B1G Roundup: Wisconsin finds new ways to sweep, running its winning streak to nine

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — As the Wisconsin Badgers keep piling up wins, and Big Ten standings points, perhaps the scariest thing about facing this red menace is you never know who’s going to beat you.

They closed out 2023 with two wins in a Milwaukee holiday tournament via the goaltending of Kyle McClellan and the offense of Simon Tassy. In this weekend’s road sweep of Notre Dame, which extended their winning streak to nine games, the Badgers got different offensive contributions, and a win from McClellan and also from his backup, freshman William Gramme.

After a defense-first 2-1 win over the Irish on Friday night, Wisconsin improved to 18-4-0 overall and 10-2-0 in the conference via a wild festival of offense, winning 7-4 on Saturday. The Badgers got goals from six different players, and now have put together the program’s longest win streak since 1990 — a season that ended with Wisconsin hosting the NCAA title trophy.

On Saturday the Badgers led 5-1 in the second period before Notre Dame (10-10-2, 4-6-2) scored three goals in less than three minutes, prompting Badgers coach Mike Hastings to switch goalies. Wisconsin scored the only two goals in the final period to close out the win.

“The way we started was awful,” Irish coach Jeff Jackson said after his team was handed its fifth straight Big Ten loss. “We got some life in the second period. But give them credit, they made the right call during a timeout to switch goalies and that changed the momentum back away from us.”

Irish goalie Ryan Bischel finished with 26 saves. Notre Dame travels to Ohio State for a conference series next weekend.

The Badgers return home for a nonconference series with Lindenwood next weekend

When it was all over, Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky hugged his son Mac at the end of the handshake line, and breathed a sigh of relief following the biggest comeback in the history of the Nittany Lions’ program.

Penn State (10-7-3 overall) trailed Army West Point by four goals in the second period, but charged back with a quintet of unanswered goals and held on for a 7-6 win. It was the first head-to-head meet between coach Gadowsky and his son, who is a freshman forward for the Black Knights.

Junior Ryan Kirwan and freshman Aiden Fink each scored twice for Penn State, which returns to Big Ten play next weekend, hosting Michigan State for a pair of games. They finished their nonconference slate for the season with a 8-2-0 record and are now an impressive 45-3-1 in nonconference games since the beginning of the 2018-19 season.

Despite going winless in the Big Ten in the first half of the season, Ohio State coach Steve Rohlik did not make any roster additions to his team at the holiday break. He said that getting forward Joe Dunlap back from an injury would be like having a new player in his lineup.

On Saturday, Dunlap proved his coach correct, scoring the game-winner in a 4-2 win at Bowling Green to complete the sweep in their weekend home-and-home series. The Buckeyes (8-8-4) won 6-2 on Friday in Columbus, paced by a quartet of Stephen Halliday assists.

Ohio State is back in the conference next weekend, hosting Notre Dame for a pair.

After a long layoff, the Wolverines (8-7-3) didn’t look overly rusty, opening up a five-goal lead over USA Hockey’s National U-18 team and cruising to a 5-1 win at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Michigan. That win came one night after Team USA traveled to East Lansing where the Spartans (13-4-3) won 5-2.

Michigan State returns to conference play next weekend with a trip to Penn State. Michigan hosts Stonehill in a nonconference series.

Jess Myers covers college hockey, as well as outdoors, general sports and travel, for The Rink Live and the Forum Communications family of publications. He came to FCC in 2018 after three decades of covering sports as a freelancer for a variety of publications, while working full time in politics and media relations. A native of Warroad, Minn. (the real Hockeytown USA), Myers has a degree in journalism/communications from the University of Minnesota Duluth. He lives in the Twin Cities. Contact Jess via email at jrmyers@forumcomm.com, or find him on Twitter via @JessRMyers. English speaker.