PREVIEW OF LEHIGH AT RICHMOND, 1st ROUND OF THE 2024 FCS PLAYOFFS – Mountain Hawks Will Encounter the Poetry of Past, Present And Future This Saturday

On By Chuck Burton

BETHLEHEM, PA – For the first time since 2017, the Lehigh Mountain Hawks (8-3) will be returning to the FCS Playoffs, and their opponents they drew, the Richmond Spiders (10-2), couldn’t be a more interesting opponent.

Many, including myself, were surprised that the Mountain Hawks were not matched up with nearby Villanova, which is maybe an hour’s drive from South Bethlehem and would have been the closest, easiest trip for both schools.

But there is a large amount of poetry in what the FCS Playoff Committee did for Lehigh, even if they maybe didn’t realize it when they matched the schools up.

Richmond and Lehigh will be leaguemates next season in the Patriot League, so this week’s game is a preview of a Patriot League matchup next year and beyond. (In fact, they will meet in Lehigh’s home opener next season.)

But that’s not the only poetry of the matchup.

Not only was Richmond the site of one of Lehigh’s greatest playoff wins ever in 1998, several of the players actually have played against the Spiders before in 2022, and Lehigh head coach Kevin Cahill coached against the Spiders once as a member of Yale’s coaching staff.

This gives this weekend’s game at Robins Stadium a lot more juice than your typical first round FCS Playoff game. Not only will the game be inhabited by both teams’ playoff past and their more recent matchups, it will be an early preview of a future conference game – and yearly matchups – that next year will feature two conference champions.

The Past

The last time Lehigh and Richmond meet in the playoffs as conference champions, it was in 1998, a game that ended up defining a whole program in a brand new way.

Undefeated Lehigh, champions of the then non-scholarship Patriot League, were lightly regarded nationally, and Richmond, playing in what is now the CAA, were seen as the champions of the dominant I-AA football conference at the time. Richmond was the 3 seed, and Lehigh the 14 seed.

It was a classic.

“Going undefeated put us in the same league with some great teams. Winning a playoff game puts us in a different category. … We just wanted a chance to get in the tournament. Then you have to prove yourself,” Lehigh coach Kevin Higgins said at the time.

The Spiders opened up a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter before the Mountain Hawks would claw back, opening up a 21-14 lead in the fourth quarter when RB Ron Jean broke a tackle – and another – and escaped a lunge at his facemask – and ran 25 yards for the go-ahead score.

The Spiders then scored a field goal and a touchdown to take the lead – and then the extra point was blocked by CB Sam Brinley, which was critical. The very next drive, QB Phil Stambaugh, WR Kody Fedorcha and the Lehigh offense marched down the field to set up Lehigh PK Jaron Taaffe ‘s 30 yarder to secure a 24-23 upset victory.

It would be such a critical game in establishing Lehigh’s credibility as a football program on the national stage. That, and the extremely narrow loss the following week to eventual champions UMass, really made I-AA take notice.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that things were different for Lehigh after that win. Broader I-AA started to notice the Mountain Hawks. The Patriot League was no longer cannon fodder. National championship material? In the face of Appalachian State and Georgia Southern’s powerhouses, maybe an outside chance. But they forced themselves into the conversation.

The Present

Both QB Dante Perri and LB Mike DeNucci are familiar with the Spiders. They played them before at Murray Goodman back in 2022. Unfortunately for them, the memories of this game wouldn’t be as fun.

Playing fast from the very first play, Richmond QB Reece Udinski found one of his long-time favorite targets, WR Jakob Herres, for a 16 yard gain, which was the first play in a 10 play, 74 drive that finished with a 13 yard TD pass to WR Leroy Henley.

The drive took a little over four minutes, with Udinski connecting on all eight of his pass attempts during that first drive.

But Udinski wasn’t finished.

He would go 17-for-17 on his first 17 passing attempts, scoring two passing touchdowns before his first incompletion midway through the second quarter. One of them would go to a wide-open RB Aaron Dykes in the end zone on a broken play, while later in the half he would add another score with a 2 yard TD run.

The end result was a 30-6 drubbing that the seniors won’t forget.

“When we did play consistent, and everyone was doing their 1/11, things were OK,” LB Mike DeNucci said after that game, who led the Mountain Hawks with nine tackles and one sack. “But there were too many missed tackles, missed assignments. At halftime, we all sat down, talked together as a D unit, talking about, we’ve got to be more consistent. Come out firing, hit the blitzes harder. We knew they were going to do those quick speed outs and that’s what we tightened up. “

This game, hopefully, will redefine the Lehigh football “present”. Back in 2022, both programs were miles apart, and it was very visible on the field. And while the Mountain Hawks are clearly light years ahead of where they were in 2022, there is always that lingering question about how close they are to the class teams of the CAA, of which Richmond certainly is.

A little blurb in this week’s game notes from Lehigh reveal what the present has been for Lehigh – they haven’t beaten a CAA opponent since 2013, when the Mountain Hawks squeaked past nationally-ranked New Hampshire at home 34-27.

Since then, the Mountain Hawks have not only lost to CAA schools repeatedly during the regular season, including twice against Richmond, they’ve been pounded in particular in the FCS Playoffs. A worrying sign in those games – a breakdown on defense, giving up 64 (!) points to New Hampshire in 2016, and “only” giving up 59 to Stony Brook in 2017.

Defensively, it goes without saying there needs to be improvement from those two performances if Lehigh is to have a chance in Robins Stadium. Judging by an amazing season, amazing coaching by head coach Kevin Cahill, and a tremendous season for the record books, this 2024 football team seems poised to be better. But is “better” enough to make it competitive, or win – to change the recent past?

The Future

Richmond becomes a member of the Patriot League in 2025, a fact that has many in the league both excited, and nervous.

Richmond, as a member of the CAA, is built different than the current teams of the Patriot League. One of the things that makes them different is their extensive use of redshirting.

One of the major questions when the shift in conferences was announced was the redshirting question – was the Patriot League going to change their rules to allow it? Can Lehigh now redshirt players?

For years, the Patriot League had as their policy that only medical and hardship waivers would be considered for redshirts, only somewhat mirroring the Ivy League’s policy. But the CAA had no such restrictions, and Richmond head coach Russ Huesman had been an enthusiastic adopter of that approach.

The answer to the question “has anything changed?” was not completely spelled out in public. At best, it felt like there might be ways within the system to do more redshirting in a similar way to how Richmond does it now. But it’s not abundantly clear if Richmond will be able to redshirt with wild abandon the way they did before.

One thing that was non-negotiable, it seems, is the Academic Index the league uses. That system, which ensures incoming football players have representative grades as the rest of the student body, was still set in stone – that wasn’t going anywhere, nor did it seem like it was going to be any sort of issue for Richmond to adhere to the Academic Index, either.

That aspect may make this game – maybe – feel more like when full-scholarship Holy Cross visited Murray Goodman back in 1991.

In that game, Holy Cross had their scholarship players grandfathered in, and upstart Lehigh was there, playing without formal football scholarships, playing them to a standstill in a thrilling 43-42 game.

The future of the Patriot League looks very bright with Richmond in it, one way or another. Richmond, a former I-AA Champion after all, feels like the Patriot League model is something they’d like to work with, otherwise they wouldn’t have joined.

For a team like Lehigh, though, this game is saying just as much that they are ready to be a part of this national stage again – for the Patriot League to stand toe to toe among the best schools in the East, if not the nation. It’s as much about Lehigh as it is about the systems.

For Patriot League fans and Lehigh fans, this one feels huge. Similar to 1998, Lehigh – and even the Patriot League as it exists now – has lots to prove. They will want to show that it’s not 2021 and 2022 anymore, where Richmond almost shut out the Mountain Hawks twice and racked up 30 points apiece against them. And it may also be the spark of a fierce future conference rivalry – between nationally ranked teams.

This one has the juice. I can’t wait for Saturday.

FCS PLAYOFFS FIRST ROUND
LEHIGH MOUNTAIN HAWKS (8-3, PATRIOT) AT RICHMOND SPIDERS (10-2, CAA)
WHERE: Robins Stadium/Richmond, VA, Saturday, November 30th, 2:00 pm
STREAMING: ESPN+
TV CREW: PxP – Jason Ross; Analyst – Tyoka Jackson
RADIO: BROADCAST (Fox Sports Lehigh Valley 94.7 FM/1230 AM; LVFoxSports.com):
RADIO CREW: PxP – Matt Kerr; Analysts – Mike Yadush, Connor Brown

LFN’s Drink of the Week

I don’t ordinarily reuse “Drinks of the Week”, but this one, like this Lehigh team, is an exception. This mixed drink – the most “Richmond” drink possible – was a pre-Civil War mixed drink recipe named for a freed slave called Jasper Crouch, who also was a renowned mixologist. Officially it’s called “Jasper Crouch’s Quoit Club Punch”, but in 2022 I re-name it “Jasper’s Lemonade”, because it deserves a snappier name and a bigger audience. It’s so good, it’s it’s worth the exception. You can find the recipe here.

Scouting Richmond

The Spiders come into this game feeling some disrespect, according to John O’Connor of The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Winners of 10 straight, and the only team in the CAA to have gone undefeated in league play, Richmond rightly thought (like many FCS pundits) that they deserved to be an 8 seed.

“It stinks that we didn’t get a bye week,” sophomore QB Cam Coleman said. “We were hoping we did with it being Thanksgiving and everything. But playing football (around) Thanksgiving is a blessing itself. We’re all very happy to be able to do that. Just the opportunity we’ve put ourselves in position to have is amazing.”

Playing in the FCS Playoffs isn’t a new thing for the Spiders – this will be the third consecutive time they’ve made it. In 2022, when Lehigh last played the Spiders, they made the FCS Playoff field.

“It’s not a shock to be in the playoffs anymore,” Spider LB Wayne Galloway said. “It’s kind of an expectation now rather than hoping and praying that you’re going to get in the playoffs.”

A shock it may no longer be, but it’s worth mentioning that Richmond’s CAA schedule avoided all of the other playoff-bound conference teams (Villanova, New Hampshire and Rhode Island), avoided one of the major teams on the bubble (Stony Brook) and had four conference victories over teams that finished in the cellar of the conference (NC A&T, Hampton, Campbell and Bryant).

Probably Richmond’s most impressive win of the season – and impressive it indeed was – was a 28-9 win over FBS-bound Delaware, handing the Blue Hens their first loss of the season. Super athletic QB Cam Coleman (16-23 passing, 194 yards passing, 79 rushing yards, 3 TDs) had a banner day, while all-conference RB Zach Palmer-Smith added 68 yards and a TD as well. The guy they call ZPS finished the regular season with 1,275 yards rushing and 13 rushing TDs.

Cam Coleman and ZPS could be the most athletic duo Lehigh has faced all season, rivaling Army QB Bryson Daily and RB Kanye Udoh from Lehigh’s season opener vs. Army. To have a chance, they’ll need to keep them both from having big days.

Defensively, too, the Spiders are a very impressive group. DE Jeremiah Grant was a first-team CAA performer with 16 1/2 tackles for loss including 12 1/2 sacks, leading the Spiders’ aggressive 4-3 defense. Like Lehigh, these are not guys that simply hang back and let the game come to them – they are aggressive and blitz often. Also like Lehigh, the Spider defense doesn’t have just one guy getting all the tackles – they are solid across the board, with LB Carter Glassmyer (80 tackles, 2 fumble recoveries) and LB Wayne Galloway (71 tackles, 1 INT).

An intriguing path to victory can be seen in what probably what Richmond’s most inexplicable loss this season, a early loss to Wofford where a series of turnovers were converted into Terrier scores, giving them a big lead and letting Wofford run the ball and grind up clock in a 26-19 win. When the Spiders haven’t turned over the ball, or won the turnover battle, they’ve tended to win.

LFN’s Keys to the Game

  1. Aggressive Defense Needs to Force Turnovers. The Lehigh defense shouldn’t stop doing what has gotten them here – playing aggressive and seizing on turnover opportunities. I believe the team that wins the turnover battle in this game in particular will advance, but forced turnovers will be especially important.
  2. Puncture their confidence early. Richmond is a team playing with confidence, winning ten straight, which is not an easy thing to do. Lehigh is also playing with confidence, winning a bunch of must-win games for weeks, but the team with the best chance to win will be the one who punctures the other’s confidence early. I’d like to see an early big play, maybe on a fake or a trick play, to put that doubt in their minds quickly.
  3. Show Richmond What Lehigh Football Is. Lehigh’s mental toughness, while hard to quantify, has been evident in the last month, with a focus level that is off the charts. It’s been a tough week in the aftermath of the Rivalry, Patriot League honors, and national attention, but I’m pretty confident this Lehigh football team has put all that aside this week because they’ve done so all season. If they do that again – and I think they have – they will not be an easy out.

Fearless Prediction

The FCS Playoffs are an amazing achievement for this most unexpected of Patriot League champions. In a way, Lehigh goes into this game in the perfect spot, with zero expectations and zero to lose. That fact alone makes them dangerous. Add to the fact that this ends up being a Patriot League greeting for the Spiders – meaning Lehigh and Richmond are essentially entering an agreement to play each other every year. To me, this takes the game from “interesting intersectional playoff game” to “juicy matchup”.

Do scholarships and redshirting make a huge difference in terms of favoring the Spiders? In years past, it certainly seemed so in lopsided Richmond wins. Now? It’s hard to say for multiple reasons.

Lehigh’s 8-3 record is impressive when you consider they were 2-9 last season. Yet the Mountain Hawks ended up with only one upper-half GPI win, and that was a squeaker over co-champions Holy Cross. For all the talk of Richmond’s schedule, they do have three upper-half GPI wins, and the Delaware win was very impressive. It was after that game when I thought Richmond might win the CAA.

The fact remains that Richmond will be the toughest opponent Lehigh has played since opening the season at Army. And I’ve consistently kept telling myself how young this team is, and how they haven’t ever been in this situation before – almost trying to tamp down my expectations.

A win here can echo 1998 in many ways. It will be a challenge. But I’ve learned one thing this season – underestimate Lehigh at your peril.

Lehigh 30, Richmond 23

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