Lucas Punkari
It’s only taken one year for Joe Basaraba to accomplish something that hundreds of NCAA hockey players never get the chance to be part of—the annual “Frozen Four” tournament.
“It’s pretty awesome,” enthused Basaraba, a freshman with the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs.
“Being one of the younger guys on the team, to be able to get a chance like this early on, is pretty amazing, and I just want to make the most of it,” added the Fort Frances native, who turns 19 on May 2.
UMD will square off against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the semi-finals tomorrow (April 7) at 4 p.m. at the Xcel Energy Centre in St. Paul, Mn., with the winner advancing to Saturday’s national final against either the North Dakota Fighting Sioux or Michigan Wolverines.
“We haven’t really worried about them [Notre Dame] too much yet as we’ve been focusing on what we have to do,” Basaraba noted.
“But we’ll be watching film before we play them just to try and pick up one some little things and see what they like to do.
“They’re obviously a good team to make it to where they are now, so we know that we have to play a full 60 minutes in order to beat them,” he stressed.
The former Muskie punched his ticket to the “Frozen Four” after UMD captured the East Regional title March 26 in Bridgeport, Conn. after upsetting the top-seeded Yale Bulldogs 5-3 in the final.
“Yale’s a really good team, so we knew going in that they would be tough to beat,” Basaraba said.
“We came out hard right off the start as it was a do-or-die situation for us and we didn’t our season to end quite yet,” he explained.
“We picked up a few goals early on, which was good to get us on a bit of a roll, and we didn’t look back from there.”
While the offence was key to the Bulldogs making it to the “Frozen Four,” they may not have had that chance if it wasn’t for some stellar netminding from junior goalie Kenny Reiter in the regional semi-finals—turning aside 32 shots to help UMD earn a 2-0 victory over the Union (N.Y.) Dutchmen.
“He really stood on his head for us to get the shutout,” Basaraba noted.
“I thought all 20 guys were really going hard and working together as a unit, and we were able to come together and get the win,” he added.
The trip to the “Frozen Four” also took away the sting of the Bulldogs’ appearance at the WCHA’s final five tournament in St. Paul earlier in March, when they were knocked out in the quarter-finals by Bemidji State in a 3-2 overtime thriller.
“That was definitely a heartbreak for us,” Basaraba remarked.
“We had set some goals [at] the beginning of the year and one of them was to win the WCHA, so when that fell short, it took a few days for the guys to get back into it,” he admitted.
“But when we got back to work, we had a new plan and we were ready to go, which is exactly what happened when we got to the regionals,” he reasoned.
The Bulldogs, currently ranked third nationally in the USA Today/USA Hockey top 15, sport a 24-10-6 record heading into tomorrow’s semi-final, which is their best mark since a 28-win campaign back in 2004 where they lost to eventual national champion
Denver Pioneers in the semi-finals.
“We started off the season great, and had our ups and downs along the way, but we have a lot of character in the dressing room and everyone’s been pulling together to make it just one whole heartbeat in there,” Basaraba stressed.
“We haven’t lost two games in a row all year, and that just shows who we are as a team,” he remarked.
“We’re always going to fight back and never give up or doubt our teammates or ourselves along the way.
“Down the stretch here in the post-season, we know what’s at stake and we’ve been taking care of ourselves and each other,” Basaraba added.
With that in mind, Basaraba feels the Bulldogs don’t have anything major to work on heading into their semi-final match-up against Notre Dame.
“We just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing up to this points,” he said.
“We’ll also need to make sure that we’re staying sharp out on the ice and off it, and taking care of ourselves and our bodies both mentally and physically heading into Thursday.”
In 34 games this season, Basaraba has three goals and one assist for four points, which puts the right-winger third among freshmen skaters on the Bulldogs’ roster.
“I think it’s been going really well for me,” Basaraba said of his first season in the NCAA ranks.
“I came in as one of the younger players on the team against guys who are five or six years older than me, so I knew that was going to be a challenge,” he noted.
“But the guys on our team and the coaches have been really accommodating and helpful in getting me going, and I’ve made some real big advances since the beginning of the year.”
Basaraba feels another major help in his move to the collegiate ranks was his two-year tenure with the highly-regarded Shattuck-St. Mary’s program.
“Shattuck was a great stepping stone for me,” he said.
“A lot of the things that I was taught there can be incorporated into the college game because of the way that we played at Shattuck, and it was really helpful in allowing me to be a first-year player with the Bulldogs that can be a positive aspect of the team.”
A key observer of Basaraba’s progress this season has been the Florida Panthers’ organization, which drafted the Fort Frances native 69th overall in last year’s NHL entry draft, as they’ve been checking in with him throughout the season.
“We’ve been keeping up to date with each other and they’ve given me some input on some minor things I can do to get better,” he explained.
“It’s nice to know that they’re doing that and they’re being as helpful as possible, so we’re building a good little relationship here in my first year with the organization.”
Meanwhile, a national title for the Bulldogs would be an historic one—marking the first-ever championship for the program.
In three previous “Frozen Four” appearances, the closest UMD has ever come to taking the crown was in 1984 in Lake Placid, N.Y., where they lost in quadruple overtime to the Bowling Green Falcons.
“It would be a pretty awesome experience,” Basaraba enthused about the chance to give UMD its first national title.
“With the group of guys that we have here, especially with the guys that are leaving at the end of the year that I’ve built great friendships with, there would be nothing better that to finish the season off by having the national championship banner hanging up in the rafters,” he said.
