Covering All College Sports Since 2012
Patriot League Women’s Basketball conference play continues this week with five games on Wednesday, January 8, four on Saturday, Jan. 11 and one on Sunday, January 12. This week features 10 women’s basketball games around the Patriot League with all 10 on the Patriot League Network (PLN).
Tennessee will look to cap the 2019 season with its sixth straight win as the Volunteers take on Indiana in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. The Big Orange are playing in their first bowl game since the 2016 Music City Bowl.
The game will mark Virginia’s first appearance in the Orange Bowl. The Cavaliers are 9-4 overall and the ACC Coastal Division champion. The Orange Bowl will mark UVA’s 21st bowl appearance and third consecutive under fourth-year head coach Bronco Mendenhall.
Mississippi State goes for its third straight victory when it meets Louisville of the Atlantic Coast Conference in the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl on Monday from Nashville’s Nissan Stadium.
A berth in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game is on the line as Ohio State and Clemson do battle in this year’s PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
In a way it’s very fitting that Michigan State returns to the Bronx to play a football game, as there is an amazing Michigan State and Fordham connection.
Mack Brown took on the challenge of getting North Carolina back into postseason play in November of 2018, and a year later, after some dancing, some oh-so-close monumental upsets and some agonizing losses, Mack has brought North Carolina back. All that’s left for him to so is get a win and head into the offseason with a winning record.
BYU vs. Hawai’i (New Orleans Bowl) When: Tuesday, December 24th, 8:00 PM EST/3:00 PM HST Where: Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, Hawai’i TV/Streaming: ESPN, WatchESPN (subscription req’d) Hawai’i Bowl History (Last 6) Dec. 22nd, 2018: Louisiana Tech 31, Hawai’i 14 Dec. 24th, 2017: Fresno State 33, Houston 27 Dec. 24th, 2016: Hawai’i 52, Middle Tennessee State 35 Dec. 24th,.
Appalachian State vs. UAB (New Orleans Bowl) When: Saturday, December 21st, 9:00 PM EST Where: Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana TV/Streaming: ESPN, WatchESPN (subscription req’d) New Orleans Bowl History (Last 6) Dec. 15th, 2018: Appalachian State 45, Middle Tennessee State 13 Dec. 16th, 2017: Troy 50, North Texas 30 Dec. 17th, 2016: Southern Miss 28, Louisiana-Lafayette.
Happily for Bulls fans, Buffalo was able to reload, not rebuild, as they competed for the MAC East title all season and easily qualified for bowl eligibility with a 49-30 win over Toledo and, for good measure, pounded Bowling Green 49-7 the following week, leaving zero doubt.
On a wet, snowy evening at Stewart Stadium, Weber State’s defense and special teams were the main reason the Wildcats defeated their bitter rivals Montana 17-10 and advanced to the semifinals of the FCS Playoffs for the first time in school history.
“The only thing that is fun about this game is winning it,” Army head coach Jeff Monken said this week.
OGDEN, UT – Kennesaw State jumped to a 17-12 halftime lead over Weber State in their FCS Playoff matchup, but the host Wildcats used a big defensive play to take the lead and rode its momentum to a 26-20 second-round win.
Hosting their first FCS Playoff games since 2015, the Grizzlies put on a show for their home fans, setting program and national records as they defeated Southeastern Louisiana 73-28 in the second round of the FCS Playoffs.
Illinois State RB James Robinson followed up his 297 yard effort last week against Southeast Missouri State with a 210 yard rushing game against Central Arkansas, including two touchdowns as the Redbirds defeated Central Arkansas 24-14 in the second round of the FCS Playoffs.
FCS Second Round Playoff Matchup: Illinois State at Central Arkansas Where: Estes Stadium, Conway, Arkansas When: Saturday, December 7th, 3:00 PM TV/Streaming: ESPN3 (subscription req’d) Illinois State Redbirds (9-4), Head Coach: Brock Spack Missouri Valley Normal, Illinois In order for Illinois State to come away with a victory in its first-round playoff game.
The oddsmakers don’t give them much of a chance – on a popular gambling site, Nicholls was a 28 point underdog.
It’s the nightmare scenario for any playoff team – seeing your starting quarterback go down midway through the second quarter with an injury. That’s exactly the scenario Kennesaw State found themselves in against Wofford, a battle between triple-option teams with hard-running quarterbacks.
To the delight of Owl fans, QB Jonathan Murphy was able to carve his name on the plank of champions as he rallied his team to a thrilling 28-21 win.
Monmouth piled up 502 yards of total offense as the Hawks beat Holy Cross 44-27 in the first-ever FCS Playoff appearance for the program and the only head coach they have ever had, Kevin Callahan.
Though they tripped up against 4-8 Lafayette, behind a strong, young defense the Crusaders pulled off an early upset of New Hampshire early and used their defense to outlast their opponents. If this game is to remain close, Holy Cross will need to make this game a slow-down, field-position battle.
Two-time defending national champion North Dakota State (12-0) tops the bracket as the number one seed after winning the Missouri Valley Football Conference. The Bison are making their 10th consecutive and 15th overall appearance in the championship.
The FCS Playoff Committee has a pretty unenviable job this time around in trying to determine the playoff seeds. With a crazy day of upsets of Montana, South Dakota State, Illinois State and others, teams who looked like certain seeds suddenly look like they are going to be practicing on Thanksgiving Day instead.
It is rare that the MVP of the Lehigh/Lafayette game is a kicker, but that’s exactly what happened this afternoon at Murray Goodman Stadium as the Leopards beat their bitter Mountain Hawk rivals for the first time in five years in a 17-16 win.
This season, though, there isn’t the same feeling of continuity that permeated many of these other games. Part of that comes from the fact that, unusually for The Rivalry, both teams are packed with young underclassmen, many of them playing in their first Rivalry ever. Normally, The Rivalry is filled with narratives. This season, it feels like the master narrative is waiting to be written with two teams that, even at this late date, have unknowns.
Going into this game, Lehigh’s defense had a serious challenge on their hands – to stop, or a least slow down, the leading rusher in FCS, Sacred Heart RB Julius Chestnut. For three quarters, they did just that, but in the fourth quarter Chestnut would score a pair of rushing touchdowns to lifted Sacred Heart to a 13-6 victory.
I’ve been doing this FCS Playoff field predictions a very long time now, and it’s been a very strange year. It’s not customary for so many autobids to be in doubt this late in the season. But this week, a lot of results came in that clarified five of the autobids.
It’s highly unusual for Lehigh (4-5, 3-2) and Sacred Heart (6-4, 4-2)to be playing a non-conference game this late in the season, but for both teams, important milestones remain.
Two weeks to go, and how many autobids have been clinched? How about… none?
We are two weeks away from the end of the Patriot League regular season, and there is a very distinct possibility that the winner of the League is going to have a losing record.
It was, depending on your perspective, either the roughest Lehigh offensive performance of the season, or the greatest Bucknell defensive performance of the year.
It’s somewhat serendipitous, according to John Feinstein of The Washington Post, that this week’s battle of undefeated teams between Dartmouth and Princeton came to be.
Holy Cross will be trying to cement their hold on the top of the Patriot League standings when they host Lafayette this weekend. They could clinch at least a share of the title and FCS Playoff autobid if they win and Lehigh loses at Bucknell.
Most games between head coaches in their first years at a school are ones where the opponents need to feel themselves out, thanks to unfamiliarity. That will not be the case this weekend, as Cecchini and Gilmore have more than two decades of awareness of one another and their tendencies. It should have the feel of a brotherly fight.
For the players of both programs, it was more about demonstrating how much they had improved over that battle of 1-6 teams on a wet, rainy, homecoming game a year ago in Worcester. Both teams showed exactly how much more they were than those teams with losing records last year, and in the end, Holy Cross showed that they were one play better than the Mountain Hawks on this afternoon.
There are three more football weekends to go before FCS Playoff Selection Sunday, where FCS Nation hopes ESPN pronounces all the schools’ names correctly and don’t forget to specify who is home, and who is away in the first round.
In the final minute, Holy Cross made one more play than Lehigh.
Undefeated Princeton and Dartmouth look to not slip up going into a potentially enormous matchup of undefeated teams in the Bronx.
November in the Lehigh Valley is known for potentially frosty temperatures, blazing red and yellow fall colors, and apple picking season.
Don’t expect anything chill at Murray Goodman Stadium this Saturday, where the combined heat of the Holy Cross Crusaders (4-4, 2-0) and Lehigh Mountain Hawks (4-3, 3-0) should be radiating from both teams.
Remember when I had Villanova as a seed? Good times. Harken back to when I had Delaware in my field? Yes, way back when – last week. Do you recall the time that I had more than two Southland teams in my bracket? It’s so long ago, why, when it happened, North Dakota State and.
After their 27-24 win over Georgetown – their third conference game won on very memorable final plays – what is the Mountain Hawks’ secret for pulling out these conference wins?
Another week, another nail-biting game with the game in doubt in the closing seconds. Fans of of the Mountain Hawks might have been standing, perhaps cheering, perhaps looking away, unable to watch whether the 27 yard FG goes through the uprights.
The Patriot League sees Fordham with a week off and features six conference members in action. Lehigh looks to get their conference record to 3-0, Holy Cross looks to keep pace and remain undefeated in league play, and Lafayette and Bucknell will do battle to see who can remain in the title race.
Last season, Lehigh football suffered through a bunch of firsts that Mountain Hawk football fans had no desire to experience. One important one came on the campus of Georgetown on October 20th, 2018.
Up until that point, in the modern era, the Lehigh football team had not lost to Georgetown.
This week, two of the nation’s unbeaten teams play tricky challengers: one in prime time on Friday night, and the other takes on a rival in one of the marquee games of Saturday.
As of right now, the FCS Playoff field feels like the show “Who’s Line Is It Anyway”, where the picks are just random improvisations of things that end up not making any sense. Nonetheless, we’ll keep pressing on, trying to figure out some version of truth.
Before the biggest game of the year so far for the Lehigh football program, senior WR Dev Bibbens was left off the depth chart for the Fordham game. Two weeks ago, the New Hope, Pennsylvania native was leveled by a vicious hit to the midsection from a Colgate defensive back, and he didn’t return in.
This week, an unlikely battle for first place in the Patriot League is on the line in the Bronx, and Lafayette and Georgetown battle it out to see if they can get themselves into the league title race.
Last week’s battle of unbeatens ended up not much of a battle – 4-0 Dartmouth jumped all over Yale early and never looked back, crushing the Bulldogs 42-10 and established themselves every bit the frontrunners for the Ivy League title. As we sit and wait for the inevitable clash of titans between Dartmouth and Princeton later in the season, let’s take a look at this week’s games.
Both teams find themselves sitting tied atop the Patriot League standings, playing for first place, and unlike last year, there will be no shortage of passion on the field at Jack Coffey Field at 1:00 PM this Saturday.
Welcome, America, to the FCSP’TID Cover Photo Curse.
Eastern Washington, UC Davis, Jacksonville State, and, last week, Montana State graced this space as rising teams that were all but guaranteed spots in the FCS playoffs after a particularly impressive win, or a gut-check performance.
