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- A member of the Weber State University hockey team gets slammed against the wall in the game against the University of Utah Saturday. WSU lost 5-3.
For two and a half periods, the Weber State University hockey club team kept the score close against in-state rival University of Utah, but the Utes ended up running away with the game with a 10-4 win.
Freshman Curtis Snowball said that the Wildcats played well, for most of the game, but were unable to close it out in the end.
“The game went pretty good until the last ten minutes,” Snowball said. “We ran out of juice at the end so that is why the Utes got the chances that they had.”
The Wildcats were hurt by injury woes and were only able to dress 14 players for the game.
The Utes scored in the first 10 minutes of the game, but despite the early goal, the Wildcats controlled the puck well for much of the first period.
With five minutes left in the first period, sophomore Mason White scored the first goal for the Wildcats and tied the game at one.
WSU Head Coach Steve Soto said that he felt the Wildcats played well for parts of the game but were hurt by mistakes and errors.
“I thought we had a pretty good first half,” Soto said. “We played well as a team. We performed well in the first two periods, but we need to compete for all three periods and give ourselves opportunities to win.”
At the start of the second period, the Utes came out strong and quickly scored a goal to make it 2-1, but Sophomore Chris Roberts scored a goal to again tie the game at two.
Soto said WSU played an OK second half but was hurt by some small mistakes
“The team played pretty well,” Soto said. “However, we made little mistakes when it comes to defending the puck and keeping it away from our zone.”
The Utes attack once again struck with seven minutes left in the second period. The Utes scored two more goals to push their lead to 4-2 at intermission.
Starting the third period, the Utes scored two more goals and put the game out of reach. The Utes took advantage of multiple WSU penalties and scored on power-play opportunities.
Soto said that the team needs to improve on its discipline and not to put itself into bad situations.
“We need to learn how to control our emotions and stay out of penalty trouble,” Soto said.
Later in the period, freshman Tommy Champi scored the third goal for the Wildcats, but it wasn’t enough to get WSU back in the game.
The Utes then scored three goals in less than five minutes to wrap up the game.
“I thought the boys gave a good effort, but we ran out of the gas in the period,” Soto said.
Snowball scored the last goal for the Wildcats with five minutes left of the game.
He said the teamwork was good. They had a lot of flow and made some good passes, but they need to improve before the next game
“We need to work on our conditioning for our next game,” Snowball said.
The Wildcats will now head to Logan where they will take on Utah State University on Jan 14.
