Women�s Hockey Denied NCAA Berth Despite 26-1 Record

An amazing season has come to an end for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point women�s hockey team as the Pointers were not awarded a berth to the first-ever NCAA Division III championship.

The Pointers finished 26-1 and won their last 15 games to capture the Northern Collegiate Hockey Association championship. However, the league does not have an automatic berth and only one bid goes to independents and teams from non-automatic qualifying conferences. Elmira (N.Y.) finished 24-1-1 and won the East Coast Athletic Conference West Division, which also doesn�t have an automatic berth, and the Soaring Eagles were picked over UW-Stevens Point.

Elmira is the top seed for the six-team event and will host the first-ever Division III �Frozen Four� March 8-9. The Soaring Eagles receive a bye into the semifinals along with Manhattanville, N.Y. (22-1-2). The other four teams will play quarterfinal games on Tuesday with Gustavus Adolphus, Minn. (21-4-2) hosting St. Mary�s, Minn. (21-5-1) and Bowdoin, Maine (22-3-1) hosting Middlebury, Vt. (19-2-1).

Men�s Hockey Fails to Earn NCAA Tournament Berth

An impressive finish to the season wasn�t enough to get the UW-Stevens Point men�s hockey team into the NCAA Division III tournament as the Pointers failed to earn a berth in the nine-team field.

The Pointers finished 18-9-2, including an 8-1-2 mark in their final 11 games and a third place finish in the Northern Collegiate Hockey Association tournament. NCHA regular season champion St. Norbert (23-4-2) and Bowdoin, Maine (18-4-3) earned the two at-large bids.

St. Thomas, Minn. (22-5) and UW-Superior (20-5-4) will meet in a play-in game on Wednesday night in Superior with the winner to travel to St. Norbert for a quarterfinal series over the weekend.

In the other quarterfinal matchups, Middlebury, Vt. (24-1-1) will host Wentworth, Mass. (23-5), Rochester Institute of Technology, N.Y. (23-2) will be at home against Plattsburgh State, N.Y. (20-8-2) and Norwich, Vt. (24-4) will host Bowdoin.

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