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Players celebrate during the second period after scoring their fifth goal against the Pitt Panthers on September 26, 2014. The Bobcats won 7-1. 

Hockey: Ohio looks to continue undefeated season against West Virginia

Ohio will begin a home-and-home series against West Virginia on Friday, before making the first road trip of its season Saturday.

Ohio has quickly turned two weekends of hockey into four dominating performances, and it doesn’t expect to let up heading into week three.

The Bobcats turn their attention to West Virginia this week for a Friday-Saturday home-and-home series against their 2-0 counterparts. The two will meet Friday night at Bird Arena at 7:30 p.m., before traveling to Morgantown Municipal Ice Arena for a game Saturday at 4:00 p.m. S

aturday’s game will be both the first road trip and first afternoon start for the Bobcats.

“The preparation will be different,” coach Sean Hogan said. “The turnaround from game to game is real quick, and that just means we’ll have to take care of ourselves and make sure we get proper rest throughout the week.”

Ohio enters the series with a 4-0 record, and a No. 9 ranking in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Last weekend, the Bobcats turned in back-to-back routs of visiting Pittsburgh, winning each game 7-1 and 9-1, respectively.

The Bobcats were led on the scoring front by Paul Sergi, who scored three goals and added an assist during the weekend. Joe Breslin leads the team in scoring with six points in four games so far, while Sergi, Michael Harris and Liam Geither each have five points.

“Our defenseman are working on getting more involved, and the forwards are working more on catching the puck and moving with it a little bit more,” Sergi said. “Overall, it’s just been guys getting used to new systems and getting used to the new demands the coach puts on us.”

In preparation for this weekend’s more demanding schedule, the Bobcats got the day off from practice on Tuesday, their first day off since Labor Day.

West Virginia, who enters the weekend as the 24th ranked team in the country, opened its season last weekend with convincing road wins over Canisius and Rochester Institute of Technology. They were led on their opening weekend by forward Zach LaDuke, who scored two goals in each game.

It will be a tangible change of pace for the Bobcats this weekend, who will battle the physically aggressive Mountaineers on a bigger ice surface than that of Bird Arena. The larger area is something that Hogan said he isn’t concerned about.

“I’m really curious to see what we do on the bigger ice surface,” Hogan said. “We have probably the smallest surface in the league, so we’ll have a little bit more room out there on Saturday, which could be good for us in our transition game.”

A third consecutive weekend sweep would put Ohio more than halfway to the 11 games it won to start off the 2012 season, a year in which the Bobcats climbed to the No. 1 ranking in the country.

@_TonyWolfe_

aw987712@ohio.edu 

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