Here is the tournament bracket plus three stories from
the East Regional ....
 
EAST REGIONAL
At Knickerbocker Arena
Albany, N.Y.
First Round
Friday, March 25
   Wisconsin 6, Western Michigan 3
   New Hampshire 2, RPI 0
Second Round
Saturday, March 26
   Wisconsin (25-14-1) vs. Boston U. (30-7-1), 5 p.m.
   New Hampshire (23-13-3) vs. Harvard (23-4-4), 8:30 p.m.
   ------
WEST REGIONAL
At Munn Arena
East Lansing, Mich.
First Round
Saturday, March 26
   Lake Superior St. (27-10-4) vs. Northeastern
(19-12-7), 3 p.m.
   Mass.-Lowell (22-9-7) vs. Michigan St. (23-12-5),
6:30 p.m.
Second Round
Sunday, March 27
   Lake Superior St.-Northeastern winner vs. Michigan
(33-6-1), 2 p.m.
   Mass.-Lowell-Michigan St. winner vs. Minnesota
(24-12-4), 5:30 p.m.
   ------
Championship Round
At St. Paul Civic Center
St. Paul, Minn.
Semifinals
Thursday, March 31
   Wisconsin-Boston U. winner vs. Mass.-Lowell-Michigan
St.--Minnesota winner, 2 p.m.
   New Hampshire-Harvard winner vs. Lake Superior
St.-Northeastern--Michigan winner, 8 p.m.
Championship
Saturday, April 2
   Semifinal winners, 8 p.m.
 
 
The AP story for Saturday afternoon newspapers:
 
By JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer
   ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Good-bye grabbers. Hello
shadows.
   Wisconsin withstood the slow-down tactics of Western
Michigan on Friday night and defeated the Broncos 6-3
in the first round of the NCAA East Regional.
   The road gets tougher tonight, when the Badgers
(26-14-1) meet Boston University (30-7-1), the No.
1 team in the nation. Last year, the Terriers
spoiled Wisconsin's Christmas tournament with a 6-3
victory. The Badgers have not forgotten.
   "They played us real tough last year. I expect
to see the same thing this year," said Mike Strobel,
whose power-play goal at 7:38 of the second period
with the Badgers up two men spelled doom for the Broncos
(24-13-3). "They'll try to rattle our top players,
like you saw tonight. I wouldn't doubt if they went
to a little bit of shadowing some of our goal scorers."
   The winner goes to the Final Four in St. Paul, Minn.
next week.
   "I expect a very tight-checking game, but I think
it's going to open up quite a bit," Strobel said.
"These guys are identical to our style, identical to
our lineup. They have four top lines, we have four.
I expect a one- or two-goal game. I don't think
you're going to see either team really blow it out.
Tension is a little higher at this stage."
   The Broncos, who got goals from Colin Ward,
Derek Innanen, and Ryan D'Arcy, tried to clutch
and grab their way to victory and nearly succeeded.
They even got a power failure midway through the
first period to help out.
   "It seemed like there was continuous stoppage
all the time," Wisconsin coach Jeff Sauer said.
"We never got any real flow going. We like to play
with flow. That part was really tough to deal with."
   Wisconsin led 3-2 after one on goals by Williams,
Jason Zent and Kelly Fairchild, and 4-3 entering
the third. But the Broncos' game fell apart when
Williams scored his 13th goal of the season with
just 4:58 left to make it 5-3.
   "We were basically playing their style early,
and that's what we didn't want to do," Strobel said.
"We didn't want to slow it up and let ourselves get
clutched and grabbed. We wanted to keep our feet
going so we could draw some penalties."
   Jamie Spencer scored on a deflection at the
left goalpost just over two minutes later to send
the Broncos home for the season.
   "I thought we played a good third period," WMU
coach Bill Wilkinson said.
"But maybe we got outskilled at the end."
   RPI didn't get outskilled in the nightcap, but
the Engineers did get outscored, 2-0, by New
Hampshire (25-11-3), which advances to play Harvard
(23-4-4) Saturday night.
   Rob Donovan and Scott Malone scored power-play
goals and Trent Cavicchi was perfect in goal for
the Wildcats, who killed seven power plays and
handed the Engineers (21-11-4) their second straight
shutout. Harvard defeated RPI 3-0 last week in the
ECAC finals.
   UNH ignored the partisan RPI crowd, which numbered
more than 10,000, and beat the Engineers for the
second time this season. The crowd came to life midway
through the second period when RPI killed off a 5-on-3
UNH power play that lasted just over three minutes.
   "When we came out of that we had to give the
crowd something to sink their teeth into," RPI
coach Buddy Powers said. "The crowd came to life,
but our offense didn't. We didn't finish any chances
tonight, so it was hard to get rocking and rolling."
   RPI exerted stiff pressure with five minutes left,
but Cavicchi kept his perfect game.
   "I was confident in there," said Cavicchi, who
finished with 21 saves. "I just had to worry about
the first shot the way the defense was playing."
   The loss dampened a wonderful performance by RPI goalie
Neil Little, who suddenly has no more games to play.
   "We had a lot of chances," said Little, who made 24
saves. "We just missed the net. It's tough to swallow
because it's my last college game."
 
 
And 2 stories for Saturday morning newspapers:
 
By JOEL STASHENKO
Associated Press Writer
   ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Rob Donovan and Scott Malone
scored power play goals and Trent Cavicchi was perfect
in goal as New Hampshire shut out Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute 2-0 Friday night in the first round of the
NCAA East Region hockey tournament.
   New Hampshire (25-11-3) advances to meet Harvard
(23-4-4) on Saturday, with the winner going to the
national semifinals next weekend in St. Paul, Minn.
   RPI (21-11-4) was shut out for the second straight
game. Harvard blanked the Engineers 3-0 last weekend
in the finals of the Eastern College Athletic Conference
tournament. RPI scored an average of nearly five goals
a game during the regular season.
   New Hampshire scored in both the first and second
periods of what was a tight-checking, defensive-minded
game.
   Donovan bore down on the RPI goal, slid the puck
past a defenseman and shot it over goalie Neil Little's
right shoulder with 6:15 gone in the game to make
it 1-0. RPI captain Ron Pasco was in the penalty box for
hooking at the time.
   With little-used RPI center Jeff O'Connor serving two
minutes for charging, New Hampshire defenseman Malone
took a loose puck behind the RPI goal and slipped a
backhander past Little with 6:10 to play in the second
period.
   Otherwise, Little was brilliant. The senior goalie, a
candidate for college hockey's version of the Heisman
Trophy, the Hobey Baker Award, denied two point-blank
attempts by Eric Boguniecki when New Hampshire was on
an extended power play in the second period and made
several other standout saves.
   But Cavicchi was just as good, and his defensemen
gave him better support than Little got from his
teammates. RPI's best chances to score came with 6:05
gone in the third period, when Engineer winger Jeff
Gabriel could not put his stick on a bouncing puck
at the goal mouth, and 2:25 later, when RPI's Wayne
Clarke fired a centering pass wide left past an open
goal on a power play.
   RPI couldn't even get a shot on goal in the final
two minutes, despite pulling Little and playing with
six skaters.
   Cavicchi finished with 21 saves and Little had 24.
   RPI was making its first appearance in the NCAA
tournament since 1985, when the Engineers won the
national title.
 
 
By JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer
   ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Third-period goals by Max
Williams and Jamie Spencer broke open a tight game as
Wisconsin defeated Western Michigan 6-3 Friday night
in the first round of the NCAA East Regional.
   Wisconsin (26-14-1) of the WCHA, the third seed,
advanced to Saturday's quarterfinals against top-seeded
Boston University. Western Michigan (24-13-3) of the CCHA
was eliminated. RPI played New Hampshire in Friday's other
East Regional game. The winner of that contest will play
second-seeded Harvard on Saturday.
   The Badgers, leading 4-3 after two periods, withstood
sustained pressure early in the third before Williams
scored with 4:48 left, converting a pass in front from
Spencer.
   Spencer scored on a deflection at the left goalpost
just over two minutes later to send the Broncos home for
the season.
   The Broncos took a 1-0 lead in a penalty-filled first
period on a power-play goal by Colin Ward at 4:36.
   There were 14 minor penalties in the period.
   Williams evened the score just 32 seconds later when
his backhander from the left side of the net got past
goalie Craig Brown.
   A problem with the lighting above both goals delayed
the game 20 minutes midway through the period.
   Wisconsin's Jason Zent scored less than two minutes
after power was restored, one-timing a feed from Andrew
Shier past Brown at 9:33 for a power-play goal.
   Ryan D'Arcy tied it at 2-2 for the Broncos with a
hard slap shot from the slot at 13:01.
   Zent set up Kelly Fairchild's go-ahead goal with
29 seconds left in the first period. Zent made a
rink-long rush up the left side and got off a hard,
low shot on Brown, who made a stick save. The rebound
came to Fairchild, who slid it into the open side of
the net.
   Derek Innanen scored at 3:24 of the third period to
tie it at 3-3.
   Mike Strobel gave the Badgers their third lead of the
game at 7:38, flipping a long wrist shot past Brown from
the top of the slot.
   Jim Carey finished with 27 saves. Brown made 23 stops.
 
And the advance story on the tournament
 
By JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer
   ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Another berth in the NCAA hockey
playoffs. It's enough to make a player smile. Or is it?
   "At the beginning of the year one of our goals was
to be in the NCAAs," said New Hampshire captain Bob
Chebator, in the postseason for the second time in
three years. "We're not just happy to be here. We want
to keep playing. We're here to win."
   The Wildcats (22-13-3) will play RPI (20-10-4) tonight
in the first round of the East Regional. They beat the
Engineers 6-3 in November. That game is gone. It is not
forgotten.
   "They embarrassed us," RPI captain Ron Pasco said.
"It was the first time in my four years at RPI that
the fans booed us at home."
   The Engineers don't expect to be embarrassed again.
   "We want to show them we're capable of putting forth
a better effort," Pasco said. "I can't forget how they
beat us."
    RPI finished third in the ECAC during the regular
season, defeated Clarkson 6-2 in the league semifinals,
but were shut out 3-0 in the championship game
last Saturday by Harvard (23-4-4), seeded second here.
   "They don't have any superstars," Pasco said. "The
two teams up front are really similar, and I think that
provides us with a good chance to win it. I don't think
we're intimidated at all playing them. We know they're
a good team, but we've got a good chance."
   "We might have a little more experience," said UNH
coach Dick Umile, whose Wildcats have never made it to
the title game. "We had a bad spell where we lost
six out of seven, but everybody's starting to come
back. We're starting to feel good about ourselves.
   "We just want to come out and be ready to play. We
didn't do that in our semifinal game in the Hockey East
Championship (a 4-2 loss to UMass-Lowell), and
I think that's something that has bothered us. We've
got a bitter taste."
   Fourth-seeded Wisconsin (25-14-1) meets No. 5
Western Michigan (24-12-3) in today's other matchup.
Harvard and Hockey East champ Boston University (30-7-1),
the top seed, received first-round byes and won't see
action until Saturday.
   Wisconsin, which has won five national championships,
is making its seventh straight appearance in the
tournament and 15th overall.
   "We only have two freshmen on this trip," coach Jeff
Sauer said. "Everyone else is pretty mature from the
standpoint of playing in pressure situations.
Hopefully, that will help us out this weekend. I think
it's a factor."
   The Badgers haven't played the Broncos since the
1985-86 season, when Western Michigan swept a pair
of games on the road at Madison and qualified for
the postseason. Those Broncos scored goals in bunches.
This team is no mirror image, even though Colin Ward
has 30 goals and is tied for the team lead in points
(48) with Jamal Myers and Chris Brooks.
   "We're a little bit different style than a lot of
the teams in the East, and certainly a little bit
different than Wisconsin," coach Bill Wilkinson said.
"We're more of a defensive oriented team. We play off
our defense and feed off that aspect of our game.
We'll be trying to clog up a lot of the passing lanes,
and the neutral zone. The free-wheeling style that the
Badgers play, we're going to try to trap them as much
as possible.
   "We take a lot of penalties because we play very
physical. It's going to be interesting to see how
both teams react. The longer we stay in the game the
better it is for us."
 
 
 
 
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|                   Lynn Burke    Newport News, Va.                     |
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