Ask anyone to explain to you what’s going on in the NCAA this weekend, and they’ll probably say “they can’t explain it.” Are these wins upsets? Is this parity? Bad games? A bad season? Who the heck knows.

Tonight we saw Minnesota fall to a North Dakota team that is desperately hanging on to their NCAA tournament hopes. How bizarre is it that I reference a Sioux team and post-season desperation in the same sentence? A quick glance at the PWR by the way, and it looks like North Dakota was suddenly shot.. up to #7 in the rankings. Insane!

On top of that you’ve got Minnesota who was on a ridiculous unbeaten streak, suddenly 3-3-0 in their last six, and each of those victories have been one goal squeakers against Minnesota State, Wisconsin and Denver… by the way Denver is the only one who would make the NCAA field right now.

We also saw Hockey East get flipped around again this evening. The historical, momentous Vermont Catamounts skated to a 1-1 tie with Merrimack. That was the least surprising twist of the evening. A streaking BU team was halted in its tracks by BC giving up five goals to the Eagles at Agganis. But if we really want to talk about upsets, Northeastern came out of the booth and just wailed on Maine dropping a six spot on them to win 6-1 AT Alfond.

In actuality, things in the rest of college hockey went down pretty much as expected, but weekend after weekend we continue to see insane twists. Something in my gut tells me that this year’s NCAA Tournament is going to be one of the greatest of all time…. In the meantime, lets keep an eye on the Denver / St. Cloud foray going on right now. It wouldn’t surprise me if both teams busted out double-digit scoring this evening.. that’s the way things work this year.

Saturday, January 27th, 2007 - 12:48 am | Uncategorized