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." |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| | Lynn Burke Newport News, Va. | | [log in to unmask] -- mail still shows [log in to unmask] | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|