The Columbia Ice Eagles didn’t have much time to celebrate their thrilling first round MVCHA playoff victory over rival Freeburg-Waterloo, as they were thrust right into the second round against a good O’Fallon squad.

O’Fallon topped the Ice Eagles in two games to take the series last week and end Columbia’s quest for top league honors.

“We knew going into the series against O’Fallon that it was going to be tough,” Columbia head coach Kevin Feager said. “They have a very deep team, but we knew we could be competitive against them.”

During the regular season, Columbia and O’Fallon played even at 1-1-1 head to head.

On Feb. 11, the two teams met in game one of the second round playoff series, with O’Fallon winning 2-1. Columbia scoring leader Garrett Poole scored the only goal for the Ice Eagles.

“We lost the first game, but we played well,” Feager said of the game one loss. “We outshot them and had a lot of quality scoring chances. They are a very good team defensively, and they have two very good goalies.”

With the season on the line last Tuesday, Columbia fell behind 4-0 in game two but didn’t give up.

Ultimately, the team just ran out of time and out of luck, losing 4-2.

“We were able to score two third period goals, but it wasn’t enough,” Feager said. “Both teams ended with a lot of penalties, which is unusual for games we’ve played this season.”

O’Fallon had 12 penalties for the game to Columbia’s 11.

“This definitely took us off our game, but we were not able to capitalize on any of our man advantage situations,” Feager said.

Poole scored both goals for the Ice Eagles. He scored a team-high 33 goals during the regular season to go along with five total playoff goals.

Columbia finished the regular season at 15-5-1 before registering a 2-3 record in this year’s playoffs.