Cornell dominated Canisius in their last outing in a 16-5 rout. They won 16 of 22 faceoffs against Canisius, which set up their game. This statistic could be especially important considering the Lions were beat in faceoffs 16-9 against Georgetown.
"Lacrosse tends to rely on goaltending and faceoffs," Thiel said. "Against Georgetown we were solid on goal and excellent on faceoffs in the first half, but we did a poor job in the second half. We should be consistent and keep it to 50-50 as much as we can."
To reach the NCAA tournament the Lions will most likely need to win the ECAC, but for any chance of receiving an at-large bid the players know every high profile non-conference game like this one will count.
"Every game on our schedule will be big in that respect," senior Sean Droogan said. "We focus on the ECAC games, but when we have games like this and UVA (Virginia) it's just as important to our goal to make the playoffs."
A player on each team is coming into the contest on a hot streak as Cornell sophomore Andrew Collins has eight goals in his last two games as does Penn State attacker Will Driscoll.
Cornell plays a similar style to the Lions, as they also prefer to push the pace of the game. That is something that senior Tim Emmick felt that the Lions didn't do as well against Georgetown.
"We just got to play our own game," Emmick said. "We didn't have our best game and we didn't get the ball off the carpet. We didn't get the running game going and the transition like we did in the first three games."
