Grin and Bare It

December 9, 2012

The Colgate Raiders made a house call this weekend, and man, it’s gonna take a while for us to chew on this sweep.

UMass certainly had a chance to take a bite out of the deficit between them and the top teams in the Pairwise. Instead, they find their chances at an at large bid rotting away. You’d think they would come out in their pearly home whites and hold court in their home office, but here they are, reeling after getting kicked in the jaw.

There were certainly bright spots here. The Minutemen brushed off a few early deficits and fought, tooth and nail, in Friday night’s game. UMass had the shots advantage, the power play clicked again, and Adam Phillips is looking as comfortable as ever as a forward. Unfortunately, where the team bit itself in the tongue was defensively. Kevin Boyle’s certainly not to blame, as the defense in front of him won’t be winning any plaques for their performance anytime soon. Seeing his shiny, clean GAA get so heavily tarnished definitely has to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

The Minutemen, unfortunately, didn’t show much improvement the next night in their follow-up appointment. Again with a 10-shot advantage, the Minutemen nonetheless played another toothless performance and their 2-1 lead fell apart like a hammock made of dental floss. While it’s great to see him back on the ice, Darren Rowe looks like he’s still got lingering issues with his upper arm, and “Hammer” Hanley didn’t have his best weekend either. 

We were hoping the Minutemen would crest into the break on a wave of positive momentum. Now they’ll need to brush off this disappointment and turn their (and our) frowns upside-down at Yale on Tuesday. Oh, and for all you Joe Sixpacks playing a drinking game at home…maverick.

—

Meanwhile, in Fight Mass’s weekend, while celebrating my 25th birthday in Boston, Matt and I made an impromptu late night visit to our favorite non-UMass bloggers, Baystate Roadsports, in their ice palace on the BU campus. We’d like to thank them for their gracious hospitality and for not killing Matt for drinking so much whiskey. We plan to make that up to them with some more crossover events this season (stay tuned!) and Kublin help us all if these two teams end up playing in the first round (it would be the current 3-6 matchup, FYI). Oh, don’t worry, though, we’re still very much a UMass blog first and foremost. We’re not suddenly going to stop being masochists now…we’ve come too far for that. But I mean, come on, they gave us this:

 

We can never hate them again. (Damnit.)

– Max

Written by bittym87 Posted in Uncategorized