It's a Wild Time in Central New York

Check out this box score, Friday night from the Brown-Colgate game in Hamilton, N.Y.:

Wow. Some things defy description, and that slew of late Red Raider goals would have to be one of them.

Harvard Coach Ronn Tomassoni's put the "darkhorse" label on Colgate in the preseason, and so far Coach Don Vaughn's scrappy Red Raiders have come through on that call. Slumping to an 0-3 start against the good (Boston University), the bad (UMass Lowell) and the ugly (Merrimack) of Hockey East, Colgate has rebounded with four straight in-conference wins to put it atop the ECAC with St. Lawrence and Harvard with eight points.

Two of those points are courtesy of this game, which will be talked about in Central New York for quite some time. Craig Jardine's goal put the Bears up by four with 5:00 to play, and talking to a Colgate radio personality yielded this story:

"[Clayton] McCaffery scored his goal and we thought it was nice for him. Then [Earl] Cronan and [Bruce] Gardiner put it in, and we were all thinking, damn, we came so close, too.

"And then Gardiner won the face off, and Cronan came straight through the slot and just pumped one in. The place went pretty ballistic."

Well it should have. Colgate hockey had fallen pretty far from its NCAA-finalist year of 1990, and it's good for the ECAC to see the Red Raiders again plundering the competition. Right now, it's playing like a charmed hockey team, and until it snaps out of its spell, Colgate can beat any team in the country.

Pearly Whites: But that still doesn't please Tomassoni. The Crimson skated into Hamilton straight out of a game that, in boxing parlance, could have been "Rocky I," with Harvard as Apollo Creed and home Cornell as the Italian Stallion.

The Crimson wanted to box, the Big Red wanted to slug it out, and at the end, both teams looked like buckets of warm spit.

The finesse game of Harvard suffered a few more injuries; with junior Perry Cohagan sidelined already (separated shoulder), senior Derek Maguire and sophomore Jason Karmanos also took big hits in the third period and sat out the following night.

Maguire will be back for Friday's tilt with Brown, but first-line center Karmanos suffered a clean break of his collarbone and will be out for several weeks.

"It's up to me, really, when it feels comfortable," Karmanos said at practice yesterday. "Yesterday, even breathing was a problem, but already today it feels much better.

Senior forward Sean Wenham and freshman defender Marco Ferrari both saw their first varsity action of their careers; junior Keith McLean, playing in only his second-ever game, pumped in the goal that put the Crimson ahead to stay, that is, until the final two minutes, when Harvard fell prey to some more Raider magic....

A Small Concern: Just in case you were wondering if the Tomassoni and the Crimson are concerned about their propensity towards letting leads slip away, you bet they are.

Tomassoni worked his men hard in practice yesterday, falling back on a message worthy of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: "Let's be greedy out there; don't stop until you hear the final buzzer."

Harvard will practice again today and early on Thanksgiving before splitting up (briefly) for turkey and mashed potatoes.

And the first "official" day of Christmas shopping will find the Crimson searching for a special gift--a home-and-home sweep of topsyturvy Brown. COLGATE, 6-5 (OT) at Hamilton, N.Y. Brown  2  1  2  0  --  5 Colgate  1  0  4  1  --  6

First Period

Bro--Fabbro (unassisted) :11.

Col--Cronan (Fogarty) 15:51.

Bro--Jones (Martino, Tragio) 18:31.

Second Period

Bro--Jones (Traggio, Kaban) 16:54.

Third Period

Bro--Kaban (Jones, Jardine) 4:57 (PPG).

Bro--Jardine (Trach, Mulhern) 14:25.

Col--McCaffery (Wilde, Craig) 17:04 (SHG).

Col--Cronan (Fogarty, DeProfio) 18:17.

Col--B. Gardiner (Fogarty, Gardner) 19:33 (PPG).

Col--Cronan (Fogarty, Gardiner) 19.47.

Overtime

Col--Fogarty (Gardiner, Pamenter) 2:35.

Saves: Bro--Parsons 13-15-6-1-35; Col--Gates 7-0-0-0-7, Murray 0-3-3-0-6

NCAA Poll 1. Michigan (25)  4-0-1  268 2. Maine (2)  6-1-0  236 3. Lake Sup. St.  7-3-0  173 4. BU  4-3-0  172 5. HARVARD  4-1-0  128 6. Wisconsin  6-3-1  126 7. Bowl. Green  6-1-2  109 8. UNH  8-1-0  107 9. Colo. Coll  6-2-2  29 10. St. Lawren.  5-2-0  28

Compiled by the Troy Record, with first-place votes in parentheses, records and total points.