By Gilbert Gutierrez III
Daily Titan Staff Writer

The Cal State Fullerton hockey club lost their first of a two-game series to Utah at the KHS ice arena, Friday night in a score of 6-4.

The Titans entered the game with a 3-game winning streak underneath their belt and they were almost untouchable.

The Titans returned home after an 8-3 win against UC San Diego, a Division III team. Assistant coach Steve Jobbit said, ” It wasn’t a confidence booster, we came out of that win and we have to play tighter and harder against a team like this.”

Friday night, CSUF had 49 shots on goal, and a number of unnecessary penalties that disrupted their opportunity to win.

The first period began quiet in front of the home crowd as the Titans took a pounding into the boards early, but managed to skate past their defenders and took a number of close shots on goal only to come up empty.

While the Titans missed their opportunities to score, the Skatin’ Utes managed to squeak by with a goal on power play from Chris Russell.

In the second period the Titans fell into an even deeper hole, but they were given a spark of light when junior Blake Dorman scored his first goal of the season and brought the crowd back to life. It was something that he deserved to get said assistant coach Steve Jobbit.

“It’s a huge weight off my shoulders, if I get a chance I’ll bury it,” said Dorman.

Dorman added that he just wants to go out on the ice and do whatever he can do to help his team to win, whether it’s by scoring a goal or clobbering an opponent down to the ground.

The Yutes would capitalize and score once again, but with 21.4 seconds left in the second, co-captain Jacob Daniel scored for the Titans to make it 4-2 and give them momentum heading into the final period.

The start of the third period was underway, but came to a halt when CSUF head coach Nick Moran called for a timeout because the ice was not yet frozen after being resurfaced in between periods, and this caused the puck to stick to the ice and one of the Titans had slipped and fell. Moran shouted a few words at the referee and was penalized a bench minor for unsportsmanlike conduct. A couple minutes later the game resumed.

The Titans did not let the penalties stop them from scoring and Daniel scored his second goal of the night and Chris Houlihan followed him shortly after to tie up the game.

For the next five minutes, Utah and CSUF would be jockeying for the puck to take the lead, but after co-captain Andrew Hodge was put in the penalty box, the Yutes would break the tie. Andrew Reed, whom had sat out most of the third period for a ten-minute misconduct issued by the referees, found the hat trick and scored a goal to ward off the Titans.

After the game, Daniel said, “we know what our mistakes are, we don’t point out what the mistakes are, but we just say hey, we know what we got to do, let’s go out there and get it done.”

This is just about as simple as it can get with any team that is down and out, and this is what the Titans work on together as a team.

“[The referee] was not the reason we lost,” Daniel said. “We should have capitalized. It should have been 7-0 at the beginning, but we didn’t.”

Assistant coach Jobbit remained humble and said that there were bad penalties made by the Titans while some may have been poorly called, but the team had basically just beaten themselves.

“The guys never gave up, but we just got to have that spirit from the beginning. That grit, we just got to have that intensity through the entire game,” said Jobbit.