Ohio State hockey swept in weekend series at Michigan State

Just when you think things can't get much worse for the Ohio State Men's hockey team, they have a series like they did this weekend.

You'd think allowing ten goals in one game versus Michigan was bad. Well...that was, but then they have a series like this weekend.

The Buckeyes didn't get blown out in either game, losing the first 4-1 and the second 2-0, but they didn't exactly look strong in either one either. The Buckeyes have now fallen to a horrendous 7-13-2 record, with just a 2-6 mark in Big Ten play. The football team may have celebrated a national title on Saturday, but the hockey team would need just as meteoric a rise to finish at .500.

During the first game on Friday, the Spartans had a 2-0 lead into the third before OSU cut the lead in half on a goal by David Gust at 2:46 of the third. Less than four minutes later, MSU scored to put the Spartans back up by two goals. The Spartans would add another with under a minute left in the third with Christian Frey still in net.

Frey saved 27 out of 31 shots on Friday, for a save percentage of .871, which would be good enough to get him sent back to the USHL. He was far from awful, as Matt Tomkins has put up worse efforts this year, but he wasn't nearly good enough to singlehandedly keep the Bucks in the game either. You can't ask him to do that, but he didn't really help the cause either.

OSU did outshoot MSU 34-31 overall, but a lot of that can probably be attributed to score effects with OSU being down into the third.

It was more of the same for OSU on Saturday as they lost 2-0 at Michigan State. Michigan State scored a goal at 17:12 of the second to put them up 1-0 and the score would remain 1-0 until Brent Darnell put the Spartans up 2-0 on a goal during a 5-on-3 at 18:49 of the third.

Christian Frey redeemed himself in this one as he saved 32 out of 34 shots for a .941 save percentage, which is a very solid number in today's NCAA. MSU outshot the Buckeyes 34-22 for the entire game despite OSU being down for the entirety of the third period. MSU, in fact, outshot OSU 15-5 in that third period with the Bucks trailing the entire time.

All in all, there weren't too many positives to take out of a sweep at lowly Michigan State. OSU is looking at a horrid conference finish after last year's Cinderella run to the Big Ten tournament final. And things only seem to be getting worse.