January 25, 2016
Salt Lake City, UT
The first weekend back for the University of Utah Skatin’ Utes was also the last weekend of the PAC-8 regular season and the Utes skated past the USC Trojans with two victories at home.
On Friday the Utes held their 4th Annual Fearless in the Fight Breast Cancer Awareness Game and wasted no time scoring on the Trojans as the Utes put up four goals in the first period on their way to a 13-1 victory. 16 different Utes tallied at least one point in the game as Josh Dangel led all scorers with six points in the game. The Utes outshot the Trojans 61-11 in the contest as Devan Betts picked up his team-leading tenth win of the season with 10 saves in the win.
On Saturday the Utes again scored early and often as the Utes led 7-1 after two periods and cruised to an 8-2 win to sweep the weekend against the Trojans. Like Friday night’s game, the Utes found scoring all over the place with 12 different Utes tallying at least one point in the game. Carl Bombardier led all scorers with 4 points in the game. Utah outshot USC 46-19 in the game for a combined total of 107-30 over the span of the two-game weekend. Jared Manzella earned his second win of the season in goal for Utah, stopping 17 of 19 shots he faced in the game.
With the pair of wins the Utes wrapped up their PAC-8 Conference schedule with a perfect 8-0 record, marking the second time in their five years in the conference that they accomplished that task. The Utes will now wait to see where the chips fall in regards to their seed in the PAC-8 Championships in South Lake Tahoe, CA from Febraury 4-7, 2016.
The Utes now head down the home stretch of the season as they’ll compete for two trophies the next two weekends, starting with their title defense of the Wasatch Cup this weekend in Ogden. The Utes will take on BYU at 4pm on Friday at the Weber County Sports Complex with the consolation and championship games taking place at 4pm and 7pm on Saturday.
