It’s often said that a team’s season doesn’t really begin until they go on the road in conference play. The familiarity, the rivalries, the upped intensity, a hostile environment — this is when a team is first thrown into the fire to sink or swim.
If that truly is the case, the Bobcats’ season kicks into high gear Friday night as they travel to Bloomington, Ind., to take on the Hoosiers of Indiana, Ohio’s first Central States Collegiate Hockey League foe of the year.
This weekend’s games mark not only a watershed as Ohio gets into the meat of its schedule but also the point where games start to matter as far as binging home silverware.
“It means a lot more,” forward Jared Fuhs said of conference play. “We’re always trying to go for a conference championship and a season championship and this is the start of that.”
The CSCHL has been the quasi Southeastern Conference of the American Collegiate Hockey Association in the last decade, having won five of the last eight national championships. That supremacy has continued into the current season, as Indiana is the only one of the CSCHL’s seven teams ranked outside the top 25 in ACHA rankings.
While in some collegiate sports coaches only view the regular season as a warm up for tournament time, coach Dan Morris sets taking the CSCHL title, which Ohio (11-3-0) has done five of the past eight seasons, as an annual objective.
Part of that has to do with the fact that winning the CSCHL is a significant accomplishment and the league’s winner usually enters the national tournament as the top seed and team to beat. During the Bobcats’ four ACHA national championship seasons, only once did they not first claim a conference championship.
Besides, from the obvious motivation behind winning a title, targeting conference games is just another way to help Morris keep his team focused. At just under six months, the hockey season is too long and arduous for a team’s mindset to only be caring about three or four games at the end of the year.
“I understand coaches and their theory of conference play, but our conference play is probably longer than theirs,” Morris said. “There’s different incentives, but it would be insane to drive a team that long (without a goal in in mind).”
Besides the start of the Bobcats’ conference slate, this weekend’s games have an added edge for Morris personally. The coach, in his 11th season behind Ohio’s bench, is sitting on the ledge of 299 wins in his time at Ohio.
The landmark that is 300 wins has been in the back of the coach’s mind for the past few weeks, but it’s nothing to dwell on, he said.
“It’s not something that we promote in the locker room. It’s not about me or anything like that,” Morris said. “The players probably really don’t know.
"It would be a neat milestone, but it’s not pressure.”
cd211209@ohiou.edu
UP NEXT
OHIO at Indiana
9:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m. Saturday
Frank Southern Ice Arena, Bloomington, Ind.
—This will be Ohio’s first trip to Bloomington under the leadership of Dan Morris.
—Ohio currently sits fifth in the ACHA rankings. Indiana is 38th.
—The Bobcats took both games against Indiana last year, winning 7-0 and 6-1.
