Cornell needed to reset and reload to take on Loyola (MD) on saturday afternoon, just a week after falling to Princeton in the championship game of the first ever Ivy League Tournament.  The Greyhounds entered the opening round NCAA tournament game on a two game skid of their own, and were looking to upset the seventh seeded Big Red at Schoellkopf Field.

At the start of the game Cornell looked fresh as Chris Langton and Steve Mock scored an opening pair of goals for the Red.  Although Loyola was not able to hold possession for long, they did have one great run by Josh Hawkins after a Roy Lang turn over to bring the score to 2-1 with 5:22 left in the first quarter. Eric Lusby followed with another score for Loyola to tie the game at 2 with 4:21 left. The Big Red answered back with two goals as well though (a second by Mock and Rob Pannel's first of the afternoon) to push the count to 4-2 after fifteen minutes of action.

The second quarter was dominated by Cornell.  Not only did the Big Red hold possession for almost the entire quarter, but they put up four more goals.  David Lau assisted to Ryan Hurley to put Cornell 3 scores.  Langton then added his second of the afternoon and Lau tallied one more to give the red a commanding 5 goal advantage.  With 7:20 left in the second quarter and the Red in a man up opportunity, Panell put another past the Greyhound goalie, Jake Hagelin, and put the red up 6 going into the break. After the series, Loyola head coach Charlie Toomey replaced Hagelin with Alex Peatty, a fifth year grad student who previously started for the Greyhounds.

Peatty made three saves early in the third quarter but was unable to stop Mock from connecting once again while Cornell was a man up. The third goal of the afternoon for Mock gave the Big Red a 9-2 lead.  Cornell’s edge quickly began to disappear from the scoreboard though.

The goalie switch and face off wins for Loyola completely changed the pace of the game for most of the second half. One goal after another in the third put the Greyhounds back in the game. It was a team effort by Loyola.  Josh Hawkins, Taylor Ebsary and David Butts all scored once and Collin Finnerty scored twice to pull the Greyhounds within a pair.

In the fourth, Loyola continued their dominance at the face off and Butts scored again with 9:53 left to cut the lead to just one. Ivy League player of the year, Rob Pannell then assisted on a Ryan Hurley goal with 7:21 remaining to push the lead out to 10-8.

The Greyhounds were relentless though. Matt Langan pulled Loyola within one and then with 7 seconds left on the clock, Stephen Murray knotted the score at 10 to take the opening round match-up to overtime.

This scene was all too familiar for the Big Red, given the pair of last second collapses on the same home turf that they suffered earlier in the season.

Loyola held much of the possession in the first OT, but freshman goalie, AJ Fiore made tough saves to keep Cornell alive. Pannell had a chance for the win, but was double teamed and turned the ball over with little time left in the first extra period. Loyola gained possession, but time ran out without either team adding a score to the board.

The second overtime also came to an end without either team notching a goal.

In the third overtime, junior defenseman Max Feely took off from the back field, leaving his position, and was able to capitalize. The score was his first career goal and ended the longest NCAA tournament game in either school's history.

Cornell will move on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament to face the winner of Saturday night's match-up between Syracuse and Army, but if they want to keep winning they are going to need to play as hard in the second half as they do in the first.  Cornell has been known to see a drop off in play in the second half.  Two of those collapses have been against possible second round opponent, Syracuse.