24-03-2025
Wisconsin defeats Ohio State to win NCAA women's hockey national championship
The Wisconsin Badgers won their record eighth national championship in a come-from-behind 4-3 win over the Ohio State Buckeyes on Sunday.
The game — a rematch of the 2023 and 2024 championship games — saw the two highest-scoring teams in the country deliver the highest-scoring championship game since 2014.
It's also the third straight year the championship game was decided by just one goal.
The Buckeyes were the only team in the country to defeat the No. 1-seeded Badgers in regulation all season. They nearly did so a second time, if not for the late heroics of Wisconsin star Kirsten Simms, who scored on a penalty shot after a coach's challenge for covering the puck with just 18.9 seconds SIMMS TIES UP THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME WITH 18.9 SECONDS REMAINING 😱OVERTIME ON ESPNU NOW 🍿 ESPN (@espn) March 23, 2025
It was Simms, too, who played the hero twice, scoring the overtime winner to complete the comeback early in the fourth BADGERS ARE BRINGING THE NATTY HOME! 🏆@simmsy0427 scores the OT winner for the Badgers!#WFrozenFour x 🎥 ESPNU / @BadgerWHockey NCAA Ice Hockey (@NCAAIceHockey) March 23, 2025
The game began with Buckeyes star sophomore Joy Dunne opening the scoring (to cap her season with a 10-game goal streak) with an end-to-end short-handed goal. Badgers star junior Laila Edwards (Dunne's teammate with Team USA at the upcoming women's world championships) answered just 12 seconds later to tie the score on the power play.
The teams' two-goals-in-12-seconds flurry was the second-fastest in Frozen Four State's Joy Dunne and Wisconsin's Laila Edwards with highlight reel goals 20 secs apart in the women's FF championship CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) March 23, 2025
Late in the first period, OSU junior Sloane Matthews re-gave the Buckeyes the advantage, followed by an early-second-period goal from junior defender Emma Peschel to balloon the lead to 3-1.
But Badgers junior defender Caroline Harvey — one of the best players in the world, whose 4-point game in the Frozen Four's semifinal led Wisconsin back to the title game — cut the lead to 3-2 to set the table for Simms' late heroics.
Until the dying seconds, it looked like the Buckeyes were going to hold on, coming up with some big blocks and nearly killing a penalty with 1:50 left, but the top-ranked Badgers scored three unanswered to complete the historic comeback.
Badgers goalie Ava McNaughton made 20 saves.
The championship is the culmination of a dominant season by the Badgers; with the best offense in the country (more than five goals per game), the best defense (just over one goal against per game) and the top special teams. The Badgers also had the national coach of the year (Mark Johnson), goalie of the year (McNaughton), Patty Kazmaier Award winner (Casey O'Brien) and all three finalists (Edwards and Harvey).
All eight of Wisconsin's national championships have been won under Johnson, the winningest coach in Division I women's hockey history.
Sunday marked Wisconsin's 12th appearance in the national championship game, and most of its core group will be back next season.
The Badgers will be losing senior captain Casey O'Brien — the Patty Kazmaier Award winner who broke Wisconsin's scoring record this season — but the team is still young with stars like Harvey, Edwards and Simms, who each have eligibility remaining. McNaughton, who finished the year with a 36-1-2 record, is also only a 20-year-old sophomore.
Despite the loss, the runner-up finish marked the Buckeyes' fourth straight year in the national championship game under head coach Nadine Muzerall, who took over a perennial .500 program in 2016-17 and turned it into a destination for players seeking postseason success.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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