No. 1 seed IU hockey heads to nationals in Michigan

The seniors on the IU club hockey team played their last home game Friday night, but their careers are not over yet. The 21-8-2 team leaves today for the American Collegiate Hockey Association DII Nationals in Rochester, Mich.\nThe team is a No. 1 seed in the southeast region and will face Siena, Utah State, and host school and defending national champion Oakland in a round-robin first round tournament. If they win their bracket, they will move onto the semifinals Saturday morning. The championship game will be played later that evening.\nThis year marks the 12th time ever and the 11th straight year that the team has made it to nationals, something the team hopes will help them. The team has been to the championship game three times, in 1995, 1998 and 2000, but has never come away with the title.\n"I think it helps a lot," said IU coach Richard Holdeman of the team's experience at nationals. "This particular group of guys is fairly young. But it does help, as a staff we've been there a lot of times, so we know what's going on, so we kind of know what the routine is."\nThe team has been on a hot streak since January, going 11-2 since the semester started. However, they lost a 4-3 overtime game to Michigan in the first round of the Great Midwest Hockey League tournament in Ann Arbor, Mich. Although the loss was disappointing, Holdeman said the team still found hope in it.\n"Of the top five teams in the league, all of the games were decided by one goal, and three of them were in overtime," Holdeman said. "Obviously we didn't come out on top there, so we know there will be at least four teams at nationals that did better than us (at GMHLs). I think the thing we realize, though, is that those are the top teams in the nation, and we're not far off."\nThe team bounced back this weekend by sweeping Kentucky, including a 5-2 win Friday night in a game filled with penalties for Senior Night at Frank Southern Ice Arena. Even though the team was successful in this game, they still want to try to cut back on the number of penalties in the national tournament.\n"We like to play physical but not get sucked into all this bush-league play (the Kentucky team) brought to the rink," sophomore forward Matt Henderson said. "We're more of a finesse team, and if we stay out of the box, there's no one that can beat us."\nRavensberg stresses the importance of playing a clean game.\n"We need to stay out of the (penalty) box," senior forward David Ravensberg said. "When you play a man-down or you play four-on-four, the opportunities become less because less people play. We're a good five-on-five team, we like to roll the lines, so when you take that away, we kind of take the advantage of being a deep team and shorten the bench."\nOverall, Holdeman likes the team's chances with his group of players. Dan Karlander is only a freshman but is second on the team in goal scoring.\n"He's had a great first year, and he's a great two-way player," Holdeman said of Karlander's performance this year. "He also plays good defense in the zone, too, as a forward. He's just a real smart player, and we've been really happy with him."\nThe Hoosiers also have received a lot of help from junior forward Reed Schafer, who won the regular season GMHL scoring title with 27 points in 12 GMHL games.\n"He's obviously the driving force in our production," Holdeman said. "There have been some games that we really needed a goal, and he came through with one, so we depend heavily on him."\nHoldeman likes that although Schafer has stepped up all season, the Hoosiers have been getting support from many different places. Seven different Hoosiers racked up 20 points or more during the course of the regular season.\n"As the year's gone on, we've started spreading out our scoring more, which has taken the pressure off (Schafer)," Holdeman said. "When you come into a game and you're the leading scorer, you know the other team will be keying you, but we got more guys scoring now, so they can't just shut down one guy."\nThe team also will enter the tournament with two goaltenders who will be able to step up: Jim Hugill and Brian McCormick, who are both sophomores.\n"You can't make it through a tournament that long and not use more then one guy," Holdeman said. "We're just going to have to see what we think is best at the time on which guy to play when."\nOne of the toughest games in the first round for the Hoosiers will be against host school Oakland 7:30 p.m. Friday. The team hopes to control the home crowd, and this is something the Hoosiers think they will be able to do.\n"They'll definitely have a home-crowd advantage," Henderson said. "But it's a big rivalry. No matter what, we'll come to play, so I don't think we'll have a problem with their fans."\nRavensberg agrees it's a winnable game.\n"I don't think we're an underdog by any means," he said. "But our backs are against the ropes, and we'll need a lot of character to persevere through a game like that."\nHoldeman said the team just needs to play their game when they face Oakland.\n"Last time we played them, we tied them, and we beat them," Holdeman said of the Hoosier's two games against Oakland in November. "It was two really high-scoring games, but when you score a lot of goals on the other team, you really take their fans out of it."\nHoldeman also felt that although it is important for the Hoosiers to get goals onto the board, they need to focus on keeping the puck out of their own net.\n"We're averaging between five and six goals a game," he said. "If we can play good defense and keep the score down, I think we'll have a good shot."\nJunior defenseman Bill Ravensberg, who is David Ravensberg's cousin, agrees. \n"If we play hard, we should be able to win it," he said. "That's what it all comes down to: just working as we can."\n-- Contact Staff Writer John Wustrow at jwustrow@indiana.edu.