Gene's Blog: New face, old friends in UST sports weekend spotlight

January 14, 2010

Terry Skrypek, the Tommies’ old school hockey coach, is hoping a new player from his old school can give his struggling offense a boost.

Sophomore wing Chris Hickey, who played last season at Division I Wisconsin, has transferred to St. Thomas. He joined practices last week and will make his UST debut this Friday night in the Tommies’ weekend set in Moorhead against the Cobbers.

Skrypek, Cretin High Class of 1966, is eager to roll out Hickey, from the Cretin-Derham Hall Class of 2007.

“He should be a really good player in this league, and he’s only sophomore,” Skrypek said. “In just one week of practice he showed us he can play, and he’s been accepted by the team. The guys know.”

The 6-1, 190-pound Hickey scored 98 points (58 goals, 40 assists) in his final two seasons at Cretin-Derham Hall. As a junior in 2005-06, he played on Cretin's state champion teams in hockey and baseball and contributed to its state runner-up football team. He scored 37 goals in 31 games that winter, including six goals in three state tournament games. Just days after his 17th birthday in the summer of 2006, Hickey was taken in the seventh round of the NHL draft by the Minnesota Wild.

Hickey was slowed by a knee injury as a senior but managed 21 goals in 17 games for the Raiders.

After he signed with the Badgers, Hickey played one season of elite Juniors hockey and posted 16 goals and 15 assists in 55 games with the Tri-City Storm. He joined Wisconsin’s team last season but only played in eight games. His lone goal came in a close victory at Minnesota-Duluth.

The Badger coaches wanted him to return for an additional year of Juniors this season, but Hickey decided a transfer was in his best interest. After sitting out fall semester, he recently decided St. Thomas was his best option to continue his education and hockey career.

“He scored a goal on his first shift at Wisconsin,” Skrypek said, “but it didn’t seem like he fit into their plans. They wanted him to play a second year of Juniors. He felt like he needed a fresh start. His dad went to school at St. Thomas, and he knew about our program.”

Hickey’s older brother, Matt, played four seasons at Army (2005-2009) and finished with six goals and 12 assists in 107 career games.

Jump start?

The Tommies (5-7-3 overall) are 1-6-1 over their last eight games and have been outscored 33-14 in that span. As his team sits in sixth place near the halfway point MIAC of the season, Skrypek knows that making the five-team playoffs could be difficult. UST probably needs three or four points in the Friday-Saturday games at Concordia-Moorhead to jump start its season.

Hickey is expected to add punch to a UST power play that has just a 10% conversion rate this season. He’s also joins the first line and in hopes of helping the Tommies climb from their current rank of 67th out of 72 Division III teams in scoring at 2.13 gpg.

Andrew Kappers, Parker Burgess and freshman Andy Singerhouse share the UST scoring lead with five goals apiece. But consistent scoring has been elusive. The good news: St. Thomas had a recent multi-game stretch where it received all 11 goals from 11 different players. The bad news: The stretch spanned eight games.

Just two seasons ago, when the Tommies lost in overtime in the national quarterfinals to eventual champion St. Norbert, they finished 10th nationally in scoring (4.14 gpg) and ninth on the power play (25% converted).

It’s been an unusual season thus far for Skrypek and his coaches, with 16 new players on his roster and two inexperienced goalies learning on the job. The clock is ticking, but the coach believes the Tommies can turn things around. “This is a big weekend for us,” he admits.

The Cobbers (3-10-2) have a split with Bethel, two ties with St. Olaf, and four one-goal losses. Last weekend they lost just 4-2 to a 12-2-1 St. Norbert team. Last season in Mendota Heights, UST edged Concordia 4-2 and 3-0 -– the latter game was tied 0-0 with five minutes left in regulation.

St. Thomas would love to continue one trend… and reverse another. Since its 3-0 win last February over Concordia, the Tommies have gone 8-2-1 on Fridays but just 1-9-2 on Saturdays.

Smith vs. Fritz again

The Tommie-Johnnie basketball rivalry resumes Saturday with an 8 p.m. game at Concordia University’s Gangelhoff Center. UST (11-2 overall, 7-1 MIAC) and St. John’s (9-4, 6-2) are chasing 8-0 Gustavus near the halfway point of the MIAC race.

The game will be the 68th head coaching meeting over 30 seasons between the Tommies’ Steve Fritz and the Johnnies’ Jim Smith. It’s believed that only one other set of conference coaches in any sport have had more head-to-head meetings. Gustavus’ Don Roberts and Augsburg’s Ed Saugestad squared off 73 times in men’s hockey over a 32-year span from 1965-1996.

If you add in the 13 seasons that Fritz was a player and assistant coach for St. Thomas, and this marks the 94th consecutive Tommie-Johnnie game where the two will compete.

On Jan. 23, Smith and Fritz will reach a combined 2,000 games as MIAC head coaches.

Saturday marks the 1,200th game in 46 seasons for Smith (708-491) and the 795th in 30 seasons for Fritz (552-242).

PHOTO: Fritz' 500th win came in January 2008 against the Johnnies, four days after a last-second loss in St. Peter (Mike Ekern photo)

More hoops

People who followed 2008-09 Tommie men’s basketball realized it was a rare team in every sense of the word. The Tommies made MIAC history with a 30-0 start and their seven-week run atop the national poll. Their full-court press was a killer, and their unselfish play and crisp ball movement led to many open looks that players converted.

Last year’s Tommies were D-III’s last unbeaten team -- their loss didn’t come until the NCAA quarterfinals in mid-March. After Wednesday night, there are no 2009-2010 D-III unbeatens. No. 1-ranked Randolph-Macon and a small school from Buffalo, N.Y., were the final teams to take their first losses.

Season Notes

You can find updated Tommie basketball season notes here:

http://www.tommiesports.com/mbb/news/11-30_Notes.html

A few revealing ones:

-- UST had a season-high 19 turnovers in Wednesday’s 56-51 loss at Gustavus -- the second most it’s had in its last 136 games

--Tommie senior Joe Scott needs six points to reach 1,000 career points with the Tommies. he also scored nearly 300 as a freshman at UC-Colorado Springs.

-- Over the last five seasons, UST is 91-4 in regulation games when it scores 68 or more points but just 12-11 when it scores under 66 points.

-- St. Thomas has won its last 50 home conference games, including the last 46 played at Schoenecker Arena.

--The last two times UST lost in conference play -- in January and February 2008 -- the Toms regained their mojo over the next four days with victories over the Johnnies.