Release for Wednesday, February.18th, 2009

Brought to you by Interim Healthcare of Lubbock

 

"Final rankings for 2008-09 season have Red Raiders at 12th"

It seems like a bad twilight zone episode for your Red Raider hockey squad as they are snubbed again from post season regional play. Another hard fought season and another non-invite to the Regional Tournament held in Salt Lake City, Utah this year for the top 10 ranked western teams. Tech finished a dismal 8-18-1 this season with 3 games still remaining on their schedule. Tech will travel to the University of Central Oklahoma next weekend for a 2 game series then will conclude their 2008-2009 season at the AAC on March.8th against the Oklahoma Sooners for the Big XII Challenge Cup. Tech Hockey played both a hard fought home schedule and an even more brutal road schedule on top of the turmoil and monstrous mess dealing with the lease and the City Bank Coliseum issues. Even with the unwanted drama your Red Raider hockey squad played on and played hard.

Going a respectful 7-5-0 on home turf was not a bad showing for the Tech Hockey squad considering the tough opponents that made their way to the Raider Dome. With the canceling of both the Red Raider Shoot-Out tourney as well as the Big XII Championship and the weekend series against Utah State University, Tech could of really put some great home wins under their belt. Being road warriors was an under statement for the Red Raider hockey team as they had the toughest road schedule in the country. Playing to a 1-13-1 road record was not what they had hoped for. Tech Hockey also dropped 9 one goal loss games which was a tough pill to swallow as getting a majority of those wins back would of probably punched the Red Raider hockey teams ticket to Utah.

 

Coach Fioroni was not happy with the snub again and does not blame anyone but himself; "It was a tumultuous season for us, anything that went wrong did and did again. Not having an arena to call home was the first huge loss for us and it just felt like we could not catch our breath after that. The problem I do have with the rankings is that the majority of the ranking committee are from certain areas and those certain areas seem to get the nod much more than others. We are geographically crippled here being situated in West Texas and it is a very hard and a huge financial burden for us to travel anywhere and to be honest with you we have to almost beg and pay teams to come to us here in West Texas and I just do not thnk that is fair to us. Regardless of our record, our strength of schedule should of been enough to get us there. There is not a Western Conference team that even came close to our strength of schedule, not one. We also beat Denver twice and tied them, beat UNLV who beat SDST 4 times and competed and beat some of the top teams in the tougher eastern and central conferences. Why are those 3 teams ahead of us in the final rankings? I think because they are in those certain areas of play and we are just not", quotes Fioroni.

 

Tech will again watch from the sidelines as post season place commences next weekend in Utah. Their focus is now on UCO and OU as they prepare for those 3 remaining road games of the season and possibly of Tech Hockey history. Here are the final Western Conference rankings for the top 15 teams for the 2008-2009 season; (The top 2* finishers will gain an automatic bid to the National Championship Tournament hosted by GVSU in Grand Rapids, MI. The remaining 8 teams ranked 3-10 will compete at the Regional Championship Tournament hosted by Utah State in Salt Lake City, Utah. The top 2 finishers from the Regional tourney will join CSU and Weber State representing the Western Conference at Nationals, March.17-22)

 

1)CSU*

2)Weber State*

3)Colorado

4)Eastern Washington

5)Northern Colorado

6)Utah State

7)Denver

8)San Jose State

9)UNLV

10) San Diego State

11)Brigham Young

12)Texas Tech

13)Oregon

14)Texas A&M

15)Arizona State

 

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR THE TEXAS TECH VS OKLAHOMA AAC BIG XII CHALLENGE CUP GAME ON MARCH.8TH, 2009 AT 7:45PM AFTER THE DALLAS STARS PLAY THE MONTREAL CANADIENS AT 5PM. COME AND SUPPORT YOUR RED RAIDER HOCKEY SQUAD AS THEY PLAY THEIR FINAL GAME OF THE SEASON!!! GO RED RAIDER HOCKEY!!!