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The waiting and wondering are finally over for the Penn State men’s hockey team and its fans. The Nittany Lions are in the NCAA tournament — officially. The opponent will be a very familiar one. Penn State will meet defending national champion Denver in the first round of the Midwest Regional at 7 p.m. Saturday at the PPL Center in Allentown. The Nittany Lions (18-14-5) finished No.
11 in the PairWise Rankings, while the Pioneers (22-9-8) were fifth. The other regional game in Allentown has Ohio State meeting Princeton. Saturday’s winners advance to Sunday’s regional final at 6 p.m. The survivor of Sunday’s game gets a ticket to the Frozen Four at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minn., on April 5.
The Nittany Lions, with the nation’s fourth-best offense in goal-scoring, finished fourth in the Big Ten and were one of four conference teams to make the field. Their opponents are the NCHC tournament champions after finishing second in the league in the regular season.
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The Pioneers lost several of their leaders from their title team a year ago but surged late in the season and boast Division I’s No. 3 scoring defense.
The Big Ten also is sending Notre Dame and Michigan to the tournament, with the Fighting Irish the No. 2 overall seed and the Buckeyes fourth overall. Minnesota also appeared set to make the field, but a combination of scenarios from Saturday’s six conference championship games broke against the Golden Gophers to leave them on the wrong side of the bubble Saturday night. Penn State will have essentially a home-ice advantage for the weekend. The program is the official host for the regional in Allentown, and will be again in 2019, so the Lions knew if they earned their way into the 16-team field, they would be guaranteed to have a bus ride of less than three hours to get to the regional. “It was definitely exciting at the beginning of the year when we found out we were hosting,” forward Brandon Biro said Tuesday during a session with the media as the team waited to learn its fate. “It was something that we wanted to work towards.
Playing in front of you home fans makes a big difference.” They won’t be the only “local” team, however, with Princeton’s campus about 90 minutes away in New Jersey.