Dylan Hafner, a player who joined the team in midseason after playing the first part of the year on a private team in Clifton Park.
"When he started to play it really solidified the team," Locke said. "They are very deep at the forward position and have a lot of talent up front and a lot of good puck handlers. Their blue line is very solid as well."
Queensbury's coach Dean Williams also has a history with the Larries. He was a member of the Glens Falls team that beat St. Lawrence Central in 1990, the last time the Larries played in the state semifinals.
