Points and Prattle, Vol. 14

Good afternoon, sportsfans!

In honor of tonight’s WhiteOut, today’s Points & Prattle will be delivered exclusively in white text.

If you actually highlighted this to read it, you get one gold star.

... Just kidding.

• The No.-4 Saints return to their home ice tonight after two weeks on the road, and St. Scholastica’s Connectica is sponsoring a Whiteout which includes free t-shirts. Supposedly, it’s the college’s social media headquarters on the web, but I noticed one site in particular missing from their archives. I’m just saying.
• The important of tonight’s game stretches beyond free t-shirts (shocking, I know), because the Saints opponent is St. Norbert – the team immediately ahead of them in the USCHO poll (No. 3) and in the NCHA standings. With three points separating the two teams with four games to go in the regular season schedule, the Saints could clinch the tiebreaker and climb within one-point of their first NCHA Regular Season title.
• It won’t come easy, and the Saints will need stellar play from their two-time, defending NCHA Player of the Week goalkeeper, senior Zach Kleiman, if they want to take another game from the Green Knights, who they split with in Green Bay earlier this season. The Saints have not defeated the Knights twice in a season since the 1992-93 campaign when they swept three meetings against St. Norbert.
• With a win against St. Norbert, the Saints will have plenty of reason for optimism: their remaining schedule will be played entirely in the Twin ports, and they are undefeated against their remaining three opponents this season, including Wis.-Stevens Point, who they host Saturday.
• Men’s and women’s basketball take the long trip to Minn., Morris and Presentation over the weekend, after splitting with Northland last weekend. Freshman Brett Tester led the men to a victory with 18 points, while senior Kirsten Haukom scored 10 points in the women’s loss.
• MILESTONE WATCH: Haukom needs just 10 more points to become the 11th player in program history to register 1,000 career points. She ought to accomplish it this weekend, so let us be the first to congratulate her on that impressive feat.
• The men have nothing quite as exciting to watch for this weekend, but they did sweep the PC Saints and Morris Cougars when the teams traveled to the BWC last month, so they have plenty of reason for optimism.
• For our Nordic ski teams, junior Waylon Manske and sophomore Eleanor Magnuson continued their succss with another impressive weekend at Telemark. Coach Salmela called Manske’s weekend the best of his career, so read about that here and here, and Magnuson and the women here and here.
• Since we couldn’t have Coach Salmela on for 5 Questions this week, and he will soon be off to the Olympics, here’s a link to an interview I did with him about that very subject earlier this school year.
• Saints sophomore Wendell Booth met the preliminary qualifying mark for the NCAAs in the long jump last weekend, for the second straight season. For his 22-ft-9-inch jump, Booth won the event and was named UMAC Men’s Indoor Track & Field performer of the week. Sophomore teammate Alec Seeley broke her own previous school record, tossing it a distance of 38’-3.5” (11.67m) to win the event and her own UMAC Athlete of the Week honors.
• Spring must be in the air because tennis season begins tomorrow. The teams will both play host to the University of St. Thomas, starting with the women at 1:30 pm.
• As for our other spring sports, softball and baseball begin in 10 and 25 days, respectively, so look out for their presence in these blog posts coming soon.

That’s all for today… if you’re a student reading this, enjoy Snowball tomorrow evening and don’t be a fool about it. If you’re just a fan, then I’ll see you at the hockey games. Enjoy the weekend!

Take it easy,
-jh