UConn isn't hiding from NCAA Tournament dreams

UConn men’s hockey is primed to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. On Wednesday, the Huskies beat Alaska Anchorage 5-2, avoiding the last potential Pairwise-killer on their schedule. They now sit at No. 9 and have secured a .500 record — a requirement to be eligible for an at-large bid.

Although UConn has been in good position for a few weeks, the Seawolves were the final landmine, coming in at No. 57 — by far the worst team the Huskies have faced.

UConn didn’t hide from that fact, though. It didn’t treat Wednesday like any other game. Instead, the Huskies freely acknowledged the Pairwise implications going into the contest.

“We talk about [the Pairwise] every week. We want to make the national tournament. That's a goal of ours. So there's no reason not to talk about it,” Cavanaugh said. “We know how important this game was. We know that if you don't win this game, it can drop you right out of the bubble. So it was something that we do talk about quite a bit in the locker room.”

With the win, UConn has likely secured its place in the field of 16. College Hockey News gives the Huskies a 98 percent chance to make the tournament. At this point, they would have to lose their final five regular season games and their first round contest in the Hockey East Playoffs to be even remotely in peril. On top of that, there would also have to be a string of bid stealers that drops the cut line to 12th or 11th.

For reference, the lowest cut line has only been lower than 13th once since 2002-03. The Huskies aren’t mathematically locks just yet but short of a catastrophic collapse and a string of bad luck, they’ll be in.

Of the 64 Division I men’s hockey programs, all but nine have made the NCAA Tournament at least once. Of that group, three are Atlantic Hockey schools while the five others only joined the DI ranks in the last five years.

Then there’s UConn. Granted, the Huskies have only been a top-flight program since 1998 and didn’t offer hockey scholarships until they joined Hockey East in 2014. Still, every other team in the conference except New Hampshire and Vermont have made the field of 16 during UConn’s tenure — and the Wildcats went in 2013 while the Catamounts did so in 2014.

Even Alabama-Huntsville and Wayne State — two programs that no longer exist — have gone dancing.

The Huskies have been close, though. In 2000, they won the MAAC Tournament but the league didn’t have an automatic bid to NCAAs. In more recent times, Cavanaugh’s squads have consistently come up just short.

UConn believed it was worthy of an at-large bid in 2020-21 but the committee — which picked the field instead of the Pairwise that season since there were no out of conference games — thought otherwise. The next year, the Huskies were one goal away from winning the Hockey East Tournament and receiving an automatic bid but ultimately fell to UMass in overtime.

In 2022-23, UConn flew out to a 9-1-1 start and put itself in great position to make the tournament, only to fall back to earth in the second half and miss out. Last season, the Huskies underperformed and were never real contenders.

Now, UConn is finally set to get over the hump. While the Huskies have received a boost from a loaded Hockey East, they’ve mostly helped themselves by going 8-2-0 in non-conference play. Their worst loss came against Holy Cross — but even the Crusaders are 29th in Pairwise.

From here, UConn can put the Pairwise on the back burner and turn its attention to the Hockey East standings.

“We're still battling for home ice in the in the playoffs,” Cavanaugh said. “That's where our focus is going to go right now.”

Currently, the Huskies are fourth in the league with 28 points but they’ve played two more games than UMass Lowell (fifth, 26 points) and Providence (seventh, 24 points), and one more than Merrimack in sixth (25 points).

That should be evened out this weekend with UConn on its bye, so the picture will be clearer on Monday. From there, the Huskies have five games left — one apiece against second-place Maine (36 points) and third-place BU (32 points) before finishing up with a pair against 10th-place Northeastern and one at ninth-place Vermont.

The top five teams get a bye to the quarterfinals, where the top four host.

So as exciting as the prospect of a first trip to the NCAA Tournament is, UConn still has plenty of business to take care of before then.

“We're trying to stay in the moment,” Cavanaugh said. “We get the Hockey East playoffs first… and we've got some big games coming up against Maine, BU, Northeastern and Vermont.”