SEASON STATS

THIS WEEK
For the second time this season, the Broncos battle the No. 1 ranked Miami RedHawks in a weekend series. This time WMU heads to Oxford, Ohio, and Goggin Ice Center on Friday for a 7:05 p.m. start and Saturday for a 5:05 p.m. face-off. Friday’s game will be broadcast by the Ohio News Network, while Saturday’s will be on Fox Sports Detroit.

LAST WEEK
Western Michigan and Bowling Green battled in a pair of games resulting in a 4-4 tie with a Broncos shootout loss on Friday and a 3-2 WMU loss on Saturday.

In Friday’s game, the Broncos battled back from a two-goal deficit and tied the game with three seconds remaining when Greg Squires knocked in a rebound on a shot by J.J. Crew. Max Campbell had a hand in every goal on the night, tallying a career-high four assists.

On Saturday the Broncos and Falcons were tied, 2-2, in the third period before a defensive lapse by Western Michigan created a breakaway for BGSU’s Jordan Samuels-Thomas. Samuels-Thomas beat Bronco goalie Riley Gill for the game-winner with 5:02 remaining. Western Michigan was unable to recreate the magic it had the previous night when it pulled Gill for the extra attacker and fell to the Falcons.

SERIES HISTORY
Friday and Saturday are the 109th and 110th meeting between the Broncos and the RedHawks. The teams met previously this season with a 3-0 Miami win and a 1-1 tie. The tie helped the Broncos retain the all-time series lead at 50-49-9. The Broncos are 0-5-1 in their last six against the RedHawks and 1-10-1 in the last 12. Western Michigan is 0-2-0 at the Goggin Ice Center and 21-27-3 on the road at Miami.

SCOUTING THE REDHAWKS
Miami stands where they have for a majority of the season, with a No. 1 ranking and at the top of the CCHA standings. The RedHawks are undefeated in their last 16 conference games, with their last loss coming to Michigan State on Oct. 24, 2009.

Junior forward Tommy Wingels leads Miami in scoring with a team-high 13 goals and 14 assists for 27 points. Fellow junior Carter Camper is not far behind with nine goals and a team-high 16 assists for 25 points. In all, six RedHawks have scored five-plus goals on the season and six of them have 10-plus assists. Sophomore Chris Wideman is the top scoring blue-liner for Miami with two goals and 10 assist for 12 points.

Miami has the top defense in the CCHA and the nation, and it’s by a wide margin. In conference games the RedHawks have given up just 1.17 goals per game, while Ferris State’s second-ranked defense has given up 2.17. The RedHawks use an aggressive fore-check along with two good options in goal to keep opponents off the scoreboard.

Cody Reichard and Connor Knapp have each seen plenty of action between the pipes, but Reichard has been the number one option. Reichard has started in 16 games with a 12-2-3 record, a 1.50 goals against average and a .933 save percentage. Reichard was in net for Miami’s 3-0 shutout of the Broncos, while Knapp tended goal for the 1-1 tie and shootout win.

ALL OR NOTHING, ALMOST
Sophomore forward J.J. Crew is tied with Greg Squires for the team-lead in points with 17. The two have combined for 13 multi-point games so far this season, with Squires tallying six and Crew with seven. Thirteen of Squires’ 17 points have come off of his multi-point games, while 16 of Crew’s 17 points have come from multi-point games. The only game in which Crew has scored a point but failed to score more than one was when he netted a lone goal in a 4-3 loss at Nebraska-Omaha on Nov. 27.

I REMEMBER THE 80’s
Bowling Green’s Brennan Vargas scored the first goal of the game for the Falcons on a penalty shot. It was the first penalty shot since Mike Kinnie from Ferris State was denied by Mike Mantua on Nov. 16, 2002.

Until Friday night, the last successful penalty shot against Western Michigan was by Illinois-Chicago’s Jeff Nelson beat Bill Horn on Oct. 17, 1987. That was 22 years, three months and five days ago, or just 8,133 days.

CAMPELL’S CAREER NIGHT
Max Campbell had his hand in every goal scored in WMU’s 4-4 tie with Bowling Green. He tallied the first assist in the goal by Dane Walters, the second assist in Tyler Ludwig’s power-play goal, the first assist in Matt Tennyson’s first collegiate goal, and had the second assist on the game-tying goal by Greg Squires.

It was a career-high for both assists and points in a game for the junior centerman. It was also the first time a Bronco tallied four points in a game since Jeff LoVecchio netted two  and tallied two assists for a four-point game against Ohio State on Nov. 23, 2007.

TENNYSON TALLIES FOR THE FIRST TIME
After receiving a well-placed pass from Max Campbell, freshman defenseman Matt Tennyson flung a wrist shot past BGSU goalie Nick Eno to light the lamp for the first time in his collegiate career. Tennyson joins Dane Walters, Trevor Elias and Luke Witkowski as Broncos with their first collegiate goals this season.