Arizona State Upsets Penn State in Overtime

Story posted November 3, 2018 in CommRadio, Sports by Ben Borus

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — After a win yesterday, Arizona State and sixth-ranked Penn State were back at it again for the second game of the series.

Arizona State scored very early in the first period as true freshman PJ Marrocco gave the Sun Devils a 1-0 lead after beating Nittany Lions' goaltender Peyton Jones. The play was later reviewed and confirmed, giving Arizona State its first lead of the game.

Penn State had a lot of opportunities to score as it had a 13-9 shot advantage over the Sun Devils at the end of the first period. The Nittany Lions gave themselves chances. However, they could not generate anything in the center of the ice as a majority of their shots were either on the far or near side of the ice.

After a clean start to the first period, Blake Gober was called for hooking. Cole Hults, as well as Sun Devils' Tyler Busch, were also called for roughing. This string of penalties late in the first period concluded once Sun Devils' Jacob Wilson was called for holding. However, the Nittany Lions were unable to capitalize on the power play at the end of the first period.

The second period was much of the same: both teams exchanging chances early on but no team could capitalize. Penn State had a chance to even it back up, but defensive turnovers were a killer for this team.

This was until Anthony Croston was called for tripping, sending the Nittany Lions into a power play. Denis Smirnov capitalized on the advantage, evening the score up at one after an impressive assist from Nikita Pavlychev and Alex Limoges.

After this goal, momentum began to slide toward the Nittany Lions as they put together a string of three near goals. Kevin Kerr was a part of two of those three goals as he almost beat two Arizona State defenders on the fast break before losing control of the puck.

This momentum however quickly vanished once Pavlychev got called for holding giving ASU its second power play of the game. Sophomore forward Johnny Walker took advantage of the man down, scoring his tenth goal of the season for the Sun Devils to give them a 2-1 lead with 6:30 to go in the second period.

Redshirt senior Dylan Hollman went on the score his third goal of the series to give the Sun Devils a 3-1 lead at the end of the second period.

Penn State put itself, yet again, in another position where it had to battle its way back into a game.

“You never want to be in that position,” Gadowski said following his team's disappointing loss.

The third period was when the Nittany Lions really came on. Despite Sun Devils' goaltender Joey Daccord’s impressive performance, sophomore center Evan Barratt secured the puck on his stick and tossed it in to put the Nittany Lions within one of tying the game.

After a quiet couple of minutes, Nate Sucese poked the puck into the goal to send the game into overtime.

Overtime moved fairly quickly as Walker scored the game-winning goal giving the Sun Devils a 4-3 win to hand the Nittany Lions their first loss of the season.

“We can control a lot of things that we didn’t like.” said Chase Berger after the game. “As long as we can learn from this loss that’s all that matters.”

The Nittany Lions will host the Robert Morris Colonials next Friday at 7 p.m. at the Pegula Ice Arena.

 

 

Ben Borus is a freshman majoring in psychology. To contact him, email bqb5475@psu.edu.