The last time Wisconsin swept the Gophers in Madison was in November of 1999, coach Don Lucia's first season at Minnesota. It could have happened again Saturday -- the Badgers won 4-2 on Friday -- but didn't.
Here is what Badgers coach Mike Eaves had to say about the second game of the series:
"Well, first of all, I think the whole tone is that I'm not bothered by our effort. I'm not bothered by the fact that we didn't score enough goals. We had great effort tonight.
" The difference between tonight and last night is they got the timely save and the timely goal it was almost the exact opposite [from last night]. Their goalie made the saves tonight and they got the timely goals.
"The word finish comes to mind. Our guys will have nightmares about some of the things that they missed tonight in terms of putting them into the net. Next week we will take a look at what we did well and what we didn't and make sure that we are finishing during the course of the week at practice."
Wisconsin outshot the Gophers 47-28 and it took a late Minnesota surge for the ratio not to be 2-1. Shots were 32-16 after two periods.
The Gophers were leading 3-0 until freshman defenseman Jake Gardiner from Minnetonka scored from the right point in the first minute of the third period.
"That's exactly what we scripted out," Eaves said. "It was interesting talking after the second period the thing that happened in the second when it was a 2-0 game before it became 3-0 we started to press as most young people will and even the pro guys do it.
"You're working hard and you're not getting rewarded for the things that you are doing and then all of a sudden on the power play we are trying to do it ourselves. We are shooting the puck when we should be passing and we pressed a little bit.
"We have chances and we give up that fourth goal really quick. Those are the kind of things you measure on what your team's character is. There's some lessons in there and we will learn those lessons and move forward."
Said junior defenseman Ryan McDonagh, the Badgers' tri-captain: "Anytime you lose a Saturday night game after a Friday night win…it's real tough to swallow. I think the team will realize it more on Monday or Tuesday as we look back on the TV and see the stats and see that we were getting the chances and we were playing pretty well on our own end. Right now it's pretty tough to take."
