It was a borderline hit at best. Neither coach commented on the hit itself aside from the "turning point" comment by Eaves. Terry took a shoulder to the head as he was crossing the blue line into the Wisconsin zone and went down hard. Terry's head was down since he was trying to make a move to get around Sexton.
The hit reminded some of the hit that Joey LaLeggia was ejected for in the NCAA Tournament game against Providence last season. As the rule is written, the onus is on the attacking player to let up and avoid high contact. On this play, the refs simply missed the call.
The NCAA wants to rid the sport of these kinds of hits. If they are going to be successful, the referees across all conferences need to enforce this rule consistently. While the LaLeggia ejection was demoralizing and ended whatever chance the Pios had of coming back in that game, the referees got the call right.
Last night, the refs got it wrong by not penalizing Sexton.
To be clear, we are not advocating that players skate with their heads down. It was a mistake by Terry to have his head down (replays showed his head down). But there was ample time and space for Sexton to let up and change his hit and go lower.
Wisconsin players were hitting the Pioneers high throughout the game last night. It will be interesting to see if there is any bad blood carried over into tonight's game, one that the Pioneers need to win.
The Wisconsin State Journal gives the Wisconsin perspective of the 3-3 tie.
3 comments:
I watched the game on TV and also thought/saw Terry got hit directly in the head. It looked like he was trying to skate around the defender.
DU needs to get more physical, for sure. Last night they were getting banged around all over, I thought, and the Pios were passive. Wisconsin came out on fire in the second period and DU never did after the first period.
DU is a smaller team, and when bigger teams get physical (as BU and UW did), the Pios get pushed around.
DU is going to need to address this issue in future recruiting. DU has only two players on the current roster at 200lbs or more - Staub (a fourth-liner with a few shifts this season) and Mostrom, who hasn't played this year, as far as I know, and both of those guys are right at the 200 lb mark. BU and UW EACH have NINE 200+ pound players, and several of those guys on UW and BU are in the 215-230 pound range.
SPEED KILLS
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