UC Santa Barbara wins 3rd consecutive WCRHL Regional Championship!
UCSB goes 0-3 in Round Robin but wins the semifinal and final by 1 goal each for the title
WCRHL March 5th, 2013 at 4:41AM
The road to the Division I championship was not an easy one. The top 4 teams had battled all season long, playing each other 4 times a piece, with teams that beat each other the weekend prior losing on the weekend next. The WCRHL Regional Championship was no different. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo entered as the #4 seed, but after going 3-0 in round robin, gained the #1 seed in the semifinals. Cal Poly’s 6-4 win against Long Beach and 7-1 win against UNLV were each big wins, but none was bigger than the 6-5 comeback win in the final round robin game against UC Santa Barbara.
UNLV gained the #2 seed by winning their other 2 matchups, 4-2 against UCSB and 5-1 against Long Beach. It just goes to show you that Long Beach, the #1 seed coming in, was evenly matched by other teams; Long Beach just happened to get the best of them all in some regular season games to gain that top spot and #2 bid to Nationals, should they not win the Regional Championship. Long Beach finished as the #3 seed after going 1-2 in round robin. UCSB ended up as the #4 seed by going 0-3 in round robin, however losing games by only 1-2 goals each time.
Championship Sunday proved to be a different story for the UCSB Gauchos. It was either the extra motivation of going 0-3 in round robin, revenge on Cal Poly for the 6-5 loss the night before, or just the fact that all 4 of these teams as so even that one team could beat another on any given day, that UCSB came out winning a 6-5 game against Cal Poly and a 2-1 overtime win against UNLV in the championship game en route to their 3rd consecutive WCRHL Regional Championship.
Player of the Game honors for the semifinal games went to UNLV goaltender Travis Barendt and UCSB’s Parker Elliot. UCSB freshman Kyle Mooney was named Division I MVP, scoring the championship-winning overtime goal and finishing with 3 goals and 8 assists on the playoff weekend.
