By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
Somewhere around the three- or four-minute mark of the first period in Thursday’s NCAA Hockey Tournament regional from South Dakota, don’t be surprised if an ESPNU camera zooms in on the Rochester Institute of Technology bench to find a player or two looking like they’re auditioning for the Wizard of Oz.
You know, the scene where Dorothy says, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Only for the Tigers, it would be, “Guys, I don’t think we’re in Henrietta anymore.”
The 5 p.m. matchup in the Sioux Falls Regional with RIT (27-10-2) against Boston University (26-9-2) is very much David vs. Goliath.
** The No. 15 seed vs. No. 2.
** Atlantic Hockey, which has had just one team reach the Frozen Four (RIT in 2010), vs. storied Hockey East, whose members boast 47 Frozen Four appearances and 10 national championships.
** A program with four NCAA tournament appearances vs. a school with 39 tournament berths along with five national titles.
** A program where three players received invitations to NHL development camps last summer vs. a school whose roster includes 14 NHL draft picks plus the presumptive No. 1 overall selection for the upcoming draft, forward Macklin Celebrini.
“It’s a little weird that we haven’t played them, yet we know the names on their team,” Tigers coach Wayne Wilson said. “They might be saying, ‘Oh, good, we’ve got the Atlantic Hockey team’ and our guys might be thinking they’re playing an NHL team.”
Indeed, RIT was pretty much an afterthought on ESPN’s selection show on Sunday night.
“Some of the guys were saying, ‘They didn’t even mention any of our players,’ and I said, ‘The last couple times (when RIT advanced) they didn’t even mention RIT,” Wilson said.
In hindsight, that was just fine. Two of those three previous appearances worked out pretty well for the Tigers. In 2010, RIT was seeded No. 15 and played No. 2 Denver in the East Regional in Albany. RIT posted a 2-1 then doubled down by defeating New Hampshire 6-2 the next night to earn a trip to the Frozen Four.
In 2015, RIT became the first 16th seed to ever knock off the No. 1 seed, defeating Minnesota-Mankato 2-1 in the Mideast Regional at Notre Dame before losing to Nebraska-Omaha 4-0 in the title game.
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The lone one-and-done appearance came in 2016, when top-seeded Quinnipiac blanked RIT 4-0 in Albany.
So the Tigers have proven upsets can happen.
“That might work against us,” Wilson said, implying BU could be on upset alert. “We’ve been to a Frozen Four, we were one game away another time.”
The other regional semifinal in Sioux Falls feature Minnesota against Nebraska-Omaha. The regional championship game is at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
“Sure, this is a tough matchup, but who isn’t a tough matchup?” Wilson asked.
RIT, Atlantic Hockey’s regular season champion, advanced to the regional by also winning the league playoff title with a 5-2 victory over American International College last Saturday.
“Winning the regular season one’s really cool,” leading scorer Carter Wilkie said, “but this is the one we all chase and now we’re excited for the next step in the NCAA tournament to prove what we can do on a large scale.”
They’re not here just to say they participated, either. Following the win over AIC, Wilkie proudly wore the championship knit hat to the post-game media briefing. “I’m not taking it off for a while,” Wilkie said.
Said Wilson: “I’m hoping one week and then he’ll have a different hat to wear.”
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