{"id":137884,"date":"2023-01-04T14:00:41","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T20:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/?p=137884"},"modified":"2023-01-03T20:52:32","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T02:52:32","slug":"this-week-in-ccha-hockey-bemidji-state-looking-to-keep-improving-after-getting-a-pretty-high-grade-over-first-half-of-22-23-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2023\/01\/04\/this-week-in-ccha-hockey-bemidji-state-looking-to-keep-improving-after-getting-a-pretty-high-grade-over-first-half-of-22-23-season\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in CCHA Hockey: Bemidji State looking to keep improving after getting ‘a pretty high grade’ over first half of ’22-23 season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Mattias Sholl has been consistent in goal over the first half of the 2022-23 season for Bemidji State (photo: Matt Sauser).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tom Serratore had a bit of a sly smile on his face on Tuesday afternoon as he compared his team to another well-known Minnesota team.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur team exceeded our expectations,\u201d Bemidji State\u2019s head coach said in his weekly Zoom press conference. \u201cWe\u2019re still trying to figure out a lot about our team. We were 9-5-4 in the first half, which is good, but I wasn\u2019t born yesterday. We\u2019re a lot like the Vikings. What are they, 11-0 in one-score games? Well, we\u2019ve played eight overtime games. So to put things in perspective right there, it\u2019s been tight for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serratore was making reference to the fact that the Vikings are 12-4 but have a scoring differential of minus-19. His Beavers\u2019 scoring margin isn\u2019t nearly that bad \u2013 BSU has scored 51 goals and allowed 43 \u2013 but Serratore was making an important point. His Bemidji State team this season isn\u2019t going to win any scoring titles, but they\u2019re the type of team that is great at winning close, grind-it-out games.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of tight games, a lot of one-goal games,\u201d Serratore said. \u201cOverall, the guys found a way to get it done, but it could be reversed. It\u2019s always challenging, but I think our guys stood tall. They improved. They got better. I like our mindset. I hope it carries over in the second half. The guys exceeded our expectations. In my book, they got a pretty high grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CCHA-leading Beavers are 3-1 in one-goal games \u2013 with all three victories coming in overtime. They\u2019ve also won by two goals twice \u2013 both of which were games in which the opposing team pulled the goalie and the Beavers scored on an empty net. So Serratore\u2019s team has become very skilled at playing with, and defending, tight leads. They\u2019ve almost made it into an art form.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, we talk a lot about puck management,\u201d BSU senior forward Carter Jones said of his team\u2019s ability to survive in tight games when the pressure is on. \u201cKnowing late in the game when you have a chance to make a play, when you need to live to fight another day. And it\u2019s also about capitalizing off mistakes. Teams are going to try and score goals late. Mistakes are going to happen, so it\u2019s about capitalizing off those opportunities and managing the puck in situations where you need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how the Beavers were able to defeat Minnesota State before Christmas. Down 3-2 in the third period, BSU managed to tie things up following a Maverick penalty and a couple of missed poke check attempts to clear. Jones assisted on Aaron Meyers\u2019 game-tying score before Kyle Looft\u2019s overtime power-play tally gave BSU the 4-3 win in overtime \u2013 good enough for a five-point weekend.<\/p>\n

Serratore on Tuesday said he recognizes that it won\u2019t get any easier in the season\u2019s second half, noting the Beavers did not have a true series sweep in the first half, meaning that while they had a few five-point weekends, they were unable to manage any six-point sweeps.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to learn how to win different ways, but the biggest thing is, you have to learn how to win 2-1,\u201d Serratore said. \u201cAnd the second half of the year is always tighter. It\u2019s hard to get sweeps. And we didn\u2019t get a sweep in the first half. When I mean sweep, I mean all six points. It\u2019s hard out there when you\u2019re playing the same team back-to-back in the second half of the year when there\u2019s so much more on the line. Well, I shouldn’t say there\u2019s more on the line. There\u2019s as much on the line in October as there is in January, but the hard reality is you\u2019re really looking at the standings and you\u2019re looking at the big picture the second half of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

By \u201cbig picture,\u201d Serratore was mostly talking about winning the conference and positioning his team for the CCHA tournament, but he also talked about the possibility of the Beavers earning an at-large bid for the NCAA tournament. BSU is just outside the bubble in the Pairwise rankings, currently No. 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2018ve gotta win games. You can look at the at-large stuff, but if you don\u2019t win games, it doesn’t matter,\u201d Serratore said. \u201cThat all takes care of itself. I don’t even need to look at the Pairwise rankings if we lose two in a row, and we shouldn\u2019t be looking at the pairwise rankings anyway. You have to let some of that stuff play out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Beavers are the highest-ranked CCHA team in the PairWise this season. The only other teams in range are co-conference leaders Michigan Tech (No. 20) and defending conference champs Minnesota State (No. 24).<\/p>\n

This weekend\u2019s home-and-home series against Minnesota Duluth is BSU\u2019s final chance to pick up some wins out of conference and move up in the standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you lose games to teams that are lower in the Pairwise, you\u2019re shooting yourself in the foot and that\u2019s going to happen (in a tight league) because there\u2019s such a small margin of error and there\u2019s such a fine line,\u201d Serratore said. \u201cI guess what I’m getting at is, I don’t look at the Pairwise right now because we\u2019re on the outside looking in. I just want to make sure we\u2019re playing good hockey and we\u2019re ready to play hockey this coming Friday.<\/p>\n

“We need to be looking at the short term and not the long term right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Serratore had a bit of a sly smile on his face on Tuesday afternoon as he compared his team to another well-known Minnesota team. \u201cOur team exceeded our expectations,\u201d Bemidji State\u2019s head coach said in his weekly Zoom press conference. \u201cWe\u2019re still trying to figure out a lot about our team. We were 9-5-4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":137885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[854],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in CCHA Hockey: Bemidji State looking to keep improving after getting 'a pretty high grade' over first half of '22-23 season - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tom Serratore had a bit of a sly smile on his face on Tuesday afternoon as he compared his team to another well-known Minnesota team. \u201cOur team exceeded\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137884\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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