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OSU STRAIGHTENS OUT LATE WOES, TAKES FIRST TSCHL CROWN

As his No. 8-ranked Ohio State team was going 1-2-0 to wrap up the regular season and beginning to focus on the Tri-State Collegiate Hockey League Championship Tournament, the Buckeyes’ sixth-year head coach, Mark Runco, realized something was wrong.

“We weren’t playing good,” he recalled this week. “We had two weekends of games that were really odd before the end of the season, and I think that threw us off our game.”

Runco said his team's preparations for the TSCHL tourney focused on getting back to the basics and being the team he knew it could be.

“We also got a lot of guys back from illness or injury, so that helped get us going in the right direction again, too . . . By the time we got to the playoffs, [we] were 100 percent.”

And then some.

The Buckeyes exploded for five goals in the first 26:47 of their opening game of the playoffs and cruised to a 7-4 win over unranked Louisville en route to three consecutive victories and the team’s first TSCHL championship.

With goalie Declan Rooney’s play getting stronger and stronger with each period, Ohio State proceeded to defeat No. 13 Indiana University 2-1 in the semifinals

The Buckeyes followed with a come-from-behind 4-3 upset of perennial TSCHL power Miami (Ohio), ranked seventh in the ACHA’s Division 2 Southeast Region, in Sunday’s championship game.

Miami led 2-0 after the first period in the title game and added another goal near the midway point in the second.

“Going down 3-0 to Miami was big but the comeback was bigger for us,” said Runco in an online interview with Hockey Y’all.

. . . [We just had to reset. Didn't really yell, just said to scrap that period and reset and do the little things right, and better things would come our way. We did not do that in the first [period].

“We split with them during the season, so we knew deep down we could get the best of them. We just needed one shift to start to tilt the ice and we got it and built off of that and didn't look back.”

The Buckeyes proceeded to score four unanswered goals to steal the win. Charles Klenkar (No. 11 in photo with Sam Gross) and Jacob Clark tallied in the second period and Jordan Hoy and Clark, scored the equalizer and the winner, respectively, in the third.

Runco said his boys “got their energy back, got their feet moving and started to win more battles. Maybe just wanted it more, too.”

Rooney, the Buckeyes’ No. 2 goalie behind All-TSCHL Second Team honoree Deven Dyer, was in goal for Ohio State in all three games. Dyer was coming off a grueling Army ROTC exercise, so Rooney got the nod for the Louisville game.

“He was really good when we needed him to be,” noted Runco, whose team ran its record to 16-6-0-1 with its win over Miami (Ohio). “We let him down a few times versus UL. and he stood tall. He bailed us out a few times and our guys knew we needed to repay him.

Several Buckeyes saw to it that that would happen: co-team scoring leaders Clark and J.P. Shimko; Nick Schantz, who stepped up his play in the title game, and Klenkar, a rookie who Runco says plays big.

“[Clark’s] motor never stops. Scored some big goals for us,” said Runco. “Shimko, [is] a senior leader and gets the boys going. He is a driving force of our team.”

The excitement over OSU’s first TSCHL championship has moderated since the Buckeyes’ takedown of Miami (Ohio).

Now, the topic du jour is this weekend’s eight-team D2 Southeast regional tournament and the two wins required to earn one of two available berths in the D2 National Tournament, March 20-24 in Frisco Texas.

“[The TSCHL sweep] gives us a little confidence and a little swagger, I think,” said Runco, whose team did not play No. 5 Rowan, which lost 4-2 to No. 1 Liberty in the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Hockey’s title game, during the regular season.

If Ohio State defeats Rowan Friday evening, it will meet one of Saturday’s other winners on Saturday, with that winner going to Texas for a crack at the D2 national tournament.

“We had some goals at the start of the season and we are just checking them off. What we did this past weekend was a goal; now we check that off and we are on to the next set of goals (two “W”s in the regional and a berth in the national tourney).”

Can the Buckeyes win twice in Lawrenceville, N.J.?
“We can. After the weekend we had we all believe we can now.”