Ohio State, Wisconsin advance to NCAA women’s championship game for fourth consecutive year
Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Ohio State and Wisconsin will be playing for the NCAA Women’s D-I National Championship.
After picking up wins in their respective semifinals on the first day of the Women’s Frozen Four, the Badgers and Buckeyes will meet up for all the marbles. However, one of these WCHA powerhouses almost didn’t make it…
Simms plays the hero again
This was an instant classic… one that few of us expected.
While Penn State was playing in the Frozen Four for the first time and came into the national tournament as the three-seed, few believed they could keep up with the defending champions.
However, a seed of doubt was planted minutes into the game. In front of a Frozen Four record crowd of 5,000 fans, Tessa Janecke snuck a shot by Badger goaltender Ava McNaughton to put the Nittany Lions on the board first, much to the delight of the home crowd. However, the lead didn’t last long as a beautiful feed from Wisconsin’s Kirsten Simms set up Laila Edwards to level the score.
The teams traded goals from there, with McNaughton giving up a second goal on just the second she faced, before Edwards bailed out her goaltender with an absolute snipe to tie the game before the halfway mark of the second. The Badgers carried a one-goal lead into the third thanks to a tally from Adela Sapovalivova, and as the minutes ticked down in the third, it looked like Wisconsin was on its way to a fourth straight championship game. However, with less than five minutes to go in regulation, Janecke was sprung on a breakaway, scoring her 26th goal of the season to tie the game at three.
Overtime was needed. AHA Defender of the Year Kendall Butzee took a boarding penalty minutes into the extra frame. That opened the door for Kirsten Simms, the hero from last year’s national championship game, to score her 26th goal of the year to give the Badgers a 4-3 win.
Edwards, Simms, and Sapovalivova all had three points in the victory, while McNaughton made 22 saves in the win. Janecke, whose college hockey career has 201 points after her fifth multi-goal game effort this year. DeSa gave the underdog Nittany Lions as much of a chance as she could, turning away 31 shots.
Ohio State bucks the Huskies
The top-seeded Buckeyes had a relatively easy time getting through Northeastern in the first semifinal of the day. Though Huskies forward Stryker Zablocki had a glorious scoring chance in the opening minutes of the game, Ohio State took advantage of a number of openings in the first period, with junior Joy Dunne leading the team to a 4-0 lead after 20 minutes.
The Buckeyes might not have lit the lamp for much of the rest of the game, but they didn’t give Northeastern any room to generate offense. Sara Swiderski put the icing on the cake in the third period, as the Buckeyes ran away to a 5-0 victory, sending the team to the national title game for a fifth consecutive season.
Ohio State had five different goal scorers in the game, with Dunne, Kaia Malachino, Sanni Vanhanen and Emma Peschel also finding the back of the net. Dunne had a goal and an assist in the opening period alone, with Malachino also having two points in the victory. Goaltender Hailey MacLeod earned her 26th win and seventh shutout of the season.
The Buckeyes outshot the Huskies 42-18 in the contest.
With Northeastern falling in the semifinals once again, Hockey East’s championship game drought is up to five years.
Tale of the Championship Tape
This is an unprecedented event. Regardless of how dominant the Badgers and Buckeyes have been, the odds of these two teams meeting in the final game four years in a row is insane. Wisconsin beat Ohio State in the 2023 and 2025 title games, while the Buckeyes won their second championship in program history at the Badgers’ expense in 2024.
The Buckeyes have tied Minnesota for the most consecutive championship game appearances. Nadine Muzzerall has built an unquestionable dynasty that shows no signs of slowing down. They have the veteran talent in Dunne, Jocelyn Amos and Emma Peschel, along with the young stars in Hilda Svensson, Mira Jungaker and Vanhanen. This is a group that also knows what it takes not only to make it this far, but also to get the job done. Amos, Dunne, Peschel, Baxter and Matthews were part of the team that beat Wisconsin in the 2024 final.
The Badgers are entering their 13th national title game in program history, and seek to add to their record eight NCAA championships. Wisconsin is also looking to become the first true back-to-back champions since Clarkson won it all in 2017 and 2018 (The Badgers won in 2019 and 2021, with COVID-19 canceling the 2020 tournament).
The Buckeyes are 2-2 in championship games. Their first championship in 2022 came against fellow conference rival, Minnesota Duluth.
The Badgers won three of the four regular-season meetings this year, but the Buckeyes knocked Wisconsin off its pedestal with a win in the WCHA Championship Game just two weeks ago.
The championship game from Pegula Ice Arena will take place on Sunday at 4 p.m. ET. The contest will be broadcast on ESPNU in the U.S. and streamed on TSN+ in Canada.