About an hour before the puck was scheduled to drop for Harvard’s NCAA quarterfinal with Wisconsin on Saturday night, Brittany Martin finished her warmup and sat down in the third row of the Kohl Center. In the quiet of the still-empty arena, Martin allowed herself a moment of meditation, contemplating the vacant crease in front of her that she would be charged with patrolling for two of the next three periods.

Make that six of the next seven.

In the biggest game of her young collegiate career, the sophomore netminder turned in her best performance, preserving a shutout through regulation and three additional overtimes. When the Badgers’ Jinelle Zaugg finally broke the scoreless stalemate with a goal in the fourth extra session, Martin’s complete ledger read: 127 minutes and nine seconds, 67 saves, one goal allowed.

Dual zeroes hung on the scoreboard for more than four and a half hours, as Martin and her counterpart, Wisconsin sophomore goalie Jessie Vetter, stifled even the best scoring chances, and the more than 5,000 fans in attendance looked on in amazement.

“A lot of it with goaltending is the mental game,” Martin said. “With your team staying there the whole entire game, keeping you fired up, it’s not really a big deal…We were all laughing about it, ‘Seven periods, why not?’”

Martin’s 67 stops shattered her previous high of 48 and tied a 25-year old school record.

“I was just glad I was on the other end with only 30-something [saves],” Vetter said after the game. “We kept peppering her and she played really well tonight. I can’t say enough about her tonight.”

Martin’s litany of clutch saves began in the game’s opening minute and did not abate until the red light went on after Zaugg’s strike. Martin slid left to right to break up a 2-on-1 on the Badgers’ second offensive shift, setting the tone for her evening.

On countless occasions, she dove out of the crease to cover a loose puck, never more fearlessly than when she emerged from a scramble at the far post with the puck early in the third period. Martin was also forced to endure more than the usual quotient of collisions, as she was repeatedly bowled over by hard-charging Wisconsin forwards. But no sight was more frequent than Martin nabbing a slapshot out of the air with her trusty glove.

“Martin played a great game,” Zaugg said. “She has a really good glove and we tried to stay away from the glove but it just kept going there, and she made a lot of great saves.”

After splitting time with freshman Christina Kessler for much of the regular season—the duo started 10 conference games apiece—Martin earned the status of playoff No. 1 with her superior play down the stretch.

She closed the ECAC slate with a whitewash of Brown on Senior Night, and allowed just one goal per contest in a two-game sweep of Yale in the conference tournament’s opening round. Then Martin stumbled in a 4-3 loss to St. Lawrence in the semifinals, but earned a chance at redemption when the Crimson received an at-large bid into the NCAA field and drew defending champion Wisconsin in the first round.

“She was locked in,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “She was prepared. Last weekend, she was disappointed with her performance, and she came back strong. That’s exactly what you want out of a goaltender. She did a tremendous job controlling the defensive end.”

Martin’s earlier best of 48 saves was established in last month’s triple-overtime Beanpot semifinal with Boston College, a bitterly disappointing 4-3 loss that nevertheless prepared the netminder for going the distance and then some.

“Having a game like that during the season just reminds you, ‘Hey, you’re capable,”’ Stone said. “It’s mind over matter—I think our team weathered that really well.”

Martin finishes the 2006-07 season with a 1.33 goals-against average (ranks third in the nation), .945 save percentage (fourth), and six shutouts (fifth), one shy of the program’s single-season record.

And one outstanding performance when her team needed it most.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.