Cornell at Army lacrosse

I'm psyched to go see Cornell play at Army Saturday, 12 noon. One of the all-time great games in Cornell history was at Army in 1971, the 17-16 victory that effectively decided the national championship in the NCAA's first playoff season.

We're ranked 5/6 while Army is 19/20 so we should win, right? I suspect it will be a lot closer, especially since Army only lost to Syracuse by 2. According to the Cornell pre-game notes (a lot of them are things like ''Cornell's record against the Patriot League on days following a harvest moon is 19-12''), of the eight ranked teams (2/28 poll), we play 2 at home, 5 away, and 1 (Virgina in a week) at a neutral site. What to do next week - Baltimore for lax, or Ithaca for hockey?

Saturday: 50 degrees, chance of rain, says Weather Underground. Is it subversive to use Weather Underground for information on a military academy?

Accuweather says the rain (and snow!) won't start until tomorrow night. I'll be coming up with a co-worker who a Cornell alum (CU '76) who also happens to be a retired army colonel.

Cornell vs Army lax games are often tight affairs with a lot of hitting. Should be fun.

Redcast doesn't connect at 11:59 am

Never mind. Computer on mute.

Cornell up on first shot by Pannell 1-0. Red also took first two face-offs (Faces-off?) 3minutes in I gotta leave, but Red playing well so far.

Army beats Cornell, 11-9. I don't know if that's disappointing or expected.

Trotsky
Army beats Cornell, 11-9. I don't know if that's disappointing or expected.

I went to the game. Disappointing in that we made a slew of turnovers, and Fiore was not at his best in goal. We also missed a number of point-blank chances, and Army's goalie (Pawlesky) made a number of sick saves. Cornell was without three starters (Lau, Mock and Feeley) who were all injured; their absence didn't help.

Despite it all, we had a number of opportunities to cut the lead to one in the last few minutes, but couldn't get it done. And, Army is a very solid team, hungry for revenge after last year's beat-down in the NCAA's. We have a lot of new faces who got significant playing time, and I am optimistic that the team will show significant improvement as we get into the meat of the schedule.

Great Cornell fanbase (as usual).

Next week against UVA will be a tough test, especially if our injured guys aren't able to play.

Just got home from the game. To add to what scoop85 said, we were very stagnant on offense. Army scored a lot of goals by great ball movement. We didn't have that. Our offense was one guy trying to attack and occasionally dishing it off for a shot. And too many turnovers in the attacking zone.

But this game came down to goaltending. Army's goaltender made lots of point blank saves, Fiore made very few.

Disappointing loss. Cornell will be better than this most of the rest of the way so long as the injured players come back.

We already knew by midway through the third quarter that this game would not be part of AJ Fiore's career highlights reel for the Tewaaraton watch hoopla by his senior year, while Army's goalie, Pawlesky, was having a career day. And we knew Army's attack was taking advantage of our not-full-strength defense. We could have dealt with that. We lost the game because, knowing this, and being down 9-7 in the third after having a 7-6 lead early in the third, we failed to score on a 2-man advantage and then gave up a goal shortly after. We went from a 6-6 halftime tie to an 11-7 deficit entering the fourth. The defense did its part holding Army scoreless, but we couldn't take it to Army in the fourth. The killer was our inability to turn a fast break with ~3 minutes to play into a manageable 11-10 deficit.

In the second half I was thinking contradictory thoughts: Pannell needs to step us his game and lead the way Seibald did. And then when he took a shot from too far out or that wasn't a high percentage shot I thought, He's trying to do too much. I suppose you can't have it both ways.

I haven't seen the stats sheet yet, but it felt as if faceoffs didn't kill us.

We're not the only top team upset: #15 Duke took down #3 Maryland.

Photos from Saturday's game.

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Rob Pannell scooped up a loose ball early in the second quarter and went in alone on Army GK Tom Palesky to put Cornell up 3-2. Pannell had 3 goals, 0 assists. A couple of his feeds should've gone, but teammates couldn't grab the passes, whether from back luck or pressure from Army.


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Army didn't make it easy for Pannell to maneuver.


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Cornell did not lose the game because of faceoffs: Mitch McMichael here was 11x18 and Cornell overall was 12x24. The Cadets must train alongside the Army mule.


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Cornell did not lose the game because of ground balls: 27-21 in Cornell's favor. Here, Jack Dudley.


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Roy Lang brings the ball across midfield. Cornell did not lose the game because of clears: Cornell was 14x16 and a perfect 7x7 in the second half. Army was 19x24.


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With LSM Max Feely out, Jason Noble and the rest of defense struggled with Army's talented attack. But on ground balls, Noble (45) was the stud: 9 of Cornell's 27 GBs. Notice also the sun came out, for a bit, in the second half.


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When nobody from Cornell could control this loose ball, Army midfielder Devin Lynch collected it and scored his fourth goal with :57 to play in the third. This followed a failed Cornell 2-man advantage EMO and a quick Army score, then this.


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When Fiore acknowledged an instruction from the sideline late in the third quarter, he also could have been verifying how many saves he had at that point. DeLuca had the backup warming up in the third quarter but stuck with Fiore. Fiore and the defense shut down Army for the final 16 minutes of the game and made it possible for the attack to (almost) come back.


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Ahead or behind, Cornell kept hustling. One reason you have to love college lacrosse more than, say, the NBA regular season.


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Cody Bremner got it to 11-8 with 7:22 to play, which made a comeback all of a sudden seem posible. (He's in goalie circle but got there on an Army push.) It was Cornell's next to last goal. He had 2 for the day and has a total of 4 for the season, behind only Pannell. Remember, he's only a freshman.


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Army won in no small part because goalkeeper Tom Palesky had a career game (Army would jusy say: He's Good). 17 saves, 65%. A.J. Fiore, 4 saves (says the stat book), 27%.


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Attendance 1,562, as reported by Army. The first government statistic in years you can believe.


Need more? About sixty game photos posted at my site:
Photos: [albums.phanfare.com]
Slideshow: [albums.phanfare.com]

Bill, thanks, nice, as always.

Hey Jim- if you checked out the other pics he linked to, did it look to you like the new gloves are anatomic representations of the bones of the hand? Check some of the tighter shots.

TimV
Hey Jim- if you checked out the other pics he linked to, did it look to you like the new gloves are anatomic representations of the bones of the hand? Check some of the tighter shots.

I assume you mean the way the fingers are broken down with the white representing the bones of each finger? I don't see much on the bones of the hand or wrist. I think the "finger bones" of Cornell gloves are accentuated by the way they have the red color separating each "finger bone". Note that Fiore's gloves only have the white on the index and long fingers, the ring and little are all red. That's kind of odd. Also it looks like the little finger only has 2 bones. Look at the last picture, you can see a goalie glove on the right and the little finger of others.

Overall, they are kind of "neat" (cool, awesome, or whatever is appropriate nowadays).

For those who've perused Trotsky insights into the date when Cornell got its 1,000 hockey victory and need something more to ponder, some additional photos of the Cornell lacrosse gloves. Yes, in some images / angles they do like like you're wearing a Big Red skeleton costume. But in a nice way.

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billhoward
For those who've perused Trotsky insights into the date when Cornell got its 1,000 hockey victory and need something more to ponder, some additional photos of the Cornell lacrosse gloves. Yes, in some images / angles they do like like you're wearing a Big Red skeleton costume. But in a nice way.

But also in a weird way, only 2 bones in the little finger. I guess you don't need to bend that as perfectly as the others.