This season’s Bowling Green State University hockey team has embodied the program and what it has become
over the past decade.
BG will enter Saturday’s NCAA tournament game for the first time in 29 years, and with a handful of
ranked victories.
Despite an unfamiliarity with the national stage, the Falcons won’t be out of place this weekend.
“Ten years ago they were going to pull the plug on the thing and there were resilient fans and a
resilient push-back saying absolutely not. We’ve been the underdog a bunch over the course that nine
years on the ice, and our guys have always seemed to respond to that,” BG head coach Chris Bergeron
said. “We don’t focus on it as coaches, but I think the reality is, Saturday we’re the underdog.
“We’ve been in this spot before and let’s act like it.”
That spot is a head-to-head bout against an elite opponent.
BG opened the season only losing one of seven games. The stretch included four- and three-goal wins over
nationally-ranked Western Michigan and an 8-2 drubbing of No. 9-ranked Ohio State.
The Falcons later swept No. 3-ranked Minnesota State with a pair of 4-1 wins before falling to the
Mavericks in overtime of the WCHA championship game.
“When we’ve played teams that, let’s just say on paper and in the rankings, we’re looking up at, we seem
to respond pretty good,” Bergeron said. “Our team, when faced with that situation, seems to step up and
play well. That’s what’s encouraging.
“If history serves this season, when our group is looking up at somebody, we tend to dig in and fight
hard.”
BG (25-10-5) is looking up yet again. This time at No. 2 and defending national champion Minnesota-Duluth
(25-11-2) on Saturday.
But it has proven all season that its best hockey is on par with any program in the country. And for the
Falcons, their best hockey becomes most evident with their backs against the wall, including taking a
2-0 lead into the final minutes of last Saturday’s conference title game.
“What happened on Saturday was a punch in the face for sure, it was really hard, but we’re an at-large
team. We’ve earned it with 25 wins, and some of the wins we’ve had. I’m really proud of that fact,”
Bergeron said. “We deserve not to think back and dwell on that. We deserve to wrap our arms around this
opportunity and put our best game forward because we’ve earned it.”
Its best game is what BG will need on Saturday as Duluth graduated just six seniors from last season’s
title-winning team. BG has scooped up loads of its own experience this season. It doesn’t quite compare.

“I think their biggest strengths are something that’s very difficult to see on video tape. Their
experience is their biggest strength, they’ve been through this before,” Bergeron said. “They’re the
defending national champions and you can’t teach that experience.”
BG intends to do, Saturday, what it has all season. Win when others said it couldn’t.
The national-stage atmosphere is just another opportunity.
“You look at the start of the year when we were playing some of those top teams, I think we just wanted
to prove ourselves to the rest of the country,” defenseman Alec Rauhauser said. “It’s just another
opportunity this weekend, playing against a really good team in Duluth, and I think we’re all excited to
show people what we can do again.”