University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Preview NCAA Quarterfinal
3/10/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Hockey
March 10, 2016
MINNEAPOLIS - The defending national champion Gopher women's hockey team begins its NCAA title defense by hosting No. 7 Princeton in an NCAA quarterfinal matchup at Ridder Arena this Saturday.
Head coach Brad Frost, junior Dani Cameranesi, and sophomore Cara Piazza met with the media to discuss rebounding from last weekend's WCHA championship game loss, facing Princeton at home, and the team's goal to return to the NCAA Frozen Four.
On advancing to the NCAA tournament...
Brad Frost: Our ultimate goal is to always get to the Frozen Four and we have an opportunity to do that. As I told our team earlier this week, it's a great accomplishment to be in the NCAA tournament. Expectations are so high that sometimes we lose the fact that this is a pretty special moment for our group. We're looking forward to playing in front of a great crowd and trying to play our best one more time here at home and see if we can get to the Frozen Four.
On representing the WCHA in the tournament...
Frost: You look at a North Dakota and a Bemidji, teams that have been in the top-8 in the top-10 even to this point, and they're not in the national tournament. It's become really hard for our league to get three teams in, which is disappointing for our league because it's the top league in the whole country. So, I feel for those guys, but we certainly want to represent our league, and I know Wisconsin does as well, to the best of our abilities, and try to keep that national championship within the WCHA.
On heading into the tournament after a 1-0 WCHA loss to Wisconsin...
Dani Cameranesi: It's a very exciting time of the year I think right now, and really getting down to the end of the season. It's time to bear down and figure things out during the week and put in a lot of work. There's a lot of excitement around this weekend's game, but obviously a little upset after last weekend so we will have a little more passion and heart coming into this weekend.
Cara Piazza: Wisconsin, I mean we started off a little slow, then we picked it up and played our game, but if we don't get a goal in, we're not going to win no matter what the other team does. Just knowing that we need to be more aggressive in the offensive zone and take advantage of our opportunities.
Frost: That obviously hurt us, not being able to score against Wisconsin. They're a great team, they're a great defensive team, we had our chances, and unfortunately couldn't put it in and that was the difference. So we played real sound defensively. We have a great offense that just happened to not score that night, and it cost us. So going forward now we've got to find a way to put the puck in the net and play with that passion and that intensity to enable us to do that.
On hosting an NCAA quarterfinal game...
Cameranesi: It has its advantages. Having been here before, I think the nerves aren't there as much, at least for the older girls, and we're able to kind of help the younger girls along the way and kind of get there nerves out of the way and help them feel welcome and at home, which is a big advantage for us. Especially this weekend having home ice advantage is huge.
Piazza: Home ice advantage is huge, especially for us since we get a lot of fans and we're playing Princeton and they usually don't average as many fans as we do so that's just a big intimidation factor. And also just being used to where we're playing and being in our locker room, being in our houses, and all that stuff, I think is really big in itself. So that's definitely a big advantage and an intimidation factor for Princeton.
On team controlling its own destiny...
Cameranesi: I think it's big knowing it's really all in our hands. We've obviously been playing our whole entire lives and this entire season so we know what to do to win. We have all of our foundations set, so we just have to just kind of stick to the things we know and hopefully things will go our way.
Frost: We are now for the first time in this season in the one-and-done scenario. Knowing last week that we wanted to win that WCHA championship, but still in the back of our minds knowing that we still had one more week of play at least, so we're excited to have that last opportunity this weekend to play at home. That's right where we want to be, and we want to push forward and hopefully extend our season one more week.
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