Sunday, March 04, 2007

Wayne State sweeps into playoffs

It might be safe to say that no one in the CHA wants to play Wayne State right now.

Over the weekend, the Warriors (12-20-2, 8-10-2 CHA) swept rival Robert Morris in Pittsburgh to close the year with a seven-game unbeaten streak.

The Warriors never trailed on Friday night as they blew out the Colonials, 5-2, at the Island Sports Center.

Nate Higgins (pictured) led the attack with a pair of goals and assists while Will Hooper stopped 30 of 32 shots in net for WSU.

Tylor Michel, Jon Grabarek and Ryan Bernardi also scored for the Green and Gold.

WSU outshot RMU, 40-32, and finished the night 1-for-8 on the power-play. The Warriors also successfully killed off all three Colonial power plays they faced.

Saturday night was more of the same as the Warriors came away with a 5-4 victory.

Junior Stavros Paskaris powered the Warriors in game two with a pair of markers.

Higgins opened the game with his team high 13th goal of the season.

Michel scored a power play tally in the second and Jared Katz closed the contest with game winner at 3:30 of the third period.

Brett Bothwell got the start in net and stopped 30 of 34 shots.

RMU out-gunned WSU, 34-28.

Wayne finished the night 2-for-4 with the man advantage. Robert Morris was held to a 1-for-5 power play attack.

After starting the season 1-7 in conference play, the Warriors are 7-3-2 in their last 12 conference games.

The Warriors will head into the CHA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, as the fourth seed and will take on the fifth-seeded Alabama-Huntsville Chargers on Friday night.

Wayne State and UAH split their four game regular season series.

The winner of Friday's game will advance to tangle with the top-seeded Niagara Purple Eagles, the CHA's regular-season champs, in Saturday’s second semifinal game.

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