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NCAA MEN'S FROZEN FOURApril 9, 2009Enrico BlasiBill LoupeeVincent LoverdeTommy WingelsWASHINGTON, D.C. THE MODERATOR: We welcome the victorious Miami RedHawks to the podium who will be playing in the first national championship game in school history in any sport at Miami. From my left we have Coach Enrico Blasi, Bill Loupee, Vincent LoVerde and Tommy Wingels. And at this time we'll ask for an opening statement from Coach Blasi. COACH BLASI: I thought it was a pretty good game. Obviously, we got some bounces there in the second period, and we knew Bemidji was going to be tough in the way they play, real aggressive style. I thought our guys did a pretty good job of adapting to that and really trying to turn it on them in transition. I thought we did a pretty good job. But my congratulations go to Tom Serratore and Bemidji for a great run, and I thought it was a well-played game. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. They cut the lead 2 to 1. Could you take us through the goal to make it 3 to 1 a minute later? UNIDENTIFIED PLAYER: Actually, Wideman made a really nice cross-dock pass to me in the backdoor and kind of end up flubbing that puck, so I came back around and Weber just put a puck on that and kind of went off the shaft of my stick and I got fortunate enough to have it roll in. And I was real happy I could do that for my team there. Q. Tommy, the fans there were waiting for something good for Bemidji State to happen. And they got that when they scored the goal to make it their first goal. What was the impact and how important was it that you answered with that goal a minute later? TOMMY WINGELS: Obviously the first shift after a goal is most important. I thought we came out, got back to our game, chipped pucks deep. I thought we were physical the whole game. After a goal that's one of the things you need to do. And Bill came back with a goal shortly after, and it's a big boost to the team. Q. Tommy, everybody talks about this deliberate defensive style your team plays. Where is all this offense coming from you? TOMMY WINGELS: You know, we like to play both. I thought it was something we did real well today, was absorbing their speed in the neutral zone, which led to our good transitional game. Our defense made plays up the middle, off the boards, whoever is open. It all stems off forwards back-checking. Our D not jumping on the puck right away, backing off. And we capitalized on our opportunities today, and that's something we need to continue to do if we want to win tomorrow. Q. Take us through the last two penalty calls you had in the second period and what went right there? TOMMY WINGELS: I was in the box for one of them. Someone else can take that one. UNIDENTIFIED PLAYER: The one we put pressure on them they were moving the puck real well. A couple of key saves from Reichard, a lot of guys blocked key shots and we were able to get the puck out of the zone. Q. This is the first national title game in school history in any sport. And I just want a feeling, a sense of what that means, what it means back home and what it means to you guys to have accomplished that? UNIDENTIFIED PLAYER: Being one of the seniors, I can tell you that losing in the finals of the regional the last two years, it's actually been good preparation for right now, because, I mean, it means a lot but you can't go into these games nervous. You can't go in uptight. And I think we've been able to accomplish that through that experience as well as who would ever have thought that losing to Northern in the second round of the CCH playoffs would have been a good thing for our team. But, I mean, it's really helped us experience what the loss and the season end would mean and now we know what we're trying to avoid and we're playing for something huge now and it's great. Q. Tommy, can you talk about the fact that so many of you guys played at Cedar Rapids and what that does for your chemistry on the team knowing that so many of you have been together longer than just your college years? TOMMY WINGELS: Yeah. I think the most important thing is bonding off the ice. You might not play with guys in your previous team, but spending time with them 250 days a year at the rink and outside the rink, it means a lot to the guys. The better you get to know someone obviously the better chemistry you're going to have. Whether it's older guys, Eichenlaub and Loupee, guys who have played before, it's just a connection we have. And we like to have a little fun with it. Q. Can you follow up a little more on what you said about your loss to Northern in the CCH tournament. It was like that a couple of weeks later when you had the week off and came back and beat UNH. Was that important for showing that that's not the end of the world when you lose in the -- if I remember it right, when you lose in the CCH tournament and then come back and get them in the first round? UNIDENTIFIED PLAYER: I mean, being able to experience that first one against -- that was when we lost to Lake State, I mean, what that does is essentially puts us down in the pair-wise and makes us seem more like an underdog when we go into the tournament. But our team has always had a personality that we can be as good as anybody in the country. Enrico has instilled that in all of us. I mean, yeah, before having that experience it really helps us come back and play games like that. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, guys. Questions for Coach. Q. A lot is made in the post-season, in every sport, all the time, about how much experience means. Your team has a lot of it. But in goals you have a pretty young and NCAA-wise inexperienced goaltender. Can you speak to just your thoughts on his experience? COACH BLASI: When we talk about experience, we talk about the juniors and seniors and sophomores that have been there before and played in this environment. And I think that's important. It really helps the freshmen understand right from day one what's expected. And this is what you play for. And when you come to Miami, this is what we're going to play for. And so every day in preparation, the process is exactly that. There's a purpose to what we do on and off the ice. And so when our freshman are put in these situations, they know exactly what they need to do, because we've done it all year. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes it doesn't. But I think Cody's a prime example of that. And I think our four freshmen defensemen have done a great job as well. Q. Coach, I want to ask a similar question I asked the players about what this means back home. We've heard a lot of questions this week about where is Bemidji. A lot of non-hockey people -- COACH BLASI: Where is Ohio? Q. Miami is certainly not in Florida. COACH BLASI: Well, again, I think right now for our program, obviously I hope that our community, our student body, our alumni, former coaches, everybody associated with the program are enjoying the journey. For our team right now, we have one more step to go. And so we're not looking ahead. We need to focus on who we're going to play next. And then we'll start to worry about that Sunday afternoon or Sunday morning. But I sure hope that everybody's enjoying it back in Oxford, Ohio and really across the country, and I think my phone is still going off with text messages and things like that. Q. This NCAA tournament this year has really been a Cinderella story for a lot of teams, with many teams making appearances and advancing that weren't expected to. But also on the individual level, there's been a lot of players coming up huge this game that we haven't really seen on the score sheet much this year. I mean Bill Loupee doubled his entire season total on goals in this tournament alone. Can you just talk about what that means to have guys stepping up for your team who you don't normally see putting pucks in the net and the amount of depth? COACH BLASI: Again, I think at this time of the year nobody really cares who scores the goals. We try to execute our game plan, and if you're in the position where you can score a goal, then obviously we want you to score a goal. I think Bill Loupee, Alden Hirschfeld, they've put themselves in situations. They've gone to what I call the scoring areas in front of the net. And with all the good goaltending, you have to go to the net to score goals. And those guys are certainly doing that. And they're giving the team a big boost. We have guys that score goals. We know they're going to be checked tightly. We know that guys like Loupee and Hirschfeld will have to come up big for us. Maybe next game it's somebody else. But at this time of the year nobody really cares. Q. 0-0 after the first period. What were you feeling at that point? Was it a confident kind of 0-0 that you were doing the kinds of things you wanted to do game plan-wise, or was it nervousness on your part that you weren't quite getting it done yet and Dalton was coming up big at times? COACH BLASI: I thought Dalton played very well in the first period. I thought they played well in the first period. I thought it was a pretty even period. You're never comfortable with a team that plays like Bemidji because they just go. So you really have to continue to remind the guys of what your game plan is and to be aware of your positioning on the ice, especially defensively when we don't have the puck. And, again, I thought our guys did a pretty good job of turning that and working in transition, something that we worked on all week in preparation for Bemidji. And I thought we executed very well. Q. What's it like preparing for this team that had become the biggest underdog story in the country for the moment, and now do you consider yourselves the biggest underdog in this tournament? COACH BLASI: Well, like I said in the press conference the other day, I'm not sure you could call Bemidji an underdog. They beat Notre Dame, who is the best defensive team in the country, and they beat Cornell, the second stingiest defensive team in the country. If anybody was an underdog we were. And we approached the week in preparation to play our best. That's what our program stands for. That's our culture. We want to be the best we can be every day. We're responsible and accountable to each other. It's as simple as that. Q. Other than three goals, what was the difference between the first and the second periods? Is there an adjustment you guys made? COACH BLASI: No, I just think, again, our power play came up big. Once we scored that first goal, you could see that everybody got loose and started to play our game a little bit and then we scored the second one. And even when they made it 2-1, our guys were focused. And then obviously the third goal was huge. Is there anything we did differently? No. We got traffic in front of Dalton on the first one. Gary Steffes did a great job. I don't think he saw it. Great play by Tommy Wingels on the second. Just execution. That was probably the difference from the first to the second. Q. Did you think you could wear them out with your depth throughout the 60 minutes? COACH BLASI: You know, it wasn't something we talked about. But that's the way we play. We're a physical team. And when we're on, we're finishing checks and we're doing a good job defensively, and we're getting pucks deep. And we're a good puck possession team, which, again, if we're on, we're wearing teams down just because we're playing well. And thankfully that happened tonight. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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