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To Colgate fans, Lehigh is returning to the scene of the crime this weekend.
That’s because the Raiders’ last Patriot League conference loss came to Lehigh on their home field, Andy Kerr Stadium, two years ago back on October 7th, 2017.
On a hot, humid late September afternoon at Murray Goodman Stadium, Gilmore won his first football game as head coach, finally outlasting visiting Merrimack 10-3 in a game where defense and special teams were the order of the day.
It wasn’t the sort of game for the NFL’s Red Zone channel. It wasn’t for people who love power rushing, precision passing, or turnover-free ball. But it was a win that the Lehigh Mountain Hawks will happily take. The Lehigh Mountain Hawks had six sacks and kept Merrimack out of the end zone, and rode.
League play starts next week, but the teams of the Patriot League need some help in out-of-conference this week if at all possible. As a conference, the Patriot League is a combined 4-20 out of conference, with one of those wins coming against a Division III school. With an FBS school, several daunting Ivies, and a CAA school, fans of Patriot League schools are hoping for upsets this week.
In the end, the matchup this weekend will be a show-me type of game, one that might set the trajectory for both programs.
It would be nice if Eastern Washington would stop making my sample FCS Playoff brackets look so foolish. The first playoff bracket of the season, I had the Eagles in the field as a seed, mostly on the backs of their potential to win the Big Sky. Two losses and a 1-3 record later, I’m.
Last week was a mixed one for the Patriot League. Georgetown overwhelmed a Division III team 69-0, while Fordham topped Bryant by double digits. The rest of the league was not so lucky, however, losing to two CAA schools (William and Mary, Villanova), a NEC school (Sacred Heart) and a Big Sky school (UC Davis). This week, the entire Patriot League faces daunting challenges against tough competition – three CAA teams and an Ivy League title favorite.
Last week, we shook the dust off our first laughable attempt at picking an FCS Playoff field, and this week, we make another laughable attempt at picking an FCS Playoff field, but with a few more data points so that it’s, well, a tiny bit less hilarious. This week, we saw North Dakota State extend.
UC Davis QB Jake Maier had a tremendous evening in the Aggies’ home opener in UC Davis Health Stadium, going 38-for-49 passing for 389 yards in a 41-13 win over Lehigh Saturday Evening in front of 9.908 fans. Maier threw for four touchdown passes, all coming off of long drives of more than 50 yards. .
Last week, Holy Cross stunned many with their 13-10 upset of New Hampshire, the Patriot League’s first win over a CAA school this season. This week Colgate hopes to make it a second when they face William and Mary on the road. NEC, Big Sky, and even a D-III opponent graces the Patriot League schedule this week.
The Lehigh Mountain Hawks (0-2) make a trip to Davis, California to take on the UC Davis Aggies (1-1). It’s a game that promises to be an interesting clash of East Coast vs. West Coast in UC Davis Health Stadium – a Big Sky vs. Patriot League matchup, which is a rarity during the regular season.
There truly is a never-ending search for content, a fact I was reminded of when I was politely and earnestly asked this week about coming up with an FCS playoff projection for the 2019 season.
0-2 Colgate, who lost two extremely challenging games to Villanova and FBS Air Force to start the season, earn a well-deserved bye week, while the rest of the Patriot League enters action looking to achieve their first victories of the season. As a conference, the Patriot League is a combined 0-8 to start the year.
30. 33. 38. 35. 26. 35. 31. No, that’s not a high school locker combination, or a quarterback audible. Those are the point totals Villanova were able to exact on Lehigh during their last seven meetings on the gridiron, all Wildcat victories. The Mountain Hawks have played the Wildcats seven times in the last eleven.
We live in a strange world where people consume things in bites. People consume bites like video clips quickly, and sometimes they love them enough to keep watching them, enjoy them, and share them with their friends and followers.
That’s what happened today with one play out of the 138 plays that were run in the St. Francis (PA)/Lehigh game this Saturday, the first game of the season for both teams.
It was a game a defensive coordinator could love, and it resulted in a thrilling victory for St. Francis (PA) and an agonizing loss for Lehigh when a late 40 yard FG attempt went wide right for the Mountain Hawks, resulting in a 14-13 win for the Red Flash.
Colgate, who hosted Villanova in Week 0, continues their Theater of Pain tour this week as they travel out to Air Force to take on the Falcons. The rest of the Patriot League kicks off their season this Saturday with a full slate of games
Last season, St. Francis (PA) and Lehigh faced off at the exact same time of year (Saturday, Labor Day weekend) at the exact same weekend. But the teams heading onto the field this weekend are not only filled with new personnel – they are also teams eager to put disappointing, losing season behind them in 2019.
Lehigh has just released their game notes for their 2019 Week 1 tilt against St. Francis (PA), and it’s our first look at Lehigh’s starting two deep. Here are my five takeaways from the list.
Much of preseason practice for a football involves building the skills, plays and toughness that’s required for the full grind of a full season. For the 2019 Lehigh Mountain Hawks, it seems to be about more than just that. With new head coach Tom Gilmore, a big theme that has emerged in preseason training camp.
Colgate’s 2018 defense was one of the most suffocating defenses in recent memory. The Raiders allowed a total of three touchdowns in conference play, two of which were scored by Holy Cross in the first week of the season.
The 2018 Patriot League football produced two tiers of teams. The first tier was Colgate, who had the best defense in FCS, gave a bowl team all they could handle (Army-West Point), and upset perennial FCS powerhouse James Madison before falling to the eventual FCS National Champions North Dakota State. The second tier was… the other six teams of the Patriot League, who all ended with records under .500. In 2019, can anybody get to the Colgate tier?
When your only losses are to a bowl-bound Army team and the eventual FCS National Champions in Fargo, that’s the very definition of a great year. Add to that a defense that only allowed touchdowns in 6 of the 12 games they played – that’s the definition of an amazing year.
Youth. Questions. Fifth.
Those are three words that haven’t normally been associated with Lehigh at the start of preseason training camp in August.
“Over 40% of our team are first-year players,” Gilmore said. “And we’re excited to see what some of these freshman can do to enhance our roster and push the upperclassmen to be the best version of themselves on the field.”
It may be hard to believe, but there are only 32 days left before the Lehigh Mountain Hawks take the field in their home opener versus St. Francis (PA).
After a 1-6 start with an absolutely brutal out-of-conference schedule and an unfortunate loss to Colgate to start the season, Holy Cross under new head coach Bob Chesney ended the season on a 4 game winning streak to close promisingly at 5-6.
After a 1-4 start in out-of-conference, the Hoyas went a surprising 4-2 in conference to finish in 2nd place in the Patriot League en route to a 5-6 record.
A disappointing 3-8 was salvaged somewhat with a 34-3 win against their long-time Rivals Lafayette. With the win, head coach Andy Coen retired as the winningest head coach in program history.
A 70 yard interception return for touchdown allowed the Rams to finish the year on a high note beating Bucknell 17-14, putting the Rams at 2-9 on head coach Joe Conlin’s first year as Fordham’s head football coach.
Going into November, hopes were high that the 3-5 Leopards would turn the corner and do enough to beat their archrival Lehigh in the final game of the season. Instead John Garrett’s team would lose to Holy Cross, Army and their Rivals to close out a disappointing 3-8 season.
A brutal 1-10 season saw the end of the Joe Susan era at Bucknell, with the Bison hiring former Valparaiso head coach and Patriot League assistant coach and player Dave Cecchini to take over the reins of the program.
It’s May. Spring football is over, and the preseason camps don’t start for a couple months. We are in the doldrums of the FCS offseason. But at this point, everyone is 0-0 and hope springs eternal. 127 schools think they have a shot to make the playoffs and compete for an FCS Championship in Frisco..
Lehigh Athletics simply can’t ignore the outside forces of college football and televised sports forever. They need one renovation more than any other – lights in order to open up the possibility of hosting late afternoon or early evening games.
There was no official scoring, but plenty of physical play and competition that made it a fun morning for players and spectators.
The challenges of being a Division I football coach – the recruiting, the staff-building, even the organization of setting up the program the way Gilmore wants it – are clearly something that he relishes, perhaps even a bit more so now.
This Sunday, C.J. returns to Stabler Arena to see his Number 3 raised to the rafters during halftime of Lehigh’s contest against Holy Cross. C.J. is the first – and only – Mountain Hawk basketball player that has gone on to play in the NBA with the Portland Trail Blazers, and, in the process, been an outstanding ambassador for Lehigh as a school.
It’s a news item in the Lehigh Valley when there isn’t an Ivy League team on the football schedule.
Five home dates, including the 155th meeting of college football’s most-played rivalry and the program’s first west coast trip in more than 20 years, highlight Lehigh’s 2019 football schedule, formally unveiled Thursday.
January 9th was finally the day when Lehigh fans finally got to see and meet their new head football coach: Tom Gilmore.
In November, the Mountain Hawks seemed to figure out some of the answers to their questions just in time to win two of their final three games, and in so doing having retiring head coach Andy Coen tie Bill Leckonby for the all-time head coaching wins record at Lehigh.
Top seeded North Dakota State advanced to their eighth straight Division I FCS semifinals with a 35-0 win over eighth seeded Colgate before 16,404 fans at Gate City Bank Field at the Fargodome.
(8) Colgate at (1) North Dakota State When: Saturday, December 8, 11:00 AM CST Where: Gate City Bank Field at the Fargo Dome TV/Streaming: ESPN, Watch ESPN Colgate Raiders (10-1) Hamilton, N.Y Patriot League Enrollment: 2,922 FCS Sagarin Rating: 105 (10 in FCS) How They Got Here: See the game report on how Colgate won its first playoff game against.
HAMILTON, NY.– It was an instant classic of an FCS Playoff game in Hamilton, New York this afternoon as kicker Chris Puzzi nailed a 38 yard field goal as time expired to lift his Colgate Raiders to a 23-20 win over James Madison. “We knew that this was going to be a low-scoring game,” Colgate.
James Madison at (8) Colgate When: Saturday, December 1, 1:00 PM Where: Crown Field at Kerr Stadium, Hamilton, NY TV/Streaming: ESPN College Extra, ESPN3 James Madison Dukes Harrisonburg, Virginia Colonial Athletic Association Enrollment: 19,000 FCS Sagarin Rating: 4 How They Got Here: James Madison used a suffocating defense and a good enough offense to defeat Delaware.
The 2018 FCS Playoff Bracket was announced on ESPNU on November 18th at 12:30 EST, and the NCAA issued their release about the 2018 FCS Playoff Bracket here. There were some interesting matchups, some shocking omissions, and a lot of interesting twists and turns. CSJ’s Jamie Williams, Kent Schmidt and Chuck Burton followed the picks.
Christmas isn’t for another month, but for a day, people associated with the Lehigh football program felt like they’d received a bunch of presents. The first present from the gods of football might have been the one that set the tone the best for Lehigh’s 34-3 win over their archrivals in the 154th meeting between.
All the regular season games have been played, and let’s get right to it. Once again, a quick recap of the rules for the ability to qualify for the FCS Playoffs: The field for the FCS Playoffs is determined at the conclusion of the FCS regular season, which is the Sunday before Thanksgiving. There are.
It wasn’t the season any Lehigh fan envisioned, a tumultuous 2-8 season that featured a lot of frustration and discord. So you might have forgiven Lehigh fans a little bit of cynicism when they came to Easton this afternoon about their prospects for a win against their bitter Rivals Lafayette. Instead, on the very first.
It kind of goes without saying that the Rivalry between Lehigh and Lafayette is the biggest game on the Mountain Hawks’ and Leopard’s schedules. Eighteen miles separate the two campuses in Easton, PA and Bethlehem, PA, and the football teams have faced off 153 times over the span of 134 years. When the two schools started.
Though the field for the 2018 FCS Playoffs was clarified a little bit a week before the selection of the field, a chaotic upset-filled week not only thrust an unlikely team to a conference championship at autobid, it sets up a final weekend of the FCS regular season filled with meaningful games. About the only.
