Despite Hofstra playing in the second game, I didn't stick around, being as Tuesday night is trivia night. I got to the Country Corner just before the game started, and Team CCCP won for the third straight week and fifth consecutive time that we played - this time with a perfect score. I've been playing for about six months, ever since I got back from Homecoming at Cornell, and it's a lot of fun.
As I mentioned last time, Cornell hockey made it into the NCAA Championship. I didn't make it out to Green Bay, so I had to settle for watching the Big Red play here on the East Coast. Since my house doesn't subscribe to ESPNU, I had to find an alternative location to view the game. For Friday night's game against Michigan, that ended up being the Buffalo Wild Wings in Centereach. By the time I walked into the place, Cornell was supposedly down 2-0, but immediately thereafter, the second Wolverine goal was ruled out. Cornell tied it later in the period and took the lead in the second. That was followed by one of the craziest sequences I've seen in a hockey game. Cornell took a five-minute penalty, and then took another one for two minutes. The Big Red survived being two men down for that time, and then was awarded a penalty shot on a shorthanded break. It has been a quarter century since a Cornell player - Hockey Hall of Famer Joe Nieuwendyk, to be precise - converted a penalty shot...and that streak continues. Michigan then took a penalty, but nobody score on the four-on-four. Cornell held its 2-1 lead into the third period, until the inevitable tying goal came. Into overtime we go, and it wasn't long. The winning goal, courtesy of Deadspin.
Thus Cornell played Ferris State the following night for a berth in the Frozen Four against Union. If you've never heard of Ferris State, it's a Division II school located in Big Rapids, Michigan. If you've never heard of Big Rapids, it's in the northwest part of the Lower Peninsula. If you've never heard of Michigan...all right, I won't carry this on any further. I watched this one in Manhattan at a bar called The Australian. Neither team scored in the first two periods, but Ferris put one on the board a few seconds into the third. Cornell answered right back, and then got five minutes of power play time. They didn't score - and twelve seconds after it ended, Ferris State got the game winner. Yet again, Cornell's season ends in the NCAA round of eight. But at least this run washed away the bitter taste of the ECAC semifinal loss to Harvard, and gave the fans a lot of hope about what next season might bring.
A couple of recent developments have taken place in the job process. One was slightly bad, and another has the potential to be very good. At least there's some type of movement after a long period of stagnation.
