The Penn men's basketball team wasn't the only team on campus winning a league title this past weekend. The Penn men's club hockey team battled back from a 1-0 deficit in the third and deciding game to defeat Temple 2-1 for the Delaware Valley Collegiate Hockey Conference championship, putting the wraps on a very dramatic best-of-three series. Temple routed Penn 8-2 in the first game of the series, but Penn answered with an 8-3 drubbing the following night to set the stage for the winner-take-all third game at Lehigh. "We came out flat [in game one]," Penn sophomore Whit Matthews said. "The next night Temple didn't play worse, it was just that we came out on fire." In game three, Temple beat Penn goalie Pat Baude to open the scoring a little under seven minutes into the game. That was the only time Sunday afternoon that the Owls would solve Baude, who stopped 42 out of 43 Temple shots. Game three proved to be a goaltending duel as Temple goalie Mike Palermo was just as dominant as Baude. Palermo stopped an unbelievable 65-of-67 shots. With only 3:32 gone in the second period, the Quakers finally knotted the game at 1-1 on an unassisted goal by Matthews. Matthews tapped a face-off draw through the opposing center's legs and then beat Palermo through the five hole to put Penn on the scoreboard. The game remained deadlocked until Penn captain Joe Merrill scored what would prove to be the championship winning goal. Merrill's goal came with 12:20 left in regulation. Penn freshman Jeff Bagnoli, who is also a member of the Penn varsity sprint football team, found Merrill right on the doorstep and Merrill banged in his own rebound to give Penn its first-ever DVCHC Championship.
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