Marquette playoff run halted by St. Louis University High in quarterfinals

Going  into the Challenge Cup playoffs as the 10th seed, the Marquette Mustangs knew the odds were long on them getting deep into the tournament.

Marquette beat the odds in the first round knocking off Rockwood Summit but on Monday night at Hardees IcePlex in Chesterfield, second-seeded St. Louis University High used an opportunistic penalty killing unit to blaze past the Mustangs into the Challenge Cup semifinals.

Nicholas Walters and Dan Warnecke each tallied a pair of goals and the Junior Billikens ended Marquette’s season with a 5-1 quarterfinal series clinching win in game two of the series.

“That line of Warnecke, Walters, and (Trent) Lulow has scored I don’t know how many goals but they know each other and know each others moves so they can end up putting the puck in the net,” St. Louis University High coach Charlie Busenhart said.

SLUH (20-2-3) jumped in front on a Christian Hoffmeister goal just four minutes into the action but Marquette (12-11-3) answered late in the period on a Nick Nast goal with 4:13 left.

Walters scored a pair of goals in the second period, one of them a short-handed goal off a center ice steal of Marquette’s Sam Turner as the Jr. Billikens penalty killing unit caught Marquette off-guard. “Our penalty-killing unit has been very good at killing penalties this year and very good at taking advantage of when other teams take penalties,” Busenhart said.

Walters pumped in his second goal of the night off an assist from Peter Hummel making it 3-1.

Despite scoring four goals in last Friday’s first game against SLUH, Marquette, led by top scoring threats Sam Turner and Dominic Costa was held in check and unable to break through on the SLUH defense.

“When it was 2-1 and we had a couple of scrambles and open nets we missed early on and that was just deflating when you can’t put those away,” Marquette coach Ryan Kane said. “Then the power play, we slowed down a little bit and that unfortunately didn’t help us.”

Warnecke lit the lamp twice in the third period with a pair of insurance goals that gave SLUH plenty of breathing room. It also set the stage for the Junior Billikens to face Oakville in the Challenge Cup semifinals next week.

As for Marquette, the end of the season has come and the skates now get hung up for another spring, summer, and fall.

“We knew this was going to be a great challenge and we always hold out hope that we can muster up that heart, drive and fight through some of the adversity but it just didn’t work out that way,” Kane said.