2025 NCAA Tournament Day 1 Notebook: Cornell continues dramatic run to extend Mike Schafer's career

TOLEDO, Ohio – Cornell upset No. 2 overall seed Michigan State 4-3 in stunning fashion, and in the process extended head coach Mike Schafer's career in dramatic fashion, again. 

Schafer is retiring after this season, a three-decade long run, that will be remember by Cornell's push through the ECAC conference tournament to win an automatic NCAA bid, upsetting Quinnipiac, in the process, and then carrying it over into the NCAA Tournament against Michigan State. 

Schafer after the game, taking time to reflect on what's happened in the past two weeks, fought back Teras. 

“Whatever happens, happens right?” Schafer said. “You know, I was at peace, just reflecting and kind of praying to God. I was like, ‘just let it be up to your will, whatever happens, happens. And I’m so grateful for what happens now."

Boston University wins ugly

It was about as ugly of an 8-3 win a team could put together. 

Yes, Boston University won big against Ohio State, but the final score was hardly indicative of the play on the ice. 

Ohio State had a 36-23 edge in shots, including a 15-2 barrage in the first period where Boston University only limited the damage to 1-0 thanks to a goal line save by Gavin McCarthy. 

In fact, Ohio State captain Patrick Guzzo failing to finish that chance might have been the biggest difference in a chaotic hockey game, because in the end Boston University's talent won out despite the Terriers lack of much structure. 

It was most notable in the third period, where Aiden Celebrini, Jack Hughes, Cole Eiserman, Jack Harvey, and Cole Hutson turned a 3-3 tie into a blowout with a collection of pretty goals, albeit aided by a rough stretch for Ohio State goalie Logan Terness. 

Boston University was able to get away with, in part, because of freshman goalie Mikhail Yegorov, who stopped 33 shots and steadied a porous Terrier defense. 

Yegorov said after the game the first period gave him flashbacks to earlier this season, when he playing in the USHL with the Omaha Lancers – one of the worst teams in the USHL, where he once faced 66 shots in a game back in December. 

For the Terriers, who will play the winner of Michigan State and Cornell on Saturday, it's a bit of a wake-up call, especially after having similar issues in the Hockey East Tournament.

No. 1 knows how it happens

Hard to watch Michigan State struggle to put Cornell away, just because they played so well and missed a few too many opportunities to put the Big Red away. Cornell only led this game for its final 10 seconds — about 240 times fewer seconds than MSU held their various leads.

That was the first upset of the tournament, and it featured the Toledo regional's 1 seed losing in regulation to a team that would not have qualified for the tournament if not for an autobid. Everywhere else in the country, the top seeds are hoping a similar fate does not befall them.

But this is what Cornell has been doing for a while now. They might not look great, but they limit their mistakes and convert on the few they get, including those they generate for themselves. You might say the way they play is custom-built for tournament time, because they're a shot-limiting juggernaut with a goalie who has often been elite in his career and is now catching fire at the exact right time. Their next game is Saturday against a BU team that just scored eight goals, so that one should be, shall we say, a clash of styles.

Big Ten bloodbath

The Big Ten entered the tournament with four teams participating. Three of them played today, and all of them lost. Michigan State suffered a brutal loss to Cornell on a late power-play goal, Ohio State got bludgeoned by BU, and Minnesota lost in overtime to UMass.

The conference is now done to just one team, No. 13 Penn State, which plays Friday on what is effectively home ice, but will do so against third-seeded Maine. There is real potential here for all four Big Ten representatives to get bounced in the first round, three by Hockey East teams.

It's a calamitous turn of events for a conference that had a lot of reason to feel good about its Frozen Four chances, and now has to hope that the Nittany Lions, who got really hot down the stretch before stumbling in the conference semis, can pull a rabbit out of their collective hat. It will not be easy.

Tough day for Richter finalists

All four of the finalists for the Mike Richter award are in the NCAA tournament. Two played today, two will play tomorrow.

The guys who watched from their hotel rooms are hoping for better fates than their counterparts had today. Michigan State's Trey Augustine stopped just 17 of 21 in a regulation loss for which his team was heavily favored, which could dent his candidacy because final votes for the award aren't due until after this weekend.

A few minutes later, Alex Tracy of Minnesota State suffered the same fate, at least as far as the won-lost record goes. But his team lost in double overtime, and he stopped 42 of 44. Very different performances but, unfortunately for them, very similar results.

Augustine's sophomore season — in which he went 19-7-4 — ends with him holding a .924 save percentage in 29 games, good for 12th in the country. However, his save percentage in the past 13 games was just .912, with a 7-4-2 record. Good, but not great.

Tracy, meanwhile, got his save percentage for the season, which already led the nation, up to .946. He's allowed just 13 goals in his last 11 games, during which time he stopped 96 percent of the shots he faced.

Stat of the day (maybe the 21st century)

Noting all that stuff above about BU not playing very well, it was impossible not to laugh out loud at the box score that showed how effective the Terriers' offense was. They scored eight goals on 23 shots, and a bunch of them weren't even of particularly high quality. In fact, it was eight goals for BU on just 2.1 expected. Extremely funny. You gotta laugh. Unless you're Ohio State.

Saturday schedule finalized

ESPN and the NCAA left the times for the final games of the two regionals that played today up in the air until today, presumably based on who they thought would draw attendance and ratings the best. Well, the two teams closest to Toledo (Michigan State and Ohio State) lost, so they made that Saturday quarterfinal game the 4 p.m., Eastern, start.

That means, out in Fargo, it will be Western Michigan and UMass at 6:30 p.m., Eastern.