Countdown to The Game

Yes, Ohio State plays Michigan at noon tomorrow. Yes, in this part of the country, that's always a big game. But it's been quite a while since The Game has meant this little. In recent years, at least one of the teams has always been playing for a BCS berth, if not a spot in the National Championship game.

This year? The Buckeyes are going to the Rose Bowl, win or lose; and the Wolverines are just trying to get out of last place in the Big Ten. At 5-6 overall (1-6 in the conference), Michigan would be bowl-eligible with a win, but so the heck what? These are not the Wolverines of Bo Schembechler or Lloyd Carr. This is perhaps a slightly better Michigan team than the one that went 3-9 (2-6) last year, but Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez has probably got one more season to turn this thing around.

The Buckeyes are 13-point favorites tomorrow, but if they don't win by at least 20, they should be embarrassed. And they do at least have a national ranking to play for. They could get into the top 10 in the nation with a win tomorrow in Ann Arbor. If they then win the Rose Bowl, maybe they get into the top five. It's not a national championship, but I'd take it.

I'm not sure how I feel about Michigan being so cruddy right now. Sure, it's nice that we get a chance to whale on them, but part of being an Ohio State fan is being involved in arguably college football's biggest rivalry. If Michigan sucks, what rivalry is there?

RedHawks hold tough

Sure, we Miami fans (and other Michigan-haters from the Buckeye State) might have preferred that the RedHawks get a win last night at Cady Arena. But the 5-5 tie leaves us in pretty good shape.

I did not watch Saturday's game, as much as I would have liked to, because I have to catch a plane early this morning to San Francisco, and I realize it's a lot more important that the pilot be awake than it is that I be, I've got a long drive to the airport. But the game reports I've read, here and here and here, and a Michigan-centric story here, tell me it was quite an exciting game. One story calls it "arguably the most exciting game of the year," which I suppose is what can usually be expected of a matchup between No. 1 and No. 2.

The 0-1-1 weekend against that school up north leaves Michigan in first place by one point in the CCHA, and the two teams will probably trade places atop the polls for about the fourth or fifth time this year, but fear not, RedHawks backers. Each team has six games left in the regular season. Miami (25-4-1) has two each against Ferris State (11-12-5), Western Michigan (7-20-3) and Ohio State (9-20-3; and this is the only sport in which I don't feel any particular allegiance to the Buckeyes). Michigan (23-3-4) will end against Ferris, before which they've got two against Lake Superior State (6-16-6) and -- and this is the key to the point I'm about to make -- two against Michigan State (18-7-5). The Spartans are a good bet to split that series, or maybe come away with at least one tie. If the Hawks win out, as they should, they've got a pretty good chance to overtake Michigan for the conference title and the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Stay tuned, Miami fans.

Bad first period

I watched last night's hockey game between No. 1 Miami and No. 2 Michigan at the Winking Lizard in Mentor because I couldn't get it on my cable at home. I ordered shrimp-crab quesadillas, and there were four of them. Now, I'm not one of those people who believes that my actions in a restaurant in Mentor can influence what happens on the ice in Oxford, some 280 miles away, but the fact is, when I started eating my quesadillas, the score was 0-0. The Wolverines scored their first goal while I ate my first quesadilla, their second goal while I ate my second, their third goal while I ate my third, and their fourth goal while I ate my fourth. So I suppose you could make the argument that I lost that game for Miami by eating some quesadillas. I apologize, Miami fans.

Our RedHawks really looked overmatched in that first period, and it hurts to say that. They weren't able to get any good shots off, and they did things like fumble the puck in front of their own goal and allow breakaways. They turned the puck over repeatedly in the neutral zone, and goaltender Jeff Zatkoff, who's been phenomenal all season, just didn't seem to have the stuff. Michigan scored all four goals within six minutes of game time. It was really hard to watch.

But once I finished my quesadillas, Miami started to settle in. Zatkoff made some fine saves in the second period, and the Hawks took some nice shots. But Michigan's goalie is pretty good too.

Finally, in the third, Miami managed to take advantage of some power-play opportunities. Ryan Jones broke through about five minutes into the period, and Jarod Palmer's goal with about seven minutes left cut it to 4-2; both were scored with a man advantage. It was starting to look like we had a chance. And we got some more power-play chances, including a brief 5-on-3, but give Michigan credit (boy, does THAT hurt to say). They held tough.

There is reason for optimism going into tonight's rematch. Michigan did not score over the last 45 minutes of game time. If our guys can keep that going, I like our chances to salvage the split.

One more thing: I'm fairly confident that this morning was the first time Miami hockey has ever appeared on SportsCenter. It would have been a lot better if they'd been talking about a win, but it felt good to see highlights from Oxford on ESPN. Anchor Robert Flores complimented Zatkoff on his goalie mask. And it is a beaut.

Big hockey series

No. 1 Miami University (25-3-0) faces off Friday and Saturday against No. 2 Michigan (22-3-3) at the Goggin Ice Center in Oxford. This is a very exciting time to be a Redsk ..., er, RedHawk. (The team nickname is a blog entry for another time.)

I've been an Ohio State fan all my life, and I always will be (even though Bob Knight played there), but I never really considered it when I was looking at colleges. I wound up at Miami, a non-BCS Division I school (no, the BCS didn't exist in the late '80s and early '90s, but we all understood that the Mid-American Conference was not the Big 10), which meant that the best we could reasonably hope for on a year-to-year basis was winning MAC championships in the various sports. Our football team was second-tier at best, our basketball teams were second-tier at best, our baseball team, our swimming team, our field hockey team, and so on and so forth.

From a national standpoint, we've had a couple of good years in individual sports: Wally Szczerbiak's 1998-99 basketball team reached the Sweet 16 before losing a highly respectable 58-48 to Kentucky; and Ben Roethlisberger's 2003 football team went 12-1, its only loss in the season opener against Iowa, and ended the season No. 10 in the nation. The lesson? In order to be a superstar athlete at Miami University, you have to have a name that only people smart enough to get into Miami can spell.

But in ice hockey ― and only in ice hockey ― Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, is NOT a second-tier school. We are a member of the first-tier Central Collegiate Hockey Association. We are in the same league as Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State ― and even Notre Dame. Brian Savage, who would go on to play 12 years in the NHL, played at Miami while I was there.

The setup in college hockey is TOTALLY different from all the other sports. Several schools that are Division II or Division III in other sports are big-time powers in hockey. The last back-to-back national champion was the University of Denver. When's the last time you heard about the University of Denver's basketball or football team? Among other traditional Division I powers ― all of whom are currently in the top 20 ― are North Dakota, New Hampshire, Colorado College, Minnesota-Duluth and Clarkson.

Oh, yes. And Miami. In fact, if you check college hockey Web sites, you'll see that Miami University is not even referred to as "Miami (Ohio)." It's just "Miami." You know how, if you look at the national football pool and see the word "Miami" on the list? You don't have to ask which Miami. It's the one in Florida. Duh!

Well, Miami of Florida doesn't even have a hockey team, as far as I know. You never see "Miami (Ohio)" on a hockey poll. Of course it's the one in Ohio.

But even in ice hockey, Miami has never won a national championship. In fact, they were never really a national power until quite recently, after Savage's former teammate Enrico Blasi became the head coach in 1999. Blasi had cut his teeth as an assistant at Denver under his former Miami coach, George Gwozdecky. It took Blasi awhile to build up the program, but he's done a fantastic job. The RedHawks reached the Elite Eight last year before losing 4-0 to Boston College ― the same team that knocked them out 5-0 in the first round in 2006 (the tournament is only 16 teams to begin with in hockey, so the office pools are somewhat less exciting).

And this year, they've been ranked No. 1 for much of the season, trading back and forth with fellow CCHA power Michigan. I went to see them in Bowling Green (the BG Falcons, Miami and the Western Michigan Broncos are the only MAC schools in the CCHA) the Saturday of the first weekend of 2008, and the Hawks looked pretty darned good. They won 5-2 and almost made it 6-2 with an empty-netter. They skated faster and controlled the puck better than the Falcons. But one of Miami's three losses is to BG, and it was actually the previous night.

And now Miami and Michigan are the top two teams in the country, and they're playing this weekend. I've been led to believe Friday night's game, at least, is being shown on TV, but I don't seem to have it on my cable. I don't know who's carrying it, but apparently somebody is.