Scorecard

Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson was wrong. It was last Thursday night in Albany, N.Y., and Berenson's Wolverines had just been smothered 4-2 by Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament semifinals. Someone asked Berenson how he expected the championship game between the Badgers and Lake Superior State—a 4-2 winner over Michigan State in the other semi and, like Wisconsin, a gritty defensive team—to be played. He tried to be gracious, then shrugged and said, "It'll probably be a boring game."

To the 12,891 fans in Knickerbocker Arena Saturday night, the final was anything but boring. In a highly charged game featuring superb goaltending and 33 power-play minutes, the Lakers prevailed 5-3.

Neither Wisconsin nor Lake State had figured to make it to Albany. Two years ago the Badgers won their fifth NCAA title, but 18 players from that team were gone by the start of this season. Wisconsin entered the NCAAs as a sixth seed but upset New Hampshire and St. Lawrence to make it to the Final Four.

And last season was supposed to be Lake State's year. In 1990-91 the Lakers won a school-record 36 games only to lose to Clarkson in the NCAA quarterfinals. That team included eight seniors, so it looked as if Lake State was facing a rebuilding season in '91-92. Still, second-year coach Jeff Jackson saw potential in his young players. He also had a solid cornerstone in junior goal-tender Darrin Madeley, whose 2.07 goals-against average led the country this season. The Lakers beat Michigan in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association's title game and arrived in Albany peaking at the right time.

The Badgers dominated the first period of the final, the Lakers the second. Entering the final 20 minutes the score was 2-2. The teams traded goals in the first 10 minutes of the third period before Lake State center Brian Rolston whipped around the net to score on Badger goalie Duane Derksen with less than five minutes to play. An open-net goal ended the scoring but not the action. Just before the final horn, several frustrated Wisconsin players threw their sticks, and one threw a punch at a Lake State player.

But the Lakers' time had come. The day before the final Jackson had said, "Sometimes when you're supposed to win, you don't." Then he paused, lest the listener miss the reference to the Clarkson letdown a year before. "And sometimes when you're not supposed to win, you do."
—RICHARD O'BRIEN

Nowhere to Run

A top marathoner is a man without a country

Mark Plaatjes, one of the fastest marathoners in the U.S., will not be running in the U.S. Olympic Men's Marathon Trials this Saturday in Columbus, Ohio. After emigrating from his native South Africa four years ago, Plaatjes was granted asylum in the U.S., but for now he is stateless, a citizen of neither South Africa nor the U.S.

Plaatjes will not become an American citizen until his five-year waiting period is over next January, but as recently as three weeks ago he still had hopes that TAC would persuade the U.S. Olympic Committee to waive its citizenship requirement and permit him to compete in Columbus. "I was led to believe that if South Africa was readmitted, I would be allowed to run in the trials," he says. "I was told there was a 'great chance.' " The IOC readmitted South Africa last July, but two weeks ago Plaatjes was informed that the USOC would not allow him to compete in Columbus. "What makes me mad is that it took them 2½ years to tell me," he says.