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As far as ho-hum 4 point weekends go, this has to have been the ho-hummiest in recent memory. BC followed up last night's walk-in-the-park 5-1 win with a similar 4-0 defeat of the Catamounts on senior night at Conte Forum.
Destry Straight opened the scoring with under a minute to play in the first period with a snipe off the crossbar and in. From there, just like last night, BC kept the Catamounts at bay, and while we didn't truly break the game open until the 3rd period, there was never a time when Vermont threatened in this one.
BC's win gave the Eagles the Hockey East regular season championship, but there are now much bigger fish to fry. As Brian outlined earlier, BC will now take on the UMass Minutemen in a best-2-out-of-3 series to get to the TD Garden. This series is important for more than just the obvious reasons -- UMass's lost to Merrimack tonight dropped the Minutemen low enough in RPI where a sweep at the hands of BC will certainly drop them out of Teams Under Consideration status in the Pairwise Rankings, knocking them and their 2 wins against BC out of BC's TUC record.
Almost everything fell BC's way tonight:
1) Northeastern overcame what felt like an impending BU overtime kick in the junk by taking the win against the Terriers. This win was absolutely enormous for BC, as it keeps BC's perfect 4-0 record against the Huskies inside the TUC bubble with no chance of them falling out.
2) Minnesota-Duluth tied Saint Cloud State and ended up with an unimpressive 0-1-1 record on the weekend against the #25 Huskies (not to be confused with the #27 Huskies down on Huntington Avenue). While it wasn't enough for BC to flip the PWR comparison with the UMD Bulldogs, thanks to a Minnesota comeback against Wisconsin, the Gophers took the comparison against Duluth and put BC in the top spot in the Pairwise Rankings where we belong.
3) As I mentioned, Merrimack took their game against UMass
The only team on my rooting guide from yesterday that didn't do its part was New Hampshire, who fell 1-0 to Maine. They're now squarely on the TUC bubble. As if we needed any more reason to root for them next week against the Terriers, taking at least one win at Agganis Arena might be enough for them to stay above the TUC cliff. Of course, a sweep would be nicer.
Elsewhere in the BC hockey world, the #4 BC women fell to surging Boston University in Hyannis in the Hockey East semifinals. The Terriers have been absolutely scorching hot of late, winning their last 6 games in, unfortunately, impressive fashion.
The BC women now set their sights to the 8-team NCAA tournament. Mercyhurst lost today as well, giving BC what appears to be an edge on them for 4th in the Pairwise Rankings -- good enough to host #5 Mercyhurst next week in the NCAA Quarterfinals. Of course, the NCAA has been known to come out with some bizarre pairings. The selection show for the tournament is tomorrow, Sunday at 6pm on NCAA.com.
Hopefully we have an epic double-header next week with the BC women hosting an NCAA tournament game in the afternoon, followed by the BC men taking on UMass.