2023-24 NCAA Division I Hockey Thread

[JMCx4]

Last but not least on the women's ice to wrap up the DI conference post-season calendar ... Wisconsin wins 2024 Kwik Trip Final Faceoff title with 6-3 win over Ohio State

 

[JMCx4]

In the men's CCHA conference best-of-3 quarterfinals matchups, Minnesota State & Bemidji State & Michigan Tech have each swept their opponents to secure slots in next Saturday's Semifinals round. The fourth QF pair of St. Thomas & Lake Superior State will meet Sunday evening for their deciding Game #3. FloHockey.TV is streaming all CCHA post-season games.

ETA: LSSU are the 4th CCHA Semifinals competitor.

 

[JMCx4]

Atlantic Hockey Quarterfinals were all sweeps, with summary Game Recaps published for Friday and Saturday contests and more details buried in the conference's 2024 Postseason page. AHA Semifinal matchups are (oddly enough) another round of best-of-3 series scheduled for next weekend (March 15-17), with the College of the Holy Cross Crusaders hosting the American International College Yellow Jackets while the Rochester Institute of Technology Tigers host the Niagara University Purple Eagles. Stay tuned via FloHockey TV.

 

[JMCx4]

The 2024 NCAA Division I women's hockey national championship tournament selections have been announced.

The interactive bracket is HERE.

 

[Dakota Sioux]

NCHC All conference teams

NCHC Unveils 2023-2024 All-Conference Teams

North Dakota’s Blake, Denver’s Zeev Buium and CC’s Mbereko earn unanimous First-Team honors

nchchockey.com

 

[The Grim Reaper]

#1 MSU takes down #7 Ohio State 2-1 in the B1G tournament semifinal. They’ll face either #3 Minnesota or #4 Michigan in the final.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

MSU vs. Michigan final, should be a great game!

 

[JMCx4]

College Hockey News offers DI men's conference playoffs summaries from this weekend's play ...

• Roundup: 4 Sweeps in ECAC; RIT to Host Atlantic Final
• CCHA Tournament: Michigan Tech Wins on Wild Finish, Will Meet Bemidji in Final
• Hockey East: UMass Wins Double Knockout of Providence ... BC, BU, Maine All Advance to Semis at The Garden
• Big Ten: Goalies, Defense the Story as Old Rivals Michigan State, Michigan Advance
• (and a partial, prior to Sunday win-or-go home games) NCHC Tournament: UND, Denver Sweep; Two Game 3s on Sunday

 

[Rob]

Happy to see the Black Bears advance. They may not make it this year but I think the regionals are a real possibility in the near future.

 

[JMCx4]

Catching up on the NCAA Division 1 women's 2024 national championship play. The bracket results to date can be found HERE. Their Frozen Four will be hosted at the Whittemore Center Arena on the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham, NH. Semifinals will be played on Friday, March 22nd (#4 Clarkson University vs. #1 The Ohio State University and #3 Colgate University vs. #2 University of Wisconsin), with the championship game on Sunday, March 24th.

 

[MMC]

 

[Dakota Sioux]

2023 portal numbers

291 Division-I players entered
74.2 percent transferred to new Division-I programs
9.6 percent went Division-III
4.8 percent turned pro after entering
4.8 percent never landed anywhere
2.1 percent stayed with current team
1.4 percent played ACHA club hockey
6 Division-III players moved up to Division-I

Surprised he lasted this long

 

[PocketNines]

If Dartmouth beats Cornell on Friday it will reach the ECAC tournament final for only the third time ever and the first time in 44 years. (Never won.)

The dream of decades would be for the team to receive one single bid in one single year to the NCAA tournament, but that is very unlikely. Nobody dreams that big, just fools.

We will settle for losing in the conference final and not getting selected like every year. What a huge leap forward that would be! 44 years! One win away ...

 

[Dakota Sioux]

NCHC Award winners were handed out today:

Grainger - WMU - Senior Scholar Athlete
Gotz - UMD - Sportsmanship Award (must not be listening to Sandy's dive clinics)
Behrens - DU - Defensive Dman (Zmolek got robbed!)
Z Buium - DU - Offensive Dman
Z Buium - DU - Rookie of the Year
Laba - CC - Defensive Forward
Blake - UND - Forward of the Year
Mayotte - CC - Coach of the Year
Blake - UND - Player of the Year

 

[JMCx4]

DI women's Frozen Four play begins Friday with semifinal games at 4 PM ET & 7:30 PM ET (both on ESPN+), followed by the national championship final on Sunday @ 4 PM ET (eta ... ESPN+). Other details can be accessed from this post above. Here are semis matchup previews from various sources ...

• The Ohio State University Athletics: Ohio State Set for Frozen Four Semifinal vs. Clarkson
• WWNY-TV7: Clarkson women hope for another national title as they head to Frozen 4

• University of Wisconsin Athletics: Five Things to Know: No. 2 Badgers face No. 3 Raiders in NCAA Frozen Four semifinal
• Colgate University Athletics: #3 Colgate Clashes with #2 Wisconsin in NCAA Semifinal

 

[JMCx4]

The Ohio State Buckeyes earn the first spot in the 2024 NCAA DI women's national championship game, defeating the Clarkson Golden Knights 4-1 in their semifinal game.

 

[JMCx4]

And defending champs Badgers will join OSU in the Final, after eliminating Colgate in a 3-1 game.

 

[PocketNines]

If Dartmouth beats Cornell on Friday it will reach the ECAC tournament final for only the third time ever and the first time in 44 years. (Never won.)

The dream of decades would be for the team to receive one single bid in one single year to the NCAA tournament, but that is very unlikely. Nobody dreams that big, just fools.

We will settle for losing in the conference final and not getting selected like every year. What a huge leap forward that would be! 44 years! One win away ...

Update: they led 3-1 after two periods and were on the cusp of actually being the higher seed in the final ... and then the anvil weight of the entire respective history of Cornell hockey and Dartmouth hockey came together in the third period and Dartmouth allowed a 5 goal collapse and their season is over

I suppose instead of a 3+ decade "throw tennis balls at Princeton's goalie after the first goal" tradition I should have focused on the fundamentals like defending zone entries. How do you get an entire student body to bring tennis balls to throw for stalwart blue line work though?

 

[JMCx4]

@PocketNines ... Thanks for bringing my attention to the Dartmouth tennis ball madness. I found this brief background story from SBNation. Seems like Dartmouth was doomed to miss the playoffs thereafter.

This 2021 article from Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has more details.

 

[PocketNines]

@PocketNines ... Thanks for bringing my attention to the Dartmouth tennis ball madness. I found this brief background story from SBNation. Seems like Dartmouth was doomed to miss the playoffs thereafter.

This 2021 article from Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has more details.

The alumni mag article I'm grateful for because Demment correctly remembered it was a radio guy who got it going. But nobody has published anything about it yet that really gets at how it was built. I am working on a huge film noir writing project and will probably write the definitive piece about how it started and what the thinking was that went into all of the design and execution and subsequent continuation of establishing that tradition.

The tennis balls in no way triggered suckage. They had been brutal for well over a decade before I even got to the school. My freshman year, 89-90, the team was like 1-24-3. The first tennis ball game was Jan 29, 1993, which Dartmouth won 5-4 in OT. One thing Demment is wrong about, in no way did this "build." It started as a huge thing, that is why it continued. Plus for each of the next three years I made sure it continued happening even though I had graduated, reasoning that once every student had only known tennis-ball throwing and never not known it, it would feel like a murkily originated tradition and continue, which is precisely what happened. Anyway, the first year remains the most epic year of it, there have never been more balls thrown than the first few years.

I was the radio play by play guy for many games and most away games, so I had seen other rinks. Lynah at Cornell is the gold standard for energetic fun fan involvement. I capitalized on some pretext to create this thing to capture a surge in the team's 92-93 season when they suddenly won 5 of 6 and got to almost .500. I wanted Dartmouth home rink to have more Lynah feel. The best thing I got to see was Martin St. Louis' freshman year at Vermont. Holy mother of f*** he was so far above everyone else. Tim Thomas and Eric Perrin were on that team too

 

[Rob]

I only start paying attention to NCAA hockey after the regular season. I’m guessing SLU over Quinnipiac is the biggest upset so far.

 

[JMCx4]

I only start paying attention to NCAA hockey after the regular season. I’m guessing SLU over Quinnipiac is the biggest upset so far.

#11 Omaha bouncing #4 North Dakota in the NCHC semis would give your upset pick a serious challenge. And at this writing, SLU is wiithout a goal in the ECAC championship final vs. Cornell; if the Saints don't catch up, their defeat of QU will be forgotten.

 

[Dakota Sioux]

 

[JMCx4]

The men's DI post-season championships were all completed this weekend, with each winning team earning an autobid for the NCAA tourney ...

• CCHA: The Michigan Tech Huskies defeated the conference's regular season champs Bemidji State Beavers by a final score of 2-1.

• Atlantic Hockey: Regular season champions the RIT Tigers beat the Atlantic International College Yellow Jackets by a final score of 5-2.

• ECAC: The 2nd seed Cornell Big Red defeated the 4th seed St. Lawrence University Saints by a final score of 3-1 .

• Hockey East: The top ranked Boston College Eagles beat the national #2 Boston University Terriers by a final score of 6-2.

• B1G: The #1 seeded & #4 nationally ranked Michigan State Spartans needed extra time to defeat the University of Michigan Wolverines by a final score of 5-4.

• NCHC: The #3 nationally ranked Denver Pioneers beat the University of Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks by a final score of 4-1.


Those post-season conference tournament final results established the final field of 16 teams heading to the 2024 NCAA Division I men's national tournament (listed by the latest national ranking, but still to be shuffled by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee for the national championship brackets) ...

• Boston College
• Boston University
• Denver
• Michigan State
• Maine
• North Dakota
• Minnesota
• Wisconsin
• Quinnipiac
• Michigan
• Omaha
• Cornell
• Western Michigan
• UMass
• RIT
• Michigan Tech

Next up: The 2024 NCAA DI men's ice hockey tournament structure will be announced during the Selection Show on Sunday, March 24. Championship selections along with the pairings for the four Regional tournament sites will be announced live on ESPNU at 6:30 p.m. ET. The single-elimination fun parts start on Thursday, March 28th. Lace 'em up, boys.

 

[JMCx4]

S/T to this year's winner ... Cornell University Athletics: Izzy Daniel Becomes The First Player In Program History To Earn The Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award