Broncos Buck Bowling Green, 8-1

Friday, February 1

Bowling Green

7:05 PM

Bowling Green State University

Western Michigan

February 01, 2002 | Ice Hockey

Feb. 1, 2002

Final Stats

Bowling Green, Ohio - Bowling Green was outshot 38-23 and allowed five second-period goals to visiting Western Michigan on Friday night, dropping its Central Collegiate Hockey Association home contest, 8-1.

After pulling to within two goals, 3-1, at 14:22 in the second period, the Falcons allowed two goals in the next 2:09 to give WMU an insurmountable 5-1 lead. WMU finished the second period with a 19-6 shot advantage.

"We score that goal and you think okay, it's 3-1 and we're back in it," said BGSU coach Buddy Powers. "Then bang...we give up a bad one off the faceoff and it's 4-1 and that just took the wind out of our sails then."

Western Michigan (13-10-4 overall, 7-9-3 CCHA) jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first period when its leading scorer, Mike Bishai, scored his ninth goal of the season at 4:46. The BGSU defense held for the remainder of the period, however, and were down just 1-0 at the end of the opening 20 minutes. It marked just the second time in the last eight games that Bowling Green had not scored the first goal of the game.

The Broncos opened up its lead early in the second period with goals from Dana Lattery (5:50) and Austin Miller (7:10) for a 3-0 advantage. That's when the Falcons cut into the lead with a goal by freshman Steve Brudzewski, his third of the season, at 14:22. Ryan Wetterberg and Roger Leonard assisted on the goal. It extended Wetterberg's point streak to a career-high four games while it was Brudzewski's third point and second goal (2-1--3) in the last four games.

The 3-1 score didn't last long, though, as Andy Townsend (15:09) and Pat Dwyer (16:31) pulled the visiting Broncos out even further. Dwyer's goal was his first of two on the night and was WMU's only power play goal (1-for-12).

BGSU outshot Western Michigan 10-7 in the final period and killed off 11 power plays. However, the Falcons were 0-for-4 on its power play tries and had 12 penalties compared to WMU's six.

WMU's Jeff Reynaert had 22 saves in the net while Tyler Masters had 30 saves for Bowling Green. Both goalies played the entire 60:00.

"Last weekend we had our best weekend of the year and now we've followed it with our worst," said Powers. "In Western Michigan, you saw a team that came out and just made plays. The three things you look for in a game are balanced offense, team defense and goaltending. And tonight we didn't have any of it. All that we did well last week (at Michigan), we didn't do tonight."

The Falcons (7-17-5 overall, 5-12-2 CCHA) finish their two-game series with Western Michigan tomorrow night (Feb. 2) at the BGSU Ice Arena. Faceoff is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.