The Post-Week Tailgate: March 10, 2024

The recipe for May success has always been goaltending and faceoffs. Notre Dame got hot at the X late last year and had the most proven goalie in the country among the top teams in Liam Entenmann.

This year it feels like faceoffs might take on an outsized influenced. Just look at some of the biggest games of the weekend.

Faceoffs certainly aided No. 14 Yale’s 15-13 takedown of No. 1 Denver on Sunday. Yale’s Machado Rodriguez won 14 of 21 in the game to help the Bulldogs to a 19 of 32 overall advantage. Both goalies made 11 saves, but the extra possessions help Yale to a 57-43 shot advantage.

The draw also played a major role in No. 3 Johns Hopkins 14-13 loss to No. 11 Syracuse on Saturday evening in Charlotte. Mason Kohn won 18 of 25 and the Orange won 22 of 31 overall, allowing Syracuse to prevail despite 15 saves from Hopkins’ Chayse Ierlan.

No. 7 Maryland, playing without faceoff ace Luke Wierman, won just 13 of 30 and barely escaped with a 14-13 victory over winless Brown. The Terps did respond to win five of seven faceoffs in the fourth quarter and the overtime draw as they rallied for the win.

And if you’re not going to win faceoffs, you’re putting a heavy burden on your goalies. No. 9 Penn State’s Jack Fracyon made 14 saves in a 20-9 victory over No. 8 Cornell even though the Nittany Lions won just 14 of 33 faceoffs. No. 13 Penn’s Emmet Carroll made 16 saves in a game in which the Quakers won just 5 of 23 faceoffs against Villanova. Carroll’s heroics helped Penn to an 11-8 victory.

Random Observations

And then there were four. Denver’s loss to Yale leaves just four unbeaten teams in the country: Army, Harvard, NJIT and Quinnipiac.

• Army easily controlled Holy Cross 18-8 to open the season 6-0 for the first time since 1984, the last time it reached the NCAA semifinals. The Black Knights biggest win of the season – an overtime triumph over Syracuse – also took on some added importance with the Orange knocking off Johns Hopkins.
• Harvard’s defensive transformation continues to pay dividends as the Crimson snapped Michigan’s five-game winning streak with a 13-11 victory on Sunday. Harvard is giving up 10.5 goals per game, a big improvement from the 13. 4 per game it allowed last year. The 11 goals were the fewest Michigan has scored in a game this season and the Wolverines scored just two in the first half. Harvard’s 6-0 start is its best since 1990.
• NJIT took care of business with an 18-5 win over Lindenwood to improve to 7-0 for the season. Cinderella is starting to feel more and more like the real deal each week. Now, the Highlanders have a must-watch game against Vermont on Saturday to begin America East play.
• Quinnipiac continues to ride the goaltending of Mason Oak. Oak made 16 saves in a 14-7 win over Canisius as the Bobcats moved to 5-0. Oak’s 64.1 save percentage is No. 2 in the country.

Rivalry games are the best. Princeton had some serious enjoyment in beating Rutgers 14-8 in Piscataway to win the Tots Meistrell Cup on Sunday to improve to 4-2 for the season. The home team had won the previous seven games in the series.

In the last six quarters, Penn State has blown out Yale and Cornell by a combined score of 32-14. The Nittany Lions rallied from a 9-2 halftime deficit last week to beat Yale 15-14 in overtime. On Saturday, Penn State led Cornell 10-1 before coasting to a comfortable 20-9 win.

T.J. Malone and Matt Traynor are evolving into one of the top 1-2 punches in the country. Malone had three goals and four assists against Cornell and leads the team with 32 points. Traynor poured in seven goals against the Big Red and now has 23 goals in just six games.

Throw in strong goaltending from Jack Fracyon (57.0 save percentage) and this team looks really dangerous. The biggest potential Achilles heel? The thing we started this column with – faceoffs. The Nittany Lions are winning just 46.3 for the season and just 40.9 percent in their two most recent wins.

North Carolina’s prized freshman Owen Duffy had a nice return home to Long Island, dropping a career-high nine points in a 21-9 win at Hofstra. Duffy had four goals and dished out five assists as the Tar Heels won their second straight. Duffy has 10 goals in the last three games.

Vermont has posted six straight winning seasons, but got off to a slow start this year. Saturday may have been a turning point as the Catamounts downed Massachusetts for the first time in school history. UMass had won the previous eight meetings, including the last two seasons. Junior Charlie Pope, who missed all of the 2023 season with an injury, had five goals against UMass and his comeback season is looking good with 17 goals in the last four games.

Colgate, which played its first six games away from home, is now 2-0 in its first two games in Hamilton, N.Y. The Red Raiders are 5-3 with a win over Penn State and have opened Patriot League play with wins over Loyola and Lafayette. They’ll be back in a familiar place – on the road – the next three weekends. Colgate does not return home until hosting Lehigh on April 13.

By the Numbers

3,037 • Attendance at Peter Barton Stadium in Denver to see the No. 1 Pioneers fall to Yale in front of an electric atmosphere.

1958 • The last time Army started a season 7-0. The Black Knights, who host Lehigh on Saturday, finished that season 9-0 and won the USILA national championship.

3 • Consecutive wins for Bellarmine after an 11-5 win over Marquette on Saturday. Goalie JC Higginbotham, who broke Dillon Ward’s career saves record last week, made 17 saves in the win. He has 99 saves in seven games this year.

8 • Career-high points for Notre Dame’s Chris Kavanagh (5g, 3a) in the Fighting Irish’s 13-10 win before a sold-out crowd of 2,462 at Ohio State.

3 • Overtime wins for Maryland this season. The Terps have beaten Richmond in double overtime and Syracuse and Brown in single overtime.

55 • Shots for Michigan in its 13-11 loss to Harvard. The Wolverines put just 20 of them on the cage.