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You are probably coming to this preview to get a breakdown on the big game in Murray Goodman Stadium this weekend, where Richmond (0-0, 1-1) will take on Lehigh (1-0, 1-1) in a really tough out-of-conference battle for the home team. Indulge me for a moment, though, while I talk Lord of the Rings.
Despite getting outgained 422-306; despite losing the turnover battle (Lehigh turned it over twice, Georgetown 0 times); despite giving up four first downs with penalties and running 30 fewer offensive plays than the Hoyas, the Mountain Hawks lined up with 1:04 to play with the ability to deny Georgetown’s two point conversion and preserve the win – and they did so, putting them, at least for now, atop the Patriot League standings.
Despite the fact it’s only the second game of the season, it’s hard to overstate the importance of this game to establish either Lehigh (0-0, 0-1) or Georgetown (0-0, 1-0) as Patriot League contenders in 2022.
In front of 6,101 enthusiastic fans, many of them students, the No. 5 ranked Villanova Wildcats did what was expected of them, running out to a big lead en route to a 45-17 victory.
When I look at Lehigh’s 2022 season opener this weekend at Villanova, I see the ingredients of a possible rivalry, but the truth is, the game between the Mountain Hawks and Wildcats is not a rivalry.
There is also something that feels different about this group than those of the last few years – a feeling that maybe, just maybe, the program is on the verge of turning a corner.
On Patriot League Media Day, one theme kept recurring when head coach Tom Gilmore, QB Dante Perri, and DL Dean Colton were talking about the upcoming season: leadership.
He was a great man, taken from us too soon from a horrible disease. I know, because I had the honor of talking to him about his passion, Lehigh football, for his entire hall-of-fame coaching career.
“We landed some very good talent and some are capable of helping early,” Lehigh head coach Tom Gilmore told me by email.
This Saturday, college football’s most-played Rivalry will contest its 157th meeting between the Lafayette Leopards (3-7) and Lehigh Mountain Hawks (2-8), and the hope is that it will be, well, normal.
In terms of the Lehigh/Lafayette Rivalry, however, which resumes this weekend in the 157th meeting between these two schools, for Leopard and Mountain Hawk fans, I think, college football seemed to end on that day on November 23rd, 2019, and never really quite seemed to get back to the college football that fans once knew before they learned what COVID was and how it was to impact their lives.
It was a game that wasn’t handed to them, either by Georgetown or Mother Nature, and they fought through and won.
In the 85th meeting between Bucknell and Lehigh on the football field, the Mountain Hawks rode a friendly home-like atmosphere on the road at Christy Matthewson Stadium to end a long consecutive game losing streak by a score of 38-6.
For three quarters, it didn’t really feel like a battle between a winless team (Lehigh, 0-8, 0-3) and a team still with an eye on a conference championship and an FCS Playoff appearance (Holy Cross, 6-2, 3-0).
“Who are these guys?”
While it’s long been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, the images racked up through 59 minutes of play between Lehigh and Fordham were enough to provide an endless supply of storylines.
Will Lehigh be able to keep this game competitive? It’s not a question that has been too very often asked about the Mountain Hawks (0-6, 0-1) over the years.
The Penn Quakers leveled their season record at 2-2 after outlasting Lehigh 20-0 at Franklin Field this Saturday.
a turnaround this Saturday could very well set up the remainder of a successful football season for the Mountain Hawks, and make a lot of people forget their early season struggles.
The greatest thing about this rivalry game every year is that the stakes are always higher, and in recent years the fact that it has been earlier in the schedule has meant that there is a critical nature of this game.
BETHELEHEM, PA – Lehigh’s offensive woes continued against a daunting, precise Princeton team, losing 32-0 in front of a crowd of 7,050 at Murray Goodman Stadium this afternoon.
In facing nationally-ranked Villanova, nationally-ranked Richmond, the Mountain Hawks have played two teams that are loaded with 4th- and 5th- year talent that are built to make a run in the FCS Playoffs.
Princeton will be no easier.
It took twenty-three years for Richmond to invite Lehigh back.
Villanova RB Justin Covington ran 18 times for 156 yards and 2 touchdowns, including a 51 yard power run in the second quarter, as the Wildcats cruised to a 47-3 win over Lehigh at Murray Goodman Stadium.
Lehigh will need all the home field advantage it can – Villanova is ranked 16th in the STATS FCS Top 25 and 15th in the FCS Coaches’ Poll.
Lehigh’s offensive struggles don’t have one single source, but what is clear is that any success the Mountain Hawks have in 2021 will have to come from vast improvements across the board.
The success of the 2021 Mountain Hawks will start with the defense – a unit that was, quietly, outstanding last spring and will be the rock on which Lehigh leans as the offense tries to get back to the teams of its offensive-minded past.
At Lehigh there is the hope that less restrictive practices and a return to a normal fall practice will mean a return to more familiar winning ways.
No matter when the game is played, when Lafayette and Lehigh get together on the gridiron, it almost always seems to be close and come down to a few plays.
This April, the same weekend as The Masters, Lehigh and Lafayette will be playing the first-ever Rivalry football game in the spring, a most atypical 156th meeting in the most-played college football game that’s simply called “The Rivalry”.
When you look at it in terms of the development of this team – and how this leads into next fall – there’s a lot more positives to draw than a normal fall season when the team is 0-2.
Two Ethan Torres FGs, one 26 yards, and one 24 yards, were enough to put the Bucknell Bison atop the Patriot League South Division, shutting out Lehigh at Murray Goodman Stadium 6-0.
In a way, the opening drive which ended with zero Lehigh points summed up the entire afternoon.
BETHLEHEM, PA – The Holy Cross Crusaders beat the Lehigh Mountain Hawks 20-3 at Murray Goodman Stadium in the first college football game contested by both schools in over 450 days.
It is uncharted waters for both teams, with plenty of questions to answer playing an unprecedented Patriot League spring football season. But many of the principal contributors in that 24-17 game more than a year ago in Bethlehem will be suiting up tomorrow.
For this Lehigh team, who has gone through this unique journey back to playing games that count, it feels like this weekend is almost as much a celebration of what football means to them as much as it is a Patriot League conference game against Holy Cross at Murray Goodman Stadium at noon this Saturday.
It’s been a very, very long wait, but this weekend, finally, we have a weekend of Patriot League football to look forward to.
“I’ve been very impressed with the enthusiasm and attitude across the board,” Lehigh head coach Tom Gilmore told me. “Getting the opportunity to be on the field and to be working towards competitive opportunities has really motivated everyone. It just feels different out there this semester. There’s an excitement in the air whenever we’re on the field.”
The signing day celebrations sometimes came with masks, but that didn’t make them any less important or meaningful to a group of athletes that have had a senior year like no other.
At the campuses at Lehigh and Lafayette, and the communities that surround them, there is a void in the third week in November, that most are trying to fill with virtual Rivalry activities and hope for a spring football season, making it not a cancelling of The Rivalry, but merely a delay to contest the game when it’s safer to have a more normal gameday experience.
On Tuesday, Lehigh University temporarily suspended training and practices for all sports programs after several Lehigh students tested positive for the coronavirus.
As Clark manned the sidelines at Kidd Brewer Stadium Saturday for the first time as the Mountaineers’ head coach, he drew from his football DNA to direct App State to its 35-20 victory over Charlotte in the 2020 season opener for both teams.
For months, fans, players, and Lehigh football head coach Tom Gilmore knew that this game wasn’t going to happen on this day. But Gilmore is trying to make the best of a difficult situation.
I have five burning questions on the issue that might help to give clarity on what a spring season for the Patriot League might look like.
Hope is not a strategy, and the truth is any form of national strategy has failed in an effort to have college football this fall. In a community like the Lehigh Valley, it’s a crushing loss to the coronavirus.
The Patriot League’s dilemmas, whether the rest of FCS admits it or not, is the FCS’ dilemmas. And as we inch closer to an alleged 2020 college football season, the NCAA needs to make some things very clear before a huge mess happens.
The Patriot League Office announced on Monday guidance regarding the 2020 fall competition, a list of principles to “guide the development of a Patriot League 2020 Athletics Plan.”
Lehigh head coach Tom Gilmore will be the first person to tell you that he’d prefer to have a regular spring assessment season for his football team.
It was an historic week that nobody could have foreseen.
I’m proud to unveil this year’s edition of the Patsy Ratings.
