Rested and recharged with two injured players back in the lineup, winless Air Force was handed its worst loss of the season, 7-2 at Niagara.

Freshmen Jacob Marti and Nate Horn scored the first of their respective careers. Alex Schilling earned the start Sunday but was pulled in favor of Zach LaRocque (12 saves) for the third straight conference game. Schilling allowed four goals on nine shots.

“I don’t even know where to start,” coach Frank Serratore said after the “humbling defeat.”

“Not a good night for us obviously.”

Horn’s goal came on the power play, but Niagara certainly won the special-teams battle. The Purple Eagles scored three times with the man advantage and once short-handed. Ryan Cox had one of each.

It took the Falcons (0-5) eight games to get to their first win in 2019-20, but it felt as though they were on the verge of a breakthrough at this point. The first four losses were against strong nonconference opponents and the next two were one-goal games.

But as Serratore pointed out, the Falcons are having trouble even keeping games competitive into the third period right now.

“It didn’t appear like we got any traction at all,” Serratore said.

“All of the teams are going to look like these guys look right now. We’ve gotta get better in every area. It’s as simple as that.”

Marti tied the game at one midway through the first period. The puck spit out to him and he one-timed a shot past Mike Corson (32 saves).

All that seemed to do was provoke the Purple Eagles (2-5-2). Josef Mysak restored the lead 45 seconds later, the first of four unanswered goals.

The shots on goal were 34-24 in Air Force’s favor, but Niagara’s were better, and often the Falcons made it easy for them. The third goal was particularly messy as Christian Gorscak smoked the opposing defense, swerved through traffic, drew Schilling way out and then tapped it through the crease to a wide-open Ryan Naumovski.

One meager accomplishment was keeping former Air Force Falcon Walker Sommer, who transferred to Niagara after his second year, out of the goal column, and Niagara tried hard to get him there. He wound up with the primary assist on the Purple Eagles’ fifth goal.

The teams will meet again Monday.

“The better team won the hockey game tonight,” Serratore said. “We’ve got a long ways to go. We’ve got a young team, we’ve got a thin team.”