Clara Van Wieren waited for teammates coming to celebrate her overtime game-winning goal against No. 1 Ohio State.

The two UMD hockey teams joined forces to record a bad-news/good-news weekend at AMSOIL Arena, and the similarities couldn’t have been more striking.
The results of both series were splits, with the women coming back from a crushing 2-1 loss to beat No. 1 ranked Ohio State 5-4 in overtime as the preliminary both days, and the puzzling Bulldogs men getting shut down 3-0 by Colorado College and then bouncing back to shut down the Tigers 4-0.
The men were trying to establish themselves and solidify their intensity to last through three periods in a game, to say nothing of both games for an NCHC sweep.
In the first game, the Bulldogs stressed the importance of scoring the first goal, overlooking the simple math equation that if they had scored the first goal, they might have only lost 4-1.
That’s cynical, though, because scoring first can change a team’s attitude about playing the rest of that particular game.
In Game 2, the Bulldogs did come out stronger, despite having lost ace defenseman Wyatt Kaiser to illness after Game 1. Darian Gotz and Ben Steeves scored first-period goals and the Bulldogs went on to prove another math/hockey theorem – if scoring the first goal is important, how about scoring the first four?

Steeves, a freshman with a nose for the net and the determination to get his shots through, added his second of the game in the second period, and completed his hat trick with a goal early in the third, while goaltender Matthew Thiessen stopped all 24 Tigers shots.
The split lifted UMD toward the contention we all anticipated, and just in time, because powerful Denver comes to AMSOIL this weekend, aiming to pull away from the pack or allow it to become a race.
In case you didn’t notice, North Dakota went to St. Cloud last weekend and took early leads in both games. In the first one, the Huskies came back from a 2-1 deficit with six straight goals to win 7-2, and in the second game the Huskies fell behind 3-0, before again scoring six straight goals, winning 6-3 for a sweep.

Meanwhile, on the women’s front, Ohio State swept Minnesota to solidify its hold on the No. 1 rank in the WCHA as well as the NCAA, and the plucky Bulldogs stole the dramatic spotlight from the men both days.
On Friday, the Buckeyes gained a 1-0 lead late in the first period, and made it 2-0 early in the third. That second OSU goal seemed to snap the Bulldogs into action and they swarmed the Buckeyes net until the finish, finally breaking through for  a goal by Kylie Hanley with 1:00 left.
It didn’t get closer, and UMD’s players said afterward they proved at the finish they were capable of attacking with intensity.
In Game 2, they proved they could, as Taylor Anderson and Clara Van Wieren scored for a 49 seconds apart for a 2-0 lead. OSU’s Gabby Rosenthal cut it to 2-1 later in the opening period, and Soph Jaques, a fifth-year grad student playing right defense, scored a power-play goal midway through the second period for a 2-2 tie.

It was the 16th goal of the season for Jaques, in 18 games – surely a record pace for defensemen in the WCHA.
UMD’s Nina Jobst-Smith moved in to the right circle on a power play and OSU goaltender Raygan Kirk went down for Gabby Krause’s shot from deep on the left. But Krause instead fired a pass across to the right circle, and Jobst-Smith lifted her shot over Kirk and just under the crossbar with 2:05 left in the second period, giving UMD a 3-2 lead.

The Buckeyes got another tie on a power play to open the third period, but Kylie Hanley broke the 3-3 game with a goal at 8:55. But the Bulldogs took another ill-advised penalty and Gabby Rosenthal notched her second of the game for a 4-4 deadlock.
In the 5-minute, 3-on-3 overtime, junior wing Clara Van Wieren got the puck deep in OSU’s end, circled out on the right side, continuing to outflank the Buckeyes as she skated around the entire zone, finally closing in on the left side and drilling a shot into the Ohio State goal at 3:37 to claim a 5-4 triumph. The women are home again this weekend against emerging Division I St. Thomas.

There were a lot of other compelling stories in sports last weekend, so many we have to compartmentalize them.

Basketball
Unlike hockey, the UMD basketball teams chose different paths to victory in their Northern Sun openers at Romano Gym last week.
The women led 23-10 after one quarter against Minnesota-Crookston, then outscored Crookston 20-6 in the second quarter for a 53-16 halftime cushion, en route to an 83-58 romp. Brooke Olson scored 21 to lead UMD, then barely set foot on the court in the second half.
The men, meanwhile, decided to try to win while top guns Drew Blair and Austin Andrews didn’t bother scoring through most of the first half. Andrews saved his best for the end, scoring all 10 of his points in the second half.
Blair was silent as Crookston connected for leads of 10-6, then broke from 12-9 to 17-9, and it was 32-24 late in the first half when Blair hit a 3 for his first points of the night. He hit another 3 to tie the game 35-35 and yet another 3 to boost UMD into its first lead of the game at 38-35 with 1:53 left until halftime. With 2,.5 seconds left, there was just time for the play of the game.

UMD led 40-35 and had the ball, and on the throw-in, Blair ran right to left across the court, caught the pass in stride and dribbled at full speed to the center-court line, then flung a shot. The horn sounded while the ball was in flight, and it swished through the net.
UMD had a 43-35 lead, and Blair had 11 points – 8 of them in the last three minutes!
The Bulldogs completed an 89-61 victory, and Blair ended up leading the game with 19 points, while Jack Middleton had 17, Matt Thompson 15, Charlie Katona 12, and Andrews 10. Good thing they olay the men’s game at the end, because nobody will leave their games early.
Football
 The Vikings continue to amaze their boosters and astound their critics, rising to a 10-2 record with their ninth victory by a single score.
Kirk Cousins remains unspectacular but incredibly adept at pulling out late-closing games. But the Vikings had to yield the spotlight to colleges and high schools last weekend.
In college, the league playoff finals found several major surprises, and the top four are Georgia, Michigan, Texas Christian and Ohio State, fighting for the national championship. Ohio State is good enough to upset Georgia, and TCU is talented and creative enough to sting Michigan.
But if you watch ESPN and enjoy the plays of the day and the top plays of the week, you had to be pleasantly surprised when the top sports play was at the Minnesota state high school Prep Bowl in the 9-man competition at US Bank Stadium.
New London-Spicer was trailing Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton 26-21, and had the ball at the DGF 49 yard line. As time ran out, New London-Spicer had one last chance.
Quarterback Blake Schultz dropped back, and as the clock went to 0:00, he fired a long pass up the right side, where receiver Grant Paffrath made a high-pressure catch at the 18, but was in the grasp of a defensive player.
As he started to go down, at the 14, Paffrath pitched the ball to his right, toward the sideline, where Brycen Christensen had yelled to him. Christensen caught the lateral and barreled into the end zone.
The winning touchdown gave New London-Spicer a 27-26 victory, and it gave ESPN one of its best Plays of the Week on record.