Wisconsin hockey coach Mark Johnson reflects on 9th national title
The Badgers’ 3-2 victory over Ohio State Sunday March 22 gave coach Mark Johnson his ninth national title. Here is what he said afterward.
It’s hard to match what the University of Wisconsin and Ohio State women’s hockey teams have accomplished – meeting four consecutive years for the NCAA championship. With a 3-2 win Sunday, March 22, the Badgers are back-to-back champs and winners in three of the four battles, all separated by one goal.
Similar to USA-Canada in the Olympic finals – a meeting this year that featured players from both UW and OSU – the programs simply seem destined to meet with the season on the line.
These are the other best postseason rivalries in Wisconsin sports:
UW-Whitewater vs. Mount Union football
This is perhaps the most obvious Wisconsin sports postseason rivalry, the battle for the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl and the NCAA Division III football championship.
UW-Whitewater first met Mount Union in 2005 for all the marbles, and then the program met a staggering seven consecutive seasons, with Whitewater winning four times (2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011).
They met again in 2013 and 2014, with Whitewater winning both. But, Mount Union still has 13 titles in program history, while Whitewater has six.
Since 1996, the two powerhouse NFL franchises have met 10 times in the postseason, and though the Packers had the early success, with wins in four of the first five playoff meetings, San Francisco has won the last five games, all since 2013.
For Packers fans, that includes many memorable highs and lows, including an NFC championship win in early 1998 en route to a second straight Super Bowl and a franchise-affirming road win in the divisional round in early 1996, even with Dallas awaiting to eliminate the Packers in the NFC title game one week later.
The more recent games included a heartbreaking divisional loss in Santa Clara after the 2023 season, a snow-aided special-teams debacle after the 2021 season and a double dose of Colin Kaepernick after the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
Marquette men’s basketball vs. Kentucky
If we merge Wisconsin and Marquette together, we get a rich tapestry of battles with Kentucky in the men’s NCAA Tournament, though Marquette has the greater volume.
For Wisconsin, the battles include a stellar high (beating undefeated Kentucky in 2015) and an agonizing loss (in the 2014 Final Four), not to mention a 2003 loss in the Sweet 16.
Marquette, of course, has its own recent thrill against UK, smashing the top-ranked Wildcats in the Elite Eight of the 2003 tournament behind Dwyane Wade’s triple-double. An upset win in the Sweet 16 of the 1994 tournament can’t be forgotten, either, with point guard Tony Miller and his nine assists helping MU stage a 75-63 victory.
MU also met Kentucky in 2008 (a 74-66 win in the first round), with the other entrants in the rivalry dating to the 1970s and earlier.
Kentucky won in 1975 (second round), 1972 (Sweet 16), 1968 (Sweet 16) and 1959 (regional third-place game) but Marquette won in 1971 (regional third-place game), 1969 (Sweet 16) and 1955 (Sweet 16).
Technically, the Bucks have faced Philadelphia (nine times) more than Boston (eight times) in the postseason, but the Celtics provide some recent history and some tense battles over the years that weren’t always restricted to the floor.
Milwaukee got the best of Boston in 2019 during the Eastern Conference semis – the series when Paul Pierce said he thought the series was over after Boston’s Game 1 victory; Milwaukee won the next four – but Boston also defeated the Bucks in 2022 in seven games without an injured Khris Middleton, and the Celtics got Milwaukee in a seven-game opening-round series in 2018, with Giannis Antetokounmpo and his team on the cusp of an ascent.
There’s plenty of history to go with those recent meetings, too, not the least of which was the 1974 NBA Finals, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson played their last game together at the Arena in a heartbreaking seventh-game loss to the Celts.
Boston twice eliminated the Bucks in the Eastern Conference finals (1986 and 1984), in addition to a seven-game series win over the Bucks in the 1987 Eastern semis, a series that featured a fight between Boston’s Kevin McHale and a Milwaukee fan in Game 3, part of a litany of wild events in that series.
Milwaukee did get a sweep over the 1983 Celtics in the Eastern semis, but it’s just 2-6 all time against Boston.
Arrowhead vs. Homestead football
There are a number of combinations in the high school football (or basketball) sphere that could apply here. For example, Catholic Memorial has met Notre Dame in Green Bay for the state football title three times. So have fellow state powerhouses St. Mary’s Springs and Stratford. Edgar met Black Hawk in 2018, then met the Black Hawk/Warren co-op in 2019 and 2023.
But Arrowhead and Homestead met three years in a row for the Division 1 state title from 2006 through 2008, with legendary coaches Dave Keel and Tom Taraska at the helm. Homestead won the first meeting between the Milwaukee-area behemoths, 35-0, and Arrowhead answered with a 31-7 win the following year. That set up the 2008 rubber match, a 13-11 win for Homestead.
