Cornell-Michigan State game 1 postmortem

[billhoward]

Well put. The season is yet young, it's on the road, it's against a team with twice as many games played. In one sense, being tied by MSU (or Cornell gaining a tie vs. MSU) is the best possible outcome. A lesson learned without the pain of a loss. Schafer has a day and a half to tell the team what miserable, rotten worms they are ... that that 4-0 record going in to MSU was a fluke provided by the quality of the early opponents ... a team with Cornell's god-given talents could knock out MSU but it also could get blown out by MSU because MSU has shown what a hard-working team can do to Cornell in shutting down the Cornell "nation-leading" offense [while at the other end, um, put up one goal in 37 tries?] ... Cornell was lucky to escape ... lucky thing McKee has the best game of his life and bails out the other 18 of you ... yada yada yada. Let's just hope he doesn't punch a cinderblock dressing room wall to make his point again.

Still, T/W for the weekend is going to be huge vs. T/L given that the only other non-conference pair of games starts off against (currently) No. 1 BC. There is the very real chance that we could be a good team and yet, in our final four non-conf games, be 0-3-1.

I'm also thinking if eLynah existed in that 1969-70 season, we'd be griping about all the close escapes, how horrible things were with Dryden gone, etcetera.

[Greg Berge]

Last season wasn't disappointing.  Finishing second with a 15-8-6 record after losing the largest and most talented senior class in the last 30 years was extraordinarily successful.  It ended with a bummer weekend, but let's not let that color an otherwise above-expectations season.

OTOH, it shows how far Schafer has taken the program that a finish better than 25 of the previous 30 years http://www.tbrw.info/cornellHistory/cornellRSBargraph.html is in retrospect deemed disappointing.

[redredux]

I'm not asking for a medical analysis of his condition or for anyone to violate medical privacy statutes, just a sense of whether he's out for Sunday, out for the season, or what.  I thought someone who was there or listened on the radio might have a sense of the severity.  Carefoot is a key player -- I'm curious how long we'll be without him.  

[ninian '72]

I read an interview with Brian Cropper not too long ago - I believe the link was posted on the forum - in which he described his experience in 69-70 as very similar to what McKee's going through.  Not every game was a blowout.  There were some nights in which Cropper had virtually nothing to do but others in which the rest of the Cornell game wasn't clicking at all, and the outcome was pretty much up to him.  Good teams can win ugly, if they have to.

[billhoward]

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:
OTOH, it shows how far Schafer has taken the program that a finish better than all but 2 of the previous 30 years  is in retrospect deemed disappointing.[/q]

The last 30 years overall was disappointing for Cornell fans after, what, six final fours in seven years. The letdown was so gradual. Post-1970, the Harkness-recruited, Bertrand-coached teams made the final four two of the next three years and so no one knew at the time (1974 and on) if it was just the law of averages swinging the other way when there were no final fours year after year until 1980. By the end of that time when it became clearer that Dick Bertrand was not possessed of the Harkness magic, it was hard, perhaps too hard, to reverse things. Through the late 1970s, Cornell was putting up 20-9 kinds of seasons (hard to fire a coach for that) and getting great individual players ... but not winning the ECACs or making the NCAAs (until 1980). You can play so many what-ifs: What if Bertrand had stepped out say in 1975 ... or what if Cornell had turned to the almost-as-youthful wizard of the North Country, Clarkson's Len Ceglarski, to directly succeed Harkness ... etcetera.

In that 30-year interim, Harvard has played for the title three times and RPI and Colgate and St. Lawrence have also been there. Others such as Dartmouth have made final fours. OK, Cornell also, but not the almost-every-year kind of thing of 1967-73.

It really feels as if Cornell is once again on the cusp of greatness. We'll see. We're not alone in wondering what happened to our long-ago years of greatness. Imagine being an Alabama football fan post Bear Bryant, UCLA fan post John Wooden ... or a Penn State fan the last five years. (Joe Pa has to hang it up.)

One's satisfaction with the current level of Cornell hockey (or football or lacrosse) depends on when you came on the scene. A grizzled veteran is going to think back to Dryden and Harkness. If your baseline is Cornell hockey of the mid- to late-1990s, then the last two years have been quite good. Better still, if you're a junior now, what you know is a ECAC title / Final Four and an ECAC playoff with home ice, plus what is likely to be a good year this year, and probably a final four contender the year after.

For someone under 25, history seems to be so, like, ancient. A Cornellian at the tail end of the Harkness era would never have thought back 20 years to the Cornell football era when we played and beat Michigan - in football! So, too, it probably seems as if Dryden is ancient history. Ah, well.

[JasonN95]

[q] Game is at 2pm[/q]

It's at 1pm. (Not trying to be anal, I just wanted to mention this in case folks weren't looking at the schedule themselves.)

[atb9]

Oops!  Great catch!  Game is indeed at 1pm...one hour from now!

[Molly]

Wait, I'm a bit confused.  USCHO lists the game as starting at 1pm, while both the CU website and CSTV lists the starting time at 2pm.  Which one is it?   ::help::

[atb9]

I was going off of USCHO...MSU athletics website says 2:05pm.  Oy.  Is MSU in the eastern time zone?  I'm really confused.  I would say ignore USCHO but who knows...

http://msuspartans.collegesports.com/sports/m-hockey/sched/msu-m-hockey-sched.html

[Jacob '06]

Gametracker says start time TBA

[pfibiger]

fwiw, the MSU athletics site lists the game at 2:05pm EST

http://msuspartans.collegesports.com/

[Pete Godenschwager]

There isn't a pregame show on WHCU right now, so 2:00 sounds like the correct start time.

[JasonN95]

Sorry about stirring things up; the three places I looked (USCHO, eLynah and printed schedule from the CHA) said 1pm.

[Killer]

Just fired up Gametracker and that's what it's showing.

[Steve M]

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:

 Last season wasn't disappointing.  Finishing second with a 15-8-6 record after losing the largest and most talented senior class in the last 30 years was extraordinarily successful.  It ended with a bummer weekend, but let's not let that color an otherwise above-expectations season.

OTOH, it shows how far Schafer has taken the program that a finish better than 25 of the previous 30 years  is in retrospect deemed disappointing.



Edited 3 times. Last edit at 11/14/04 01:30PM by Greg Berge.[/q]

I agree with part of what you said.  It's because Schafer has taken the program so far that last season was disappointing.  Unless we can be satisfied with one Frozen Four appearance every 23 years, the team should have the goal to make the 16 team NCAA playoffs every year.  A 16-10-6 record and a second place ECAC finish isn't nearly as successful as it would have been 25 years ago because the ECAC is nowhere near as good today as it was in the 70's and 80's.