The UND men's hockey team was frank in postgame comments after Saturday night's 3-1 loss to Western Michigan at Ralph Engelstad Arena.
The message: We're fed up with inconsistency.
UND, the defending national champion, will finish the first half of the season 9-6-3 overall and 3-4-1-1 in the NCHC.
"We wanted to win a lot of games and just weren't good enough," UND forward Joel Janatuinen said. "We need to improve a lot. We have a whole second half to improve on our game."
The inconsistency isn't a new storyline. The Fighting Hawks have been harping on it for weeks.
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This year, UND has swept St. Cloud State on the road, then followed with a loss at home to Michigan State. UND has beat Boston College in Madison Square Garden, then lost at home to Western Michigan.
"We talk about it every weekend," Janatuinen said. "We win a couple of games and then lose a couple. We can beat the best team in the nation and right now we kind of want to, and that's just not good enough."
UND will have plenty of time to think about the clunker to end the first half. The Fighting Hawks don't play again until New Year's Eve at Union. That's 21 days to stew about the first-half roller coaster.
"We have a couple of weeks off and optimistically each guy when they go home and think about this can think about why we are up and down and lack consistency," UND defenseman Tucker Poolman said. "This is a long time to think about something like that so hopefully we can get it figured out."
UND coach Brad Berry wasn't happy with his team's start against Western Michigan on Saturday. The weekend was indicative of how UND's first half of the season went, coming off a 5-1 win over Western Michigan a night earlier.
"We let off the gas a little bit in the first part of the game and that gave them momentum," Berry said. "We have to come to the rink and put two games behind you and work hard to get that third game. It's about how you deal with success on a daily basis.
"Very inconsistent. We've had success, then lose a game or two. In order to make up ground and do what we want to do, we have to have consistency."
