Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green State University
Nebraska Omaha
BGSU Drops 6-3 Decision at Nebraska-Omaha on Saturday Night
February 01, 2003 | Ice Hockey
Feb. 1, 2003
Omaha, Neb. - Bowling Green cut its deficit to just one goal with under three minutes remaining in the third period before Nebraska-Omaha scored the final two goals of the game for a 6-3 victory over the Falcons at Omaha Civic Auditorium on Saturday night.
BGSU trailed 4-1 after a Scotty Turner goal at 18:34 of the second period for UNO. Falcon freshman Mike Falk gave the visitors life with 50 seconds remaining in the period, though, when he shelved the puck above a sprawling Dan Ellis to make it a 4-2 contest at the end of two periods.
The score stayed that way through most of the third period before sophomore Steve Brudzewski scored a short-handed goal on Ellis at 17:42 of the third period to bring BGSU within one, 4-3. Jon Sitko assisted on the breakaway goal. Just seconds later, sophomore Alex Rogosheske found a loose puck outside of the crease and nearly tied the game with another short-handed goal. But, Ellis made one of his 21 saves in the game to maintain the Maverick lead.
UNO answered, though, with a power-play goal by Anthony Adams, his second of the game, at 18:10 of the third period, and Joe Pereira finished the scoring with an empty-net goal at 19:17 for the final 6-3 verdict. Both Falk and Kevin Bieksa both had shot attempts that hit the left post in the third period that could have brought the Falcons closer.
"We withstood the early rally and got the game settled down a little bit well into the second period," said BGSU coach Scott Paluch. "Give our guys credit for settling that down. Then we got away a little bit from some safe plays and got a little careless along the wall and in the center of the ice, and UNO made some nice plays. Good teams will take advantage of mistakes.
"We're going to keep coming and we did a good job of that," said Paluch. "We got the short-handed goal to make it 4-3, and even after the power-play goal that made it 5-3 we gave ourselves some chances. We'll always keep coming."
UNO forward Dan Hacker assured there would not be a BGSU shutout for the second night in a row when he scored on his team's first shot attempt at just 1:13 of the first period for an early 1-0 Maverick lead. UNO held a 7-1 shot advantage in the first eight minutes of the game. Later in the first, junior Mark Wires evened the game at 1-1 with a power-play goal at 10:02. Steve Brudzewski and Tyler Knight assisted on the goal with just one second remaining on the Falcon man-advantage.
The two teams stayed tied at 1-1 into the second period before UNO rattled off three unanswered goals at 8:21, 17:04, and 18:34 of the second period.
After being out-shot 14-5 in the first period, BGSU held their own in the final two periods being out-shot by just one, 20-19. UNO held a 34-24 shot advantage for the game.
Sophomore goalie Jordan Sigalet finished with 28 saves on 33 shots faced. BGSU finished 1-for-6 on its power play while the Mavericks were 2-for-5.
BGSU drops to 7-16-2 overall and 4-13-2 in the CCHA. UNO improves to 11-14-3 overall and 9-12-1 in the CCHA. Wires' PPG extended his career-long point streak to five games while junior Kevin Bieksa had his career-long point streak snapped at five games.
The Falcons return home for one home game next Saturday, Feb. 8, when they host Michigan State at 7:35 p.m. at the BGSU Ice Arena. The game is being televised live on Fox Sports Detroit as the CCHA Game of the Week.
