With its captains selected and new class now on campus, Cornell men’s lacrosse announced its 2018 regular season schedule Monday afternoon, which begins at Colgate and, hopefully for the Red, results in at least a trip to New York City for the Ivy League tournament.
After a Feb. 10 scrimmage with Drexel, Cornell will look to open its 2018 campaign with a 14th-straight win against Colgate on Feb. 17. Thanks to a 15-6 win over the Raiders at home last year, which snapped a five-game winless start to the season, the Red holds a 43-7-1 record in the series.
Cornell will stay in-state for its next three matchups, including its home opener against Hobart on Feb. 24 for another installment of one of lacrosse’s oldest rivalries. The Statesmen took the 137th meeting between the two last year by a margin of 16-8, ending a 12-year skid to Cornell. The Red’s other two Empire State matchups include a trip on the road to Albany before a tilt with Binghamton at Schoellkopf.
The Red will then look to avenge 2017’s season-opening 20-10 loss to Penn State when it converges with the Nittany Lions at US Lacrosse’s Tierney Field in Sparks, Maryland. In the past two years Cornell and Penn State have met, the Nittany Lions have taken both matchups.
Cornell opens its 2017 Ivy slate at home the following weekend, hoping to end a two-game skid against defending conference champion Yale. The Red is currently in the midst of its first losing streak to the Bulldogs since the mid-1990s.
Penn sits next for the Red, which will look to avenge a 10-9 loss to the Quakers in 2017. That loss eventually came back to bite Cornell, as Penn advanced to the Ivy tournament over Cornell thanks to the tie-breaking win on March 25.
After Penn sits Air Force for the Red’s second-ever matchup with the Falcons. The only other meeting came in the 1968 season-opener, a 9-6 win for Cornell in Boca Raton, Florida.
A road date with Dartmouth and a home matchup with Harvard — the team’s first two Ivy victories in 2017 — sit next for Cornell before the highly-anticipated Syracuse matchup, which serves as the only consecutive home game for Cornell in 2018. The Orange trounced Cornell at home last year, despite six points from now-sophomore attacker Jeff Teat. Syracuse owns a 65-38-1 record in the series.
Cornell wraps up non-league play against Lehigh the next weekend on the road before its final two regular season games of the year, home against Brown and on traveling to Princeton — a loss and upset win for Cornell last year, respectively.
Overall, Cornell will look to rebound this year from a 5-8 2017 campaign, which followed a marginally better 6-7 2016 — the first consecutive losing seasons for the program in two decades. With a new face at interim head coach in Peter Milliman, a core of young players now with collegiate experience, a slew of senior leaders returning and a freshman class “seeking to provide competition at all positions,” the Red hopes to walk away from Princeton on April 28 with a ticket punched to the first Ivy tournament to be held in the concrete jungle.
2018 Men’s Lacrosse Schedule:
Feb. 10: at Drexel (scrimmage)
Feb. 17: at Colgate
Feb 24: Home opener vs. Hobart
March 3: at Albany
March 6: vs. Binghamton
March 10: vs. Penn State^
March 17: vs. Yale*
March 24: at Penn*
March 27: vs. Air Force
March 31: at Dartmouth*
April 7: vs. Harvard*
April 10: vs. Syracuse
April 14: at Lehigh
April 21: vs. Brown*
April 28: at Princeton*
Home games are emboldened
* – Ivy League matchup
^ – Neutral location