NCAA Hockey: Don't Diss Bucky!

On Sunday I was forced to listen to the Sharks radio broadcast at work because I could not TiVo it to watch once I got home. (FSN+ has this annoying habit of blocking out six hours for the two and a half hour game, and TiVo does not allow for recording partial games, so I did not have the room. But I digress.)

I am glad of this because it gave me a chance to hear former Sharks' centre and current radio broadcaster Jamie Baker rail on what it sounded like must have been the worst sports travesty of justice ever.

Worse than the '72 Olympics do-over for the Soviet Union basketball team.

Worse than the Jerry Rice fumble in the 1998 playoffs that was not called.

Worse than David Stern overlooking Tim Duncan stepping over the same line earlier in the same game that A'mare Stoudemire was ejected for to give the Spurs the series. Or all their earlier transgressions he ignored that made Robert Horry think he could get away with a hockey move, checking Steve Nash. (Which, by the way, was the moment I decided to stop watching the NBA.)

According to Baker, the Wisconsin Badgers should not have even made the NCAA hockey tournament. At the end of the broadcast, he declared justice had been served because Wisconsin lost. He had decried them receiving a home game.

It is too bad he was in California, because he could have used some of that great Wisconsin cheese with all that whine.

First, let me address the home game issue.

THE SITES FOR THE GAMES ARE DETERMINED IN ADVANCE. The reason Wisconsin gets to host those games is because the fan base is strong, the ice is good, and the location is central to many schools in the region.

What other region would you put them in but the Midwest? You could get rid of regions altogether and just seed teams 1-16, but that is a separate issue to debate.

As for their worthiness for the tournament, I could assert that a team that has been as consistently competitive as Wisconsin deserves the benefit of the doubt if they are on the bubble in that tough conference. Instead, I will let their play do the talking.

For starters, they beat a higher-seeded, skilled Denver team handily. I suppose Baker and his ilk would claim their home ice advantage accounted for four goals. Or perhaps Denver did not belong either, in which case he is advocating only allowing four teams in the tournament since Denver was a No. 2 seed.

Their next game was against the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota. I won't even go into detail about how offensive THAT name is, beyond pointing out that the term Sioux was a derogatory one for the Lakota tribe...I suppose the North Dakota Lakota does have a bad ring to it.

I missed the first 17+ minutes because ESPNU was showing the end of the overtime game between Miami of Ohio and Boston College; I missed more than three minutes of the third period and overtime because it ran over. I did watch some of the rest of it at an accelerated speed so I could get through it before going to bed, but I still saw enough to know Wisconsin belonged.

Through the first 35+ minutes, Wisconsin had 11 scoring chances to the mighty Sioux's two. Through two periods they were out-shooting their conference rivals 30-19 and leading 2-0.

It did not look to me like Bucky was getting the home ice breaks to stay in this game, either. Were it not for the four posts they hit in just the time I was watching at normal speed, or the fact that one of North Dakota's goals hit a post and went in, they would have won.

In fact, were it not for the exceptional netminding of Jean-Phillipe Lamoureax, this might have been a blowout.

So tell me, Mr. Baker, did you bother watching either game before declaring they did not belong? Had you watched them at all during the season? Or did you just look at some win-loss record, poll, or stat sheet and make a snap judgment?

The Badgers proved they belonged.

Now if I can just get a new DVD player so I can clear some space on my TiVo...