Last night, in the first round of the 12th Annual Pepsi/Best Western-State
College Inn Nittany Lion Invitational, the #1 Penn State Icers defeated
Atlantic League rival #10 Rhode Island 7-1 in front of a sellout crowd at the
Penn State Ice Pavilion.  The Icers took an early 2-0 lead in the first, before
the Rams got on the board midway through the period.  That would be all the
scoring that Rhode Island would see, as the Icers added one more in the first,
one in the second, and three in the third.  Even though Penn State outshot
Rhode Island 61-19 (including 23-4 in the first), the Icers looked a little
flat.  This game could easily have been 14-1 or so, as the Icers had many near-
misses in front of the goal.  Still, Penn State is now 19-0-0 (5-0-0 in the
ACHL - last night's game was also a league game), while the Rams dropped to
9-6-2 (4-3-0 ACHL).  In the earlier game, the unranked Buffalo State Bengals
upset the #7 Ohio Univ. Bobcats 7-3.  The Bobcats had an early 2-0 lead before
the Bengals scored 7 straight goals.  Ohio U. (13-4-2) will face URI in the
5 PM consolation game, while Buffalo St. (15-3-0) takes on Penn State in the
championship game at 8 PM.  The consolation game should be interesting:  these
two teams battled each other for last year's NLI championship, which URI won
6-5, at the end of which Ohio U. instigated what would become a bench-clearing
brawl.
 
And now, yet another referee comment:  in last night's Ohio U.-Buff. St. game,
the two referees were wearing ECAC patches.  I didn't get their names, but
one of them had a name similar to "Steve Miller" (darn PA system at the Ice
Pavilion...).  Anyone know what level of the ECAC he's at?
 
Jeremy Hall
Penn State Univ.
LET'S GO ICERS!!!!
Clarkson '91
LET'S GO TECH!! BEAT SLU(T)!!!!!