AMHERST - Coming into Friday night's game, the last time the University of Massachusetts hockey team defeated a No. 1 opponent was in 1995 in a 4-2 win against Maine. Now you can change that to Nov. 14, 2008.

The No. 20 Minutemen defeated No. 1 Boston University 5-1 before 7,212 fans at the Mullins Center.

"Whenever you play a team that's considered to be one of the best in the country there's that much more focus that goes into everything," UMass coach Don "Toot" Cahoon said.

The Minutemen's first line of Alex Berry (two goals), Cory Quirk (goal, assist) and James Marcou (assist) played well against the Terriers (6-2, 3-2 Hockey East) after the trio was held scoreless in Saturday's 3-1 loss to Merrimack.

After fending off early pressure by Boston University, UMass (5-2-1, 3-1-1 Hockey East) took advantage of turnovers and odd-man rushes to jump ahead of the Terriers 2-0 in the first 12 minutes of the first period.

The Minutemen applied constant pressure, harassing BU players at both ends. UMass jumped on the board at seven minutes, three seconds in the first period on a careless play by two Terrier defenders.

Quirk and Marcou skated in the offensive zone hoping to apply pressure to the two defensemen. The BU defenders bumped into each other, causing the puck to drift onto Marcou's stick. After receiving the pass from Marcou, Quirk skated in front of BU goaltender Grant Rollheiser (21 saves), moved the puck to his backhand and shot it over the netminder.

Backhanders continued to perplex Rollheiser all night. Later in the first at 11:21, Berry and Martin Nolet (one assist) rushed into the Terrier zone, giving UMass a 2-on-1 advantage. With Nolet going stride for stride with him on his right, Berry skated in toward the lone defender while Nolet provided a screen. Berry flicked the puck onto his backhand and shot it over the right shoulder of Rollheiser.

"We just wanted to take things shift-by-shift and good things will happen and that's what we ended up doing," Quirk said.

"We needed to remain poised," Cahoon said after his team went up by two goals.

Minuteman goaltender Paul Dainton (30 saves) made an outstanding split-legged glove save to rob Colin Wilson's bid from the lower half of the right circle in the second period.

The UMass lead grew a little over 11 minutes into the second period. After controlling the puck behind the BU net, Chase Langeraap dished it back to the blue line to Matt Irwin. He wristed a shot through the crowd and over Rollheiser's right shoulder for his first collegiate goal.