Sam Battaglia scored a goal with 1:36 remaining in the third period yesterday to lift the Icecats to a 4-3 victory over Arizona State, but No. 6 Iowa State's 6-3 win over No. 2 Penn State later in the day eliminated the Icecats from a shot at the title game tomorrow night.

The Icecats face Penn State today at 2 p.m. Tucson time with a berth in the third-place game on the line. After record and head-to-head competition, goal differential is looked upon as the tie breaker. Therefore, the Icecats € whose differential is even because of the 3-2 loss to Iowa State € must beat Penn State. PSU's differential is plus-1 after topping ASU, 4-0.

Senior defenseman Mark Thawley notched his 100th-career point as an Icecat in the win over the Ice Devils. He is just the fourth defenseman in Icecat history to reach the milestone. Senior center Kevin Oztekin tallied three assists.

The Icecats jumped out to a 2-0 lead with first-period goals by forwards Peter Scott and Brian Consolino. An Ice Devil power-play goal with 11 seconds left in the period made it 2-1 going into the first intermission.

Said Icecat head coach Leo Golembiewski, "We dominated them for 60 minutes."

He couldn't have said it better.

For the second straight day, the Icecats outshot their opponent by a ratio of almost 2 to 1, but still had problems putting the puck past the goaltender.

"If we had anything to be disappointed about, it would be that we haven't been tickling the nets as much as we would like," Golembiewski said.

The Icecats made it 3-2 after two periods thanks to senior defenseman Jon Muntz's second goal of the tournament. An ASU goal with six minutes to go in the game tied it at 3, setting the stage for Battaglia's game winner.

Defending champion and No. 1-ranked Ohio defeated No. 8 Delaware 10-0 on Wednesday night. The Bobcats faced No. 5 Michigan-Dearborn late yesterday. Dearborn was defeated 5-2 on Wednesday by No. 4 Eastern Michigan, which scored five goals in the third period yesterday to slip past Delaware, 6-3.