Cornell, though, could be back — and soon — after only popping up on the national radar intermittently since advancing to the 2013 semifinals.
The Big Red were one-and-done in the 2014 and 2015 tournaments and were bounced by Maryland in the 2018 quarterfinals after winning a first-round game at Syracuse. That covers Cornell’s postseason history in the seven tournaments between its Memorial Day weekend appearances.
That method of accounting downplays what might have happened if the 2020 season unfolded without a pandemic. Nonetheless, the Big Red possessed modest postseason experience prior to its run as a No. 7 seed in May.
“It’S a domino effect,” defenseman Gavin Adler said. “Now that I’ve been here, [Kirst’s] been here, that’s three years a generation of players can pass on, do what it takes and show the young guys this is who we are.”
What was a roster filled with untested players at the college level outside of a few guys — Adler and attackmen Michael Long and John Piatelli, among them — now has a lot of knowns.
Kirst (55 goals, 24 assists) has to rate among the most intriguing of that bunch after proving every bit as effective as Buczek believed he could be in the preseason. Adler, an exceptional technician and master of leverage who was named a first-team All-America selection, will be back to anchor the defense.
Other stars have emerged as well. Sophomore Hugh Kelleher had 23 goals and eight assists in his first college season, including a hat trick in the NCAA semifinals against Rutgers. Jack Follows looks like he will be a long-term mainstay on close defense after starting the final six games after injury prevented him from debuting until late April.
The Big Red will take some graduation hits, most notably with Piatelli — whose last-minute goal in the title game gave him 66 for the year, one more than Mike French’s 46-year-old program record. As significant a departure as Piatelli is, Cornell won’t have nearly as many unknowns as it did at the start of 2022.
Yet to the Big Red, a team that concentrates on inputs rather than outputs, the plan will be to follow the same blueprint, only with an altered roster.
“We just want to get better tomorrow, because if we talk about Memorial Day starting tomorrow, we just wasted 364 days,” Buczek said. “So our hope is as soon as we turn the page from this and we let this hurt a little bit that it’s back to work.”
It shouldn’t happen without some appreciation of what Cornell accomplished in its return to competition. It won 10 of its first 11, then overcame a late-season wobble to race past Ohio State, smother Delaware and then pound Rutgers before forcing a juggernaut to scrap to the end on the season’s final day.
And if the title game loss meant the present wasn’t euphoric, it underscored the future’s considerable promise in Ithaca.
“The clock ran out on us today, but hopefully we’re on the cusp of building something pretty special here moving forward,” Buczek said.