Colgate Will Play Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

Colgate was supposed to play a pair of home games the last two weekends. It didn’t stop the Raiders from collecting a pair of victories.

The inadvertent road warriors — who now won’t have their home opener in Hamilton, N.Y. until March 15, when they play their eighth game — roll into their Patriot League opener at Loyola on a three-game winning streak.

The 19-14 defeat of UAlbany on Feb. 14? Moved up a day and shifted a two-hour drive east.

A 19-15 triumph at Harvard on Feb. 18? Pushed up a few hours from an evening start to a 2 p.m. opening faceoff, probably a blessing for all involved.

And Saturday’s 16-5 drubbing of Villanova? There was a site change there as well, with Colgate making the trip to the Philadelphia suburbs.

“Just tell us where to be and what time to be there,” Colgate coach Matt Karweck said. “That mentality alone will get you so far in life. Tell me where to be and what time to be there and Colgate will show up and be ready to go. That’s the thing I love about my team this year in particular, and our program with how we’ve been building it. Our guys are just so excited about playing the game.”

To be clear, it wasn’t snow (which Hamilton does get plenty of) that made the Raiders’ facilities unavailable. That can be cleared easily enough. It was the ice that came from wet conditions coupled with sub-freezing temperatures, a problem without a cost-effective solution.

So Karweck simply asked the Raiders (3-2) to rely on the three Gs of their program — grit, growth and gratitude — to guide them through a few early surprises.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Colgate already had measured themselves in losses to Penn State (14-9) and Virginia (19-9). The Raiders were still within three of Penn State late in the third quarter. They were down just 13-9 after a man-down goal with 4:05 left in the third at Virginia before the Cavaliers pulled away.

Colgate is unabashedly aggressive, eager to apply pressure on opponents rather than permit the reverse to occur, and it’s what Karweck has been building toward over his seven seasons in charge of the program.

“We’re a physical team,” Karweck said. “We dodge hard. We ask a ton of our scout team and a ton of our players to be as physical as we can be. And how does that work? You can’t do a ton of it. You have to make sure you practice that way. As you watch those games back, we may not have won those games, but we gained massive amounts of confidence when we’re putting our shoulder in the chest of some of these defensemen that everybody loves.”

The basic external thinking heading into the season was Colgate might have been due to push itself into serious Patriot League consideration. It brought back five of its top six scorers, and it generally lost close games to conference opponents.

And while there are some familiar figures on offense — such as Liam Connor (10 goals, 12 assists), Jack Turner (15 goals, five assists), Rory Connor (13 goals, six assists) and Hunter Drouin (13 goals) — Karweck doesn’t see this as merely a continuation of a team that went 8-7 a season ago.

“The growth mindset is we don’t want to be last year’s team,” Karweck said. “We don’t want to be a little bit better than last year’s team. We want to be a brand-new team that does the things we do at a level that is much higher than any year before.”

NUMBERS OF NOTE

7 • Goals for Hofstra’s Drew Bogardus in the Pride’s 13-12 overtime defeat of St. John’s, the second-most ever for a freshman in the program. Owen Walsh holds the Hofstra freshman record of eight, set in 1949.

12 • Points for Cornell’s CJ Kirst in Tuesday’s 22-9 rout of Hobart, a career high and the most for a Big Red player since Jeff Teat had 12 against Harvard in 2018. Kirst’s six-goal, six-assist day made him the sixth player in Cornell history to post a 12-point day, joining Teat (twice), Jim Trenz (twice), Bruce Cohen, Tim Goldstein and Dick Shriver).

18 • Ground balls for Syracuse’s John Mullen in the Orange’s 15-14 loss to Harvard, the second most in school history behind faceoff wing Sam Bassett’s 21 against Georgetown on May 6, 2000. Mullen’s 28 faceoff wins were the most since Chris Cercy had 28 in that same game against Georgetown in 2000 and are tied for the second most in program history.

26 • Saves for Mercer goalie Rand Paddack on Saturday against Army, the most for any Division I goalie since St. Bonaventure’s Brett Dobson had 27 against Siena on May 5, 2022.