At least for a weekend Wisconsin looked like the Badgers of their championship seasons — and then some.<\/p>\n
The latest edition of the Badgers (31-2-5) features more weapons up front, and now the stifling defense has returned as well. Wisconsin limited Minnesota (31-4-3) to 18 shots on goal in claiming their third WCHA tournament title in four years.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very happy for our team,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said coach Mark Johnson. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought they competed very well today as they did yesterday. They played hard, and they earned the victory today.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Jasmine Giles gave her team a lead it would not relinquish at 9:46 of the second period on a 4-on-3 power play.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was just trying to get a shot on net and hope for a rebound to pop out,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n
Angie Keseley and Hilary Knight, who both had three-point games, earned the assists.<\/p>\n
Less than a minute later, and four seconds after another Badger power play ended, Meghan Duggan popped in a feed from Brooke Ammerman while stationed on the edge of the crease.<\/p>\n
It looked like Wisconsin might blow the game open at that point, but Tera Rasmussen snuck a shot through Jessie Vetter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s five-hole to give Minnesota a chance at a comeback.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Her angles weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the best, and I think that if we would have kept shooting, we would have been able to capitalize a little bit more,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rasmussen said.<\/p>\n
In two previous games, Minnesota had rallied from third-period deficits against UW, but this time the Badgers would not allow it, keeping much of a crowd of 1,730 silenced.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought the beginning of the third period was as well as we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve played all season,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Johnson said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We started taking care of the puck and doing the things we needed to do to have a chance to win the hockey game. It was fun to watch the kids do that this time of the year.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Wisconsin pulled away to a 5-1 lead on third-period goals by Erika Lawler, Rachel Bible, and Knight making a couple of late Gopher goals by Dagney Willey and Brittany Francis academic.<\/p>\n
The Badgers took advantage of a wealth of power play opportunities, going three of 11 on the day.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We competed, we battled, but just became a little undisciplined at times,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gopher coach Brad Frost said.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Credit Wisconsin too; they played very, very well. They wanted it just as bad as we did and they did what was necessary to win.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
One of those necessities was shutting down Minnesota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s high-octane attack.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think this whole weekend the D has done a good job of not giving teams second opportunities,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Vetter said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And what could be an opportunity, they shut the door and stop them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
If Wisconsin played near there best, Minnesota did not.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much that they were better than us, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that we were our own worst enemy tonight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Minnesota co-captain Melanie Gagnon said.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Before the game, Frosty was telling us discipline over emotion, and I think we let our emotions win. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a long history, a long rivalry with Wisconsin, and unfortunately, I think we let that get to us one more time. We won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make that mistake again — given the chance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think that left lot of us with a bitter taste in our mouth to lose to them by one point in the regular season,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Badgers captain Erika Lawler said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think we used that to our advantage to kind of motivate us a little bit there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Once again, the team in cardinal and white are able to drive back to Madison from Minneapolis with some hardware.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re happy to win a championship this year, bringing the trophy home,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Vetter said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We call it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWilma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re bringing Wilma home with us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least for a weekend Wisconsin looked like the Badgers of their championship seasons — and then some. The latest edition of the Badgers (31-2-5) features more weapons up front, and now the stifling defense has returned as well. Wisconsin limited Minnesota (31-4-3) to 18 shots on goal in claiming their third WCHA tournament title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9578"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}