4/2/00 – The most intense rivalry in the CCLA lived up to its billing today as #12 Illinois and #7 Michigan fought it out for momentum heading into the stretch run of the conference season and the CCLA tournament, which is now only a month away. Michigan escaped with a 12-9 win, but it may be Illinois who gained the momentum as the hungry Fighting Illini showed why desire can make a big difference in any game.

The Wolverines dominated time of possession and outshot Illinois 63-30, but a patient and smart Illini defense forced numerous mistakes and rushed shots. The Wolverines missed the cage 30 times, and when their shots were on, junior goalie Mike Vanderweide turned them away 21 more times. Nearly half of his saves were on point-blank shots. The usually deadly Michigan attack was a dismal 8 for 38 shooting.

Both teams had trouble getting anything going early as both teams had man-up opportunities but couldn’t convert. It wasn’t until 11:41 had ticked off the clock when Dan Jerneycic (Bloomfield Hills, MI/Univ. of Detroit Jesuit HS) collected an Alex Gregor (Bloomfield Hills, MI/Country Day HS) feed and rifled one home just under the crossbar to put Michigan up 1-0 on another extra-man play. Illinois answered just a minute later on a Mark Parmenter goal, but when Yusef Elfiki was sent off for slashing, Pierce Davis (Wellesley, MA/Wellesley HS) found a seam on the crease and snuck one past Vanderweide to put the Wolverines up 2-1.

The Wolverines seemed to be on the right track for the first half of the 2^nd as they finally got the attack involved. Goals by Jeff Hadwin (Vestal, NY/Vestal HS) and Tom Burns (Bloomfield Hills, MI/Brother Rice HS) put them up 4-1, but as would be the case all afternoon the Illini answered when Dustin Marchant scored the first of this 3. Again the Wolverines went to the attack to get the job done as Hadwin scored his 62^nd of the year and Adam Denenberg (Wynnewood, PA/Lower Merion HS) got his 49^th. Illinois would manage one more, and the two teams went into halftime with Michigan hanging onto a 6-3 lead.

If anything, the intensity picked up in the 3^rd quarter. Michigan would tally 3 goals, all scored by the attack, but Illinois put home 4 to narrow the margin to 9-7 going into the final stanza. One intriguing match-up had Michigan’s junior defenseman Wesley Martus (Nashville, TN/Hillsboro HS) against Illinois leading scorer Scott Lirette. Lirette, who was Jerneycic’s high school teammate at University of Detroit Jesuit, had been held scoreless in these teams’ two meetings last season. He didn’t get a goal again today, but he got his first assist in three games against Michigan when he found Sean McCone on Illinois’ third goal of the 3^rd quarter. Martus held Lirette without a shot for the day.

Illinois scored first in the 4^th quarter, but Dave Bernard (Litchfield, CT/Westminster HS) answered for Michigan to keep the margin at two. In a controversial play a couple of minutes later, an apparent Illinois goal was waved off when the ball was determined to have hit the net outside the goal. Five minutes went by before Michigan’s Ben Herbst (Baltimore, MD/Pikesville HS) beat his man from the wing and bounced one in to get the lead back to three with 5:47 to go. Lirette found Dave Siegel less than 30 seconds later to get it back to two, but when Denenberg collected his 4^th assist on Hadwin’s 4^th goal of the game, the lead was back to three and the scoring was over. Michigan benefited from two costly Illinois penalties in the final 3:15 to help ice the game.

The win improves Michigan’s record to 12-3 overall and 7-0 in the CCLA. Illinois drops to 10-4 and 3-1 in the CCLA. Earlier in the day at the Invitational #6 Virginia Tech avoided going 0-3 on the weekend by scoring the last three goals of the game to defeat #9 Arizona 14-11. Next up for the Wolverines is #8 Tennessee next Saturday, April 8 at 3:00 p.m. in Oosterbaan.