The dust had barely settled on Michigan’s 3-0 victory over Ohio State last weekend when Mel Pearson started looking forward Michigan’s regular-season finale at Notre Dame.
The Wolverines roll into this weekend on an eight-game winning streak and are in the catbird seat when you look at the Big Ten standings. Michigan has 51 conference points, two more than Minnesota, as it aims to become the sixth different school to win the regular-season crown in the Big Ten’s history.
“They beat us twice here,” Pearson said after last Saturday’s game, referring to Notre Dame’s road sweep of the Wolverines in November. “We’re trying to pursue a championship. We’ve got to go into a tough place and find a way to win a couple games.”
The back-to-back overtime victories by the Irish are the only time Michigan has lost consecutive games so far this season. With a title on the line this weekend, Pearson would love to flip the script.
“We can’t play both games in one night, we just have to get ready and make sure we’re ready to go Friday,” he said on his radio show Tuesday evening. “That’s what I really like about where the team is, it’s a business-like approach. They go out and play that game and play hard and play for 60 minutes and see where they are.”
Olympians Matty Beniers, Brendan Brisson, Owen Power and Kent Johnson returned to the team this week, meaning that the Wolverines will have a fully-loaded arsenal as they chase the trophy. Pearson was very complementary of the way other players stepped up to fill in for the Olympians in both his press conference and radio show but was excited to have the full roster for this weekend.
“The key is to play our game and take it to them, but you have to be patient at the same time,” he said of playing the Irish. “You can’t get away from your game just because you’re frustrated or things don’t happen in the first 20 minutes. You have to stay with it.
“We’ve played them enough, we know what it’s going to be like,” Pearson added. “We have to play fast. We have to use our speed against them and force them into making mistakes.”
The race for the title is only between the Wolverines and Gophers, but Notre Dame could vault over idle Ohio State for third place in the conference with two points this weekend. Home ice for the first round of the Big Ten Tournament is settled with there being a 21-point gap between Notre Dame and fifth-place Wisconsin.
Michigan State looks to end skid before playoffs
While one Big Ten team in Michigan is on a winning streak, the team from East Lansing is trying to end a streak of a different kind.
What was once looking like a promising season for Michigan State has derailed and the Spartans need to take the majority of the points from this weekend’s series at Penn State to avoid another last-place finish. MSU has dropped a dozen games in a row and hasn’t won in the 2022 calendar year.
Danton Cole spoke candidly about the streak in his press conference on Monday but said that it was important for the team to use it as motivation and not become all-consumed by it.
“If it was a 12-game winning streak it’d be the same way, you want to take the lessons from those games, things you’re doing well and things you need to do better,” he said.
That said, the Spartans aren’t exactly happy about the learning experiences they’re going through.
“You want the guys to be a little ticked, you don’t want to forget about where we’re at and not have them want it a little bit,” Cole said. “You want a little bit of urgency, you want a little bit of anger, but you also have to say, ‘Hey, there’s not a lot we can do about those, but we can do a heck of a lot about Friday.’”
