For the first time, a women’s hockey program from the Midwest failed to advance to the NCAA championship game.
After 96 minutes and three seconds — the longest semifinal in Frozen Four history — Colgate beat Wisconsin 4-3 as Breanne Wilson-Bennett completed her hat trick well into the second overtime Friday.
With Ohio State falling to Clarkson in Friday’s earlier semifinal, Midwest programs’ 17-year streak was snapped of making it to the national title game since it became an NCAA sanctioned sport in 2001. Defending champion Clarkson, of Potsdam, N.Y., beat the Buckeyes 1-0 in overtime.
Clarkson made history in 2014 when it became the first Eastern school to win a national title, a 5-4 win over the Gophers in 2014. Colgate, the Hamilton, N.Y., school in its first Frozen Four appearance, will join its upstate New York colleague in Sunday’s 2 p.m. final at Ridder Arena.
“I think it speaks to the competition in our (ECAC) league,” Wilson-Bennett said of the final matchup. “I’m maybe a little biased here, but I think we are the best conference out there. We fought a hard season.”
Friday’s nightcap didn’t end until nearly midnight and the only longer Frozen Four game came when Minnesota Duluth beat Cornell in three overtimes in the 2010 title game.
Coach Mark Johnson’s Badgers needed a late third-period goal to beat Boston College in last year’s semifinal, before falling to Clarkson in the title game. “When teams get to this point, they are usually playing really well,” he said. “I don’t care where they are from.”
Wisconsin dominated large stretches of the game, with a 48-24 advantage in shots, including 15-7 across the overtimes. Colgate goalie Julia Vandyk made 45 saves, while Wisconsin goalie Kristen Campbell had 20.
The first penalty since the third period was called with 5:47 left in the second overtime. Presley Norby, one of five Badgers from Minnesota, went to the box for holding and Wilson-Bennett scored in the waning seconds of the Badgers attempt to kill it off.
“It was pretty sloppy,” Colgate coach Greg Fargo said. “We just needed to make a play and that’s what happened.”
In their first matchup, Colgate took the lead three times, once in each period, only to have Wisconsin rally to tie the score at every crossroad.
Wilson-Bennett gave Colgate the lead in the first period; Baylee Wellhausen answered early in the second. Then on power plays, Wilson-Bennett put Colgate ahead again and Wisconsin’s Claudia Kepler soon responded. In the third period, Colgate’s Jess Eldridge made it a 3-2 lead, but Mekenzie Steffen made it a short-lived lead just over two minutes later.
When the Badgers first tied the score in the second period, the pro-Badgers crowd of 3,369 cracked up the energy in what became a strange home-like environment, their red-clothing contrasting with the Gophers’ maroon backed seats. But it was short-lived as Colgate didn’t appear to be overmatched in their first time on this stage.