Ohio opened up its 2011-12 season with a 7-1 romp over the West Virginia Mountaineers Saturday night at Bird Arena. Some of head coach Dan Morris's postgame thoughts on what his team did well and also needs to improve on:
2 Good
On freshman defenseman Mike Kretz, who had two assists in his Bobcat debut:
"Mike Kretz stepped up and played a big role. A last minute thing we put Mike Kretz in a powerplay role, a penalty kill role and I thought he stepped up and played a big role."
On his team's penalty kill, which successfully killed over four penalties including a 5-on-3 in the first quarter:
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"I thought on our penalty kill we took care of our zone real well. We have a lot of veteran players on our penalty kill and I thought we played pretty well and blocked a lot of shots on that first power play, the 5-on-3."
2 Bad
Again on Kretz, who made some freshman mistakes on the blue line:
"We allowed our defenseman to be aggressive, young defenseman kind of take that in a good way sometimes and they get caught up. As well as Mike did up front, playing defense and jumping into play, he also gave up some odd-man situations which we need to correct. Take your spots and get involved in the play but make sure you’re a defenseman first."
On the second period, during which the Bobcats stepped off the gas and almost let West Virginia back into it:
"Hockey’s a great game. You come out in the first and get all the chances. You’re up 2-0 then you go in the locker room and there’s a lot of guys going ‘oh this is the way its gonna be.’ Then you come out in the second and you’re not winning one-on-one battles, you’re overskating pucks, you’re kind of being cute and all of a sudden your scrapping. Sure you get a couple nice goals and we outscored them, but they definetly outplayed us for a lot of that period."
