EAST LANSING, Mich. — No. 8 Boston College beat unranked Michigan State 3-2 to snap a four-game losing streak, but the win wasn’t easy.
“We’ve been in a little funk as far as how we’ve been playing recently and we’ve talked about how we have to be more cohesive in all of it – defensively, offensively – and raise our grit meter, which has been very lukewarm, as far as I’ve seen,” said BC coach Jerry York. “I thought our grit was better, I thought our cohesiveness was better. We needed everything, because State gave us all we could handle tonight.”
The Eagles jumped out to a 2-0 lead by the 12:33 mark of the first, but the Spartans drew within one by the end of the stanza. Midway through the second, the Eagles bumped their lead to two again but the Spartans finally caught up to BC’s tempo in the third and scored again to make the last 10 minutes of the game very interesting.
The teams ended close in shots, with BC edging Michigan State 34-33.
“Kind of a frustrating game for us, because we just gave up goals too easy tonight, which isn’t typical of our team,” said Michigan State coach Tom Anastos. “To our credit, I thought we kept fighting back, in spite of spotting them the goals that we did. We just couldn’t get over the hump to get that third one to tie it.”
The Eagles scored just 39 seconds into the first period on freshman Zach Sanford’s first collegiate goal, a shot from the right circle and the marker that turned out to be the game-winner. The goal was reviewed because there was a concern that Michigan State goaltender Jake Hildebrand had been interfered with, but when the goal stood, said Anastos, it set the tone for the first period.
“It never gave the crowd a chance to get into the game,” said Anastos
“That really helped us,” said York. “You didn’t know it was going to be a goal. It was kind of a bang-bang play. That gave us a good start.”
At 12:33, Matthew Gaudreau scored from in front of the Spartans net when Ian McCoshen’s shot dropped right in front of Hildebrand. Gaudreau poked it toward the crease, but the puck may have had some help from Michigan State defender Travis Walsh’s skate. At 17:16, Spartans Michael Ferrantino and Joe Cox broke into the Boston College zone, with Cox dishing to Ferrantino, whose shot from the left circle put the Spartans on the board.
Quinn Smith gave the Eagles a 3-1 lead at 11:54 in the second when he picked up Ron Boyd’s clearing attempt. Boyd had saved a goal right at the line, in fact, with Hildebrand drawn to the opposite side of the net to defend, but Smith’s rebound found the back of the net before anyone could react to it.
Matt DeBlouw’s goal from Ryan Keller’s pretty wraparound feed at 9:19 in the third made it a 3-2 game. The Spartans pressured for the rest of regulation and were especially keen with Hildebrand out of the net for most of the final two minutes.
“That’s a good team,” said Anastos. “You can’t spot a team like that the goals that we spotted, and it’s not typical, but unfortunately in a game like tonight, it was too much to overcome against a good team.”
“It’s a significant victory for us,” said York.
