The Wolverine

May 2013

The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports

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Starting From Scratch Michigan Should Make The NCAA Tournament Next Year After Having Its 22-Season Streak Come To An End L By Michael Spath ess than 24 hours after Michigan's season ended — and with it the Wolverines' 22year NCAA Tournament appearance streak — there was no moping from the players emerging from the Yost Ice Arena locker room, no hanging heads, no regrets. The Maize and Blue had played their hearts out, winning five consecutive CCHA Tournament contests to earn a spot in the league title game, opposite Notre Dame, and had they won — they fell 3-1 to the Irish March  24 — an automatic NCAA berth would have been a deserving reward. Instead, college hockey's longest stretch of NCAA success by nine years (ahead of Minnesota's run of 13 seasons, from 1985-97) was no more, and the Wolverines were left wondering what might have been had they played better during the regular season, when they went just 13-18-3. "You think that you show up and you're wearing the 'M' that you're going to roll teams because it's been that way in the past, but college hockey is tough," senior defenseman Lee Moffie said. "I was talking to [senior] Jeff Rohrkemper about how all we needed was like three or four wins, at Northern, at Lake State, stuff like that. You think, 'How could you not get those wins? But it's not as easy as it looks.'" The disappointment of 2012‑13, though, is already in the past, with head coach Red Berenson and his players looking forward to next year's arrival of a Big Ten hockey conference, a challenging schedule and a singular redemptive goal of returning to the NCAA Tournament. "We haven't talked about it as a team, but it doesn't need to be said," freshman center Andrew Copp noted. "Obviously, the goal we've set

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