13 f PORT S; SECTION B Sports desk: 647-3336 sportsdesk@umich.edu C C 'C.C -~ ~ %.c .C,* ___ ~ ~*- ~ -~ <,,. ~ Icers score 16 goals in stellar weekend By Uma Subramanian Daily Sports Writer As Jeff Reynaert flung his stick to the ice, you could almost feel his frustration. Bill Trainor's even-strength goal, late in the third period of Saturday's game, was the 15th Michigan tally the Western Michigan netminder had allowed in two days. Reynaert was furious and probably rightly so - after all, the Wolverines obliterated his Broncos 7-2 on Friday and 9-3 on Saturday. By doing so, in many ways, Michigan righted its offensive ship, which had been sailing through murky waters. The Wolver- ines had only scored seven goals in its previ- ous three games. In the two-day scoring barrage, nearly every Michigan forward recorded at least one point, making for a complete team performance. Mike Comrie found the back of the net three times, and Mark Mink, Mark Kosick, Geoff Koch, Scott Matzka and Jed Ortmeyer each had two goals apiece. "This definitely is a huge boost our confi- dence as a team," said Michigan forward Andy Hilbert, who scored a goal and four points on the weekend. "We were struggling a little bit to get some goals. But it all comes with better defense and it definitely feels good for the puck to go in the net and for everyone to get their share of points." The victories could not have come at any better time for the Wolverines. With only five games left in the regular season, the race for the CCHA crown will come down to the wire. Currently, with a 17-5-1 CCHA record, Michigan is in the driver's seat, but Michigan State and Northern Michigan are close on its heels. Regardless of what happens the next two weekends, with Saturday's victory the Wolverines clinched home-ice for the first round of the CCHA tournament. But perhaps even more significant than the victories themselves was the nature of the wins. All season long, the Michigan coaches have preached the importance of peaking at the right time. Peaking, as Michigan coach Red Berenson defined it, is getting every player to play together and push themselves one step farther in the best interest of the DAVID KATZ/Daily Mark Mink was one of five Wolverines who scored at least two goals in Michigan's weekend sweep over Western. team. On Saturday, the Wolverines, who are 22- 7-1 overall, took a giant step closer to arriv-. ing at that plateau. Coming off Friday's prolific win, Michi- gan came out firing on Saturday, outshooting the Broncos (8-13-3 CCHA, 9-16-3 overall) 18-7 in the first period. Reynaert was stellar in that period, making 17 saves, but his suc- cess in the first 20 minutes was misleading. By 13 minutes into the second period, the Wolverines had amassed a 4-1 lead. But as things seem to go in college hock- ey, no lead is ever entirely secure. The Bron- cos mounted a resurgent attack of their own, pulling to within one goal. Early in the third period, with the Broncos surging, defenseman Dave Huntzicker brushed a loose puck off the goal line to pre- vent the tie. From that moment on, it was all Michigan. The Wolverines blasted five shots past Reynaert in that stanza, including an improb- able off-balance score from Andy Hilbert that found the back of the net while he was being catapulted into the boards with 10 sec- onds left on the clock - sweet icing on a delicious cake. "This was the game we wanted," Berenson said. "The game was on the line when it was 4-3, no question. That's how the game goes. You'll see a scoring chance missed at one end and sure enough it'll go in at the other end. But I liked the feeling. I liked our team." Hilbert and linemates Comrie and Jed Ort- meyer accounted for 12 points in the series. That line was a new creation by the Michi- gan coaches, instituted for the first time in Friday's game. Comrie and Hilbert have played together consistently since Thanksgiv- ing, but Ortmeyer has rotated through the lines. With this combination, the coaches may have found the perfect and most effective tn- fecta. Playing on the top line "is great," Ortmey- er said. "You just have to work hard. You know you're going to get the puck and you know they're going to put the puck on your stick no matter what. "You just have to find the seam, get open See BRONCOS, Page 4B Skid row Women win fourth straight in Big Ten vThat's six don 't be too surprised Six big games, six big losses. The Michigan basketball team hasn't seen the win column in almost a month. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The Wolverines just endured their toughest stretch of a grueling Big Ten season. Michigan faced Indi- ana - twice, Michigan State, Ohio State and two tough road contests at Iowa and Illinois - four of hem without their leading scorer. And things were going so well up until now. Replenished with a top recruiting class, Michigan marched to a 9-2 conference record. After the Big Ten sea- son began, the Wolverines edged out Purdue on the road, and Illinois and Northwestern at home to push their record to , 12-3 and 3-1 in the confer- nmee. Things were looking good. Michigan had won only 12 MARK games in the 1998-99 season, FRANCESCUTI'L and already in January, these The Cutting new millennium Wolverines Edge were celebrating their 12th victory. Everything looked great from the budding Maize Rage and the increased excitement at Crisler Arena, to the crystal clear media image. Forget Ed Martin, forget last year's 12-19 record *- Michigan basketball was back. One could smell the NCAA tournament in the Wolverines' future like cookies in the oven. Butoh how the stench of NCAA violations can change things. A couple years ago, Jamal Crawford took some items from a man he thought of as a father-guardian figure. No one found out, and maybe no one ever would, until Michigan self-reported the incident at the end of January. What a terrible time for a scandal. The Spartans came into town on Feb. 1. Despite losses on the road to Iowa and Indiana, Michigan fans came in hordes, wearing their Jamal Crawford headbands in stride, and primed to think the Wolver- ines could upset Mateen and the Spartans. Michigan even gave out 5,000 headbands at the game to honor its team idol. One problem - Jamal didn't play. Crawford's absence due to a six-game suspension for violating an NCAA bylaw may push the image of Michigan basketball deeper in the mud, but on the *ourt, it's destroyed what could have been a Cin- derella season. Okay, maybe Michigan would have won only one or two out of the past four games with Crawford. But wouldn't 5-5 in the Big Ten look a lot better than the reality of 3-7? Now the Wolverines see an ending stretch of games that they could have had success in. At Wis- consin and Northwestern, home against Purdue, Penn State and Iowa. With Jamal in the lineup, three-to-four wins would not be out of the question. But after all the 20-point losses, after all the embarrassment on television, and after all the scan- dalous rumors - can this team hope to find a gold- en road to some sort of postseason tournament? Kevin Gaines, a fighter in every sense, was still 0- 15 from the field yesterday. He can't lead this team alone. By Arun Gopal Daily Sports Writer There is an old proverb that goes something like, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Apparently, this, is a phrase quite familiar to the Michigan women's basketball team. While a snowstorm raged outside Criser Arena, the y INDIANA 58 Wolverines dismantled MICHIGAN 85 Indiana inside the building's friendly confines, 85-58. The win, which came on Par- ents' Day, left Michigan (17-6, 9-3 Big Ten) in no worse than a second-place tie in the conference. The key for the Wolverines in the game was their defense. When the two teams played in Bloomington on Jan. 6, Hoosier center Jill Chapman abused the Michigan interior defense to the tune of 29 points and 10 rebounds, while point guard Heather Cassady tore apart the Wolverine guards with 23 points of her own. This time, Chapman scored just 12 points before fouling out midway through the second half. Though Cas- sady did hit for 19 points, many of them came after Michigan had the game well in hand. "I thought we did a great job today of executing on both ends of the floor," Michigan coach Sue Guevara said. "Cassady had nine in the second half and Chapman had two, and that was due to our defense." Given that Stacy Thomas, Anne Tho- rius, and Alayne Ingram combined for just 23 points on 10-25 shooting, one might wonder how Michigan was able to score 85 points. The answers came from the frontcourt - 22 points from LeeAnn Bies, 14 points for Raina Goodlow - and the bench which scored 41 points. "Our bench did a tremendous job today," Guevara said. "Kenisha Walker got her hands on a lot of things, and I thought Bies came in and did a nice job for us also. "I thought we were smart getting the ball inside. We challenged our post players today that we needed 30 points between the three of them, and if I'm not mistaken, we got a little bit more than that:' When Indiana beat Michigan in Bloomington, the Hoosiers were able to come back from a double-digit deficit in the second half en route to a 77-72 upset victory. The scenario was similar yesterday - the Wolverines jumped out to a 40-25 halftime lead. See HOOSIERS, Page 6B DAVID KATZ/Daily Indiana. Young had a career-high Michigan center Chris Young earned his first start yesterday againstI 12 points, but the Wolverines fell again, 86-65. Hoosiers embarrass M' again By David Den Herder Daily Sports Editor The 1989 championship banner between the black rafters of Crisler Arena seemed lonelier than ever yesterday. In another nationally televised debacle, Michigan was embarrassed by Indi- INDIANA 86 ana, 86-65. The Wolverines have now g MICHIGAN 65 lost six in a row by an average of 19.7 points. With six games remaining on the schedule, Michigan needs to win at least two more games to finish at .500 in the conference and have any hope of securing an NIT bid. "It's totally demoralizing," Michigan starting center Chris Young said. "It's real hard to just look people in the face." Michigan coach Brian Ellerbe said the past six games - four of which had a national audi- ence - would have been a tough stretch for any team. "These are very, very good basketball teams," Ellerbe said. But after matching last season's win total of 12 games back on Jan. 19, the closest Michigan has come to victory is a five-point loss at unranked Iowa on Jan. 22. Since then, the Wolverines have come no closer than 16. Yesterday freshman guard Kevin Gaines went 0-for-15 shooting and played 35 minutes in PELR CORNUE/Daily Although Joe DeGain could not beat Indiana's No. 6 Victor Sveda on Saturday, his win on Friday night over Minnesota's No. 10 Owen Elzen was one of only two for the team. Grappers earn split. DAVID KATZ/Daily Bob Knight called the Michigan fans' reception of Dane Fife "bullshit." By Jon Schwartz Daily Sports Writer If a group of people had chosen to attend only the first matchups of the two wrestling meets this weekend, they would have seen enough to draw conclusions for the rest of the. evenings. Each of the two bouts, heavy- weights Matt Brink and Minnesota's Brock Lesner on Friday night and 133-pound Joe Warren against Gabe Cook of Indiana, were telling of how the rest of the matchups would turn out and of how the Wolverines would fare in their final home-stretch of the season. On Friday night, the No. 2 Golden Gophers beat the tenth-ranked Wolverines in just about every way imaginable, squandering only two matches, a Warren victory, and one an intimidating giant vying for a chance to wrestle in the WWF, pinned No. 15 Brink in only 3:26, continuing his so-far undefeated pur- suit of the national championship. "Every opponent for me is trying to take the national title away from me," Lesner said. "I'm wrestling to win it." From that point on, Minnesota proved its superiority, winning two matches by falls and another two by major decisions. In truth, the Gophers put on a clinic for those in attendance -- but more importantly, for the awe-filled Michigan wrestlers. "Minnesota showed tonight why it's the number two team in the coun- try," Michigan coach Joe McFarland said. "A lot of the stuff was just a mindset. They were aggressive, and often times, we found ourselves wasn't able to get himself out of holes." Meanwhile, freshman LaVell Blanchard had 23 points and 10 rebounds. The forward's ath- leticism and ability to create - and hit - a shot was the only consistently good thing Michigan had going for it yesterday. Despite falling into an 8-0 hole early, the Wolverines were able to keep the crowd into the first half, especially after Brandon Smith's put- back jam brought Michigan within five. But for I , ;