Ferris sopho­more defense­man Chad Billins net­ted the clinch­ing goal in a shootout vic­tory over the Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturday.

Billins faked a shot to the left top shelf before he pulled the puck back to the right, allow­ing him to sneak the puck past Buckeye goalie Dustin Carlson, giv­ing Ferris a 4–3 shootout victory.

“It was excit­ing to score the final goal in the shootout,” said Billins. “But I would have never got the chance to score if it wasn’t for my team­mates com­ing up big in the shootout as well.”

Ferris got on the board first as senior defense­man Matt Case scored his fourth goal of the sea­son at the 15:07 mark in the first period.

The Bulldogs took advan­tage of the over­turned goal quickly as senior Aaron Lewicki scored his eighth goal of the sea­son three min­utes into the sec­ond period to give the team a 2–0 lead.

The lead did not last for long though, as Ohio State scored back-to-back goals in a span of 40 sec­onds to knot up the score. Ferris regained the advan­tage with eight min­utes left in the period when senior for­ward Blair Riley posted his team-leading 17^th goal of the season.

In the final period of reg­u­la­tion, Ohio State forced a 3–3 tie by con­vert­ing a power-play oppor­tu­nity with 16 min­utes left in the period. In the final three min­utes of reg­u­la­tion, both teams were down a player as penal­ties were assessed to both teams. Ferris had a power-play oppor­tu­nity in the last 1:15 of reg­u­la­tion, but was unable to cap­i­tal­ize on the advan­tage, send­ing the game to an over­time period.

After nei­ther squad claimed the vic­tory in over­time, the con­test went to a shootout. The Buckeyes struck first on their first shootout attempt as OSU’s Jon Albert snuck a back­han­der past sopho­more goalie Taylor Nelson.

OSU main­tained the 1–0 lead going into the final shootout attempt, but senior cap­tain Cody Chupp scored the equal­izer to force a 1–1 tie and another shootout attempt. The extra attempt proved to be cru­cial for Ferris, as Billins snuck in the clinch­ing goal after Ohio State missed on its attempt.

The Bulldogs con­verted two of its seven power play chances, while Ohio State was 1 for 9 on its oppor­tu­ni­ties. Two Buckeye goals were waived off dur­ing the game, one for goalie inter­fer­ence and the other because the puck never crossed the line.

Ferris dropped the series-opening con­test on Friday, 5–3, despite out­shoot­ing Ohio State 49–30.

Ohio State took a 2–1 advan­tage in the first period, as both teams posted 11 shots on goal.

After the Buckeyes stretched their lead to 3–1 on a power-play oppor­tu­nity early in the sec­ond period, the Bulldogs trimmed the lead to 3–2 when junior Justin Menke scored a goal off a deflec­tion off Case’s leg.

Ferris could not claw any closer though, as Ohio State scored twice in the final period to seal the vic­tory. Five dif­fer­ent play­ers net­ted goals for the Buckeyes.

Following this weekend’s action, the Bulldogs are 17−8−3 over­all and 11−6−3−3 in con­fer­ence play. The team will return to action this week­end with a two-game home series against the Northern Michigan Wildcats. Ferris is 12–2 at home this season.

“All of the series from here on out are very impor­tant for us,” said Billins. “It’s also still impor­tant to take it one game at a time though.”