The Big Red machine is coming to Messa Rink next weekend.

Cornell, winners of an ECAC Hockey-best 11 tournament titles, advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-0 rout of Dartmouth in Game 3 of their first-round series Sunday at Lynah Rink. Now, the Big Red face Union starting Friday.

Union and Cornell tied for fourth during the regular season. But the Dutchmen earned the fourth seed and first-round bye by winning the season series against the Big Red. Both games were one-goal contests, and you can expect more of the same this weekend.

While the Big Red have won 11 titles, the Dutchmen have yet to win a series. In 10 tournament appearances, they are 2-19. That will be a topic of discussion leading into this series.

Union is two wins away from reaching the semifinals for the first time. It has been in this position twice before, 1994 and 1997. In 1994, the Dutchmen beat RPI in the first game of the quarterfinals. But the Engineers bounced back to win the series. Three years later, goalie Joel Laing stymied the Dutchmen, leading the Engineers to a series sweep.

Since the 12-team format started in 2003, Union has had home ice five times. It lost to RPI in 2003, Clarkson in 2004 and 2005 and Yale in 2006. But that was all in the first round.

To be this close to making it to the ECACH semifinals should be exciting for everyone in the Union program. And with Cornell fans its dreaded band expected to make the trip to Schenectady, Messa will be rocking this weekend.

That’s it for now. I’ll have my predictions later this week.