Regional brackets for the 2024 NCAA tournament were announced Sunday and the #2 Terriers will be the top seed in the Sioux Falls, S.D., regional. On Thursday, they'll face the #4 seed, Atlantic Hockey conference champion RIT in a 5:00 pm ET start with the game airing on ESPNU and live streamed on ESPN+.
The other half of the bracket pits the #3 seed--and tournament host--Nebraska-Omaha against #2 seed Minnesota. The Gophers are the team that ended BU's season last year in the Frozen Four semifinal.
Making its 39th national tournament appearance, BU will play the 27-10-2 Tigers for the first time ever. In 2010, RIT reached the Frozen Four semifinal after regional round upsets of Denver and New Hampshire.
Following the bracket announcements, Coach Jay Pandolfo
spoke with the media, beginning with his team’s experience in the NCAA
tournament:
“When you’ve been there before, it certainly helps. Guys know what to expect. It’s going to help us going into the tournament. This year's a little different, traveling a little further but nothing wrong with a good road trip”
About putting Saturday night’s loss behind them:
“Sure, it still stings but we know we’ve still got a chance to play and still have a chance to do something big. You have to have a short memory at this time of year because there’s still a lot of hockey to play.
“We understand as a group how to play and what it looks like to have success and we’ve gotta get back to that mindset."
About how big games during the regular season prepared BU for
playing on the national stage:
“We’re prepared for it. We didn’t get some of the results we were hoping to get. You can learn a lot from not winning. I think our team will and will respond. Our team is mature and looking forward to the next step."
Pandolfo acknowledged that he didn’t know too much about RIT and would “start watching some video on them and prepare like we do for most teams.”
He discounted the fact that the Tigers, on average were two years older
than the Terriers, noting that BU had played many games against teams with
older players this season.
RIT won the Atlantic Hockey regular-season title as well as the post-season tournament. Now 21st in the Pairwise, the Tigers are riding a seven-game winning streak in which they didn’t allow more than two goals in any game. In out-of-conference games, they own shutout wins against Notre Dame and Clarkson and also defeated New Hampshire and Lake Superior.
● GoTerriers.com report, Comments from Jay Pandolfo, Sam Stevens and Macklin Celebrini
● USCHO.com Brackets Announcement
● College Hockey News Tournament schedule and TV times, Four-bracket grid
● Hockey East Online Four Hockey East Teams Earn NCAA Berths
