Yesterday afternoon we took on the Cobbers from Concordia in our last official home game of the year as well as Senior Night. They last played on Monday vs. St. Thomas so we are playing against a team that has a bye for the second time this week, St. Olaf being the first. And that's enough on that matter.
The first half started with a lot of back and forth action. We had a 24-18 lead with a little over seven minutes to play and had several opportunities to increase our lead but either turned it over or got stagnant on offense. For the second consecutive game the opposing team's defense really sagged off our guys and collapsed on Carl. We've seen it numerous times throughout the season with Northwestern, MAC, and St. Thomas the second time around. The key to beating this type of defense is to get some skip passes in and then attack and the defense breaks down. The skip was open and we rarely took advantage of it. We were down two at the half, 35-33.
The second half was a flat out awful performance by our team. For the second consecutive game we had no answer. We made a couple of mini runs but they were never enough. We look tired. They beat us to every loose ball and clearly wanted it more than we did. They also needed a win to clinch a playoff berth but we have to play hard every game regardless of who we are playing. Final score, 87-76 in favor of the Cobbers.
Over the past two games it looks like we have reverted back to how we played at the beginning of the year, except we aren't defending at all. At least at the beginning of the year we could keep ourselves in games because we were defending like crazy. Now, we are letting teams shoot high percentages and we have been getting outrebounded by an average of 20 rebounds a game over the past two games. Plus, we are getting outworked.
On a positive note, we clinch the #3 seed for the playoffs because of St. Olaf's lose to Carleton yesterday. We will play Concordia again on Wednesday at our place at 7:30pm central time. We have to be ready to play because we know they will be.
Here are the seedings for the MIAC playoffs
#1 Carleton
#2 St. Thomas
#3 Hamline
#4 St. Olaf
#5 Gustavus
#6 Concordia
Gustavus will play at St. Olaf on Wednesday for the other first round game. The winner of our game will play at St. Thomas on Friday. The winner of the Gustavus-St. Olaf game will play at Carleton on Friday.
Congrats to the Men's Hockey team on clinching the Regular Season Championship yesterday, posting a 7-4 win against the Cobbers in Moorhead. I believe it's their second regular season championship in the last four years.
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