Massachusetts-Lowell players and coaches enjoyed a police escort to Logan International Airport. When the plane landed in Pittsburgh, they were greeted by cheerleaders and a pep band, courtesy of host school Robert Morris. Banners all about the city proclaimed a welcome to the Frozen Four.<\/p>\n
“[The police escort] was pretty cool,” Chad Ruhwedel said. “I’d never experienced that before. You get get there pretty quick.”<\/p>\n
“We were kind of in awe,” Riley Wetmore said of the cheerleader-and-pep-band greeting. “We don’t really expect that ever. It was something different and it was neat.”<\/p>\n
Getting treated like a rock star is an experience these young men are likely never to forget.<\/p>\n
But they’ll need some temporary amnesia in Thursday’s game against Yale and maybe, just maybe, a Saturday night match for the national championship.<\/p>\n
“We have a wow factor for the first day,” Wetmore said. “We want everyone to enjoy the experience. For the guys in the locker room, this is once-in-a-lifetime [experience]. Being a senior, this is the only time I’m going to be able to experience it.<\/p>\n
“So, yeah, we took it in. We had a good practice. But tonight and tomorrow, it’s going to be [our usual game-day] mentality. We’ve got to be focused and ready to go.”<\/p>\n
Lowell coach Norm Bazin pointed to Wetmore’s leadership as a critical component in the River Hawks enjoying the experience but avoiding the distractions. Wetmore is the only two-time captain in the history of the program who has led his team to the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
“We’ve approached these last three weekends the same way,” Bazin said. “Riley Wetmore has been a great two-time captain for us.<\/p>\n
“When you have good leadership, you can get over some of those distractions. We’ve done a fairly good job, I believe, as a coaching staff, of trying to eliminate a lot of those distractions over the course of the week, introducing some of the things that they may see here.<\/p>\n
“Once tomorrow comes, it will be business as usual.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Massachusetts-Lowell players and coaches enjoyed a police escort to Logan International Airport. When the plane landed in Pittsburgh, they were greeted by cheerleaders and a pep band, courtesy of host school Robert Morris. Banners all about the city proclaimed a welcome to the Frozen Four. “[The police escort] was pretty cool,” Chad Ruhwedel said. “I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1426],"tags":[713],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n