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University School continues to stymie Wausau West

By Bill Berg, WiPH Staff, 12/07/14, 8:00AM CST

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Wildcats top Warriors 3-1 in our Game of the Week

Goals have been hard to come by when the University School  of Milwaukee Wildcats and Wausau West Warriors meet up, especially for the Warriors. The Wildcats beat West 1-0 last December, and 2-1 at the State Tournament last season. This trend continued on Saturday when the Wildcats downed the host Warriors 3-1 at Marathon Park.

Besides wearing the same colors, both teams play a similar style: a fast, aggressive offense combined with a stingy defense.  Getting the puck into the attacking zone is easy. Getting it to the net is much more difficult.

University School scored first, starting with a fight for a loose puck in the left faceoff circle in the West zone.  A Warrior tried to clear the puck, but Riley Hill  stopped it at the blue line and fired a shot on net through the crowd to put the Wildcats up 1-0.

That was the only goal of the first period. Wausau West goalie Paul Weise stopped eight shots in the period, while USM's Mac Schmidt stopped all nine pucks thrown at him.

The Wildcats started the second period with 34 seconds of power play left over from the first. They only needed 22 seconds to cash in and take a 2-0 lead. Nick Epperson was in position at the side of the crease to put in a rebound off a shot from the left point.

Later in the period, West’s sophomore line put the Warriors on the board.  Hunter Ricklefs, Brandon Thorson, and Nick Techel had done a good job of buzzing around in the Wildcats end, but hadn't been able to crack the USM defense.  Sheldon Oja fired a shot from the blue line toward the USM goal, where Trechel  got to it and put it in the net.

Schmidt and Weise each stopped seven of eight shots in the second period.

Holding a 2-1 lead entering the third period, the Wildcats defense made it hold up. The Warriors amped up the pressure, but USM refused to allow them access to the front of the net. Wausau's best chances came on a power play midway through the period, which included one loud pipe shot, but nothing got past Schmidt.

Epperson added an empty net goal with less than thirty seconds to go to put the final score at 3-1.

WiPH Game Summaries