WAGNER AT LEHIGH 9/7/2024: Mountain Hawks Eager To Start Cooking Again at Home

On By Chuck Burton

BETHLEHEM, PA – From the moment head coach Kevin Cahill stepped onto campus as Lehigh’s head football coach, he’s been talking about making Murray Goodman stadium a true home field advantage.

He was right to broach the subject.

The last time Lehigh had a winning record was in 2016, when the Mountain Hawks were 9-2, and winners of the Patriot League. Critically, that included a 4-1 record at home.

They barely lost to Monmouth to begin that season, beat Penn on the road in Week 3 and proceeded to win their next nine games, with home wins against Princeton, Colgate, Fordham and Bucknell.

It was that last win, a nervy 20-13 win against a feisty Bucknell team in front of small but animated 7,000 fan crowd, where it last felt to me like Lehigh home advantage was a “thing”.

My recollection of that game was one where the many fans that showed were expecting offensive fireworks, a coronation, like the humbling of RB Chase Edmonds‘ Fordham team earlier in the season. But it was anything but, as Bucknell jumped out to a lead, and Lehigh had to claw back and ended up clinching the game with several critical defensive plays.

The crowd had an unbearable quiet to it, a tension that seemed to only be broken when Lehigh could finally enter victory formation. I feel like you can hear it in the Twitter clip above.

Up until that game, too, Lehigh had a reputation for being the toughest place to play in the Patriot League – no joke.

“Goodman stadium has been home to over 10,000 fans on game days seven of the past eight seasons and has hosted sellout crowds in five of the past seven seasons,” Lehigh’s 2006 media guide boomed. “Lehigh has led the Patriot League in attendance for 15 straight years and has been among the top Division I-AA attendance leaders for several years.

“There are very few home field advantages bigger than the one Lehigh enjoys at Murray Goodman Stadium,” it continued. “Since its inception in 1988, Lehigh has won 73% of its games at home, sporting a 70-25-1 record during those 18 years.”

Those dominant Murray Goodman days never seemed further away than last season, when Lehigh went 0-5 at home, making it a dismal 3-15 home record since the spring 2021 COVID season.

One win against Colgate, one win against Georgetown, and one win against Lafayette – that’s it, for the last five years.

Certainly reversing this dismal home record would go a long way towards Lehigh climbing back to respectability.

But the lack of a home win last season seemed to make it an even bigger point of emphasis since the end of the 2023 season – from spring, to preseason practice, to moments after the Army game last week. It’s something I’ve been hearing over and over again, from coach Cahill, and the players. It’s clearly a point they want to try to make.

Protect the nest.

*****

Superficially, Wagner (1-0, 0-0 NEC) would seem like the perfect home opener for Lehigh (0-1, 0-0 Patriot League).

Dig deeper, though, and you can find plenty of reasons for concern.

There’s that tiny matter that Lehigh has never beaten Wagner.

For many years Wagner was considered small college in the days before the split of athletics into divisions. When George Paterno was head coach of Merchant Marine, (brother of Joe Paterno), they would play Wagner every year.

At that time, Lehigh was the equivalent of Division II on their way to what ultimately would be Division I FCS. When the divisional shakeout ended, Wagner was considered to be Division III.

In 1991, Wagner made the choice to transition to the NEC, thus causing them to upgrade their athletics programs to Division I status. They barely beat a deadline where Division III schools couldn’t accept D-I membership before spending time in D-II.

Lehigh scheduled some NEC schools during the 1990s and 2000s, but Wagner never was on the list, until the 2010s. That mirrored the NEC’s transition from non-scholarship to limited-scholarship football.

In 2017, winless Lehigh made their first-ever trip to Staten Island to play the Seahawks and laid an enormous egg, losing 37-20 with QB Brad Mayes tossing 5 interceptions on a cold, blustery night in front of 2,000 fans.

Wagner beat up Lehigh’s offensive line that evening, notching 4 sacks, and Mayes was running for his life a lot of the time.

“We’re tired of talking every week about winning a game,” a downcast Andy Coen said afterwards. “We have to go out and do it.”

Then, as now, Wagner has a significant number of transfers playing key positions, and then, as now, the Seahawks have some redshirt players as well, which means they will be big across the lines. If 2017 is any guide, they will be extremely physical, and Lehigh will need to be ready.

In fact, the more you look at this game, this feels pretty pivotal for both sides. A win for Wagner would give them a real tailwind blowing into the rest of their schedule, while a Lehigh win might establish that elusive home field advantage they’ve been missing at Murray Goodman for quite some time.

WAGNER SEAHAWKS (1-0, 0-0 NEC) AT LEHIGH MOUNTAIN HAWKS (0-1. 0-0 PL)
WHERE: Murray Goodman Stadium/Bethlehem, PA, Saturday, September 7th, Noon
STREAMING: ESPN+
TV CREW: PxP – Marco Socci; Analyst – Mike Yadush
RADIO: BROADCAST (Fox Sports Lehigh Valley 94.7 FM/1230 AM; LVFoxSports.com):
RADIO CREW: PxP – Matt Kerr; Analysts – Lance Haynes, Connor Brown

Photo Credit: Hannah Ally

The Lehigh Rundown

Last week, in Lehigh’s yardstick game, the Mountain Hawks showed some positives, but still succumbed to an efficient Army attack 42-7. In the game Kevin Cahill used three different quarterbacks – part of the gameplan, he said – with QB Dante Perri as the starter. All three – Perri, QB Hayden Johnson, and QB Matthew Machalik – came in the game in different game situations.

Lehigh’s game notes are here. Perri is listed as QB1, with Johnson as QB2, but it stands to reason that it’s quite possible all three QBs might find themselves in the game at some point Saturday. It’s difficult to saw whether Cahill will rotate them in and our based on drive, or go with a “hot hand” approach – we’ll just have to see on Saturday.

One of the real positives from Friday’s game is not only the extra day of rest and preparation but the fact that the Mountain Hawks came out of the game relatively healthy. Last season, Lehigh was already needing to juggle their offensive and defensive lines due to injury in Game 2, but this year it’s essentially the same two deep from last week. In such a physical game like the one vs. Army, that’s a real plus.

Everyone wants a sunny home opener, but according to the weather forecast rain and wind seems to be in play. As of the time of this writing, there’s a 50% chance of rain with a 10 mph wind at kickoff, with a non-zero chance at lightning, The weather situation will be something to monitor.

LFN’s Drink of the Week

Interestingly, I looked up mixed drinks associated with Wagner, and found something that involved maple. My wife not only loves maple liqueur, but I’m always looking for a new mixed drink with maple in it for her to try. While the original Wagner cocktail proportions were lost to the Internet, I found an alternative that was pretty close. She calls it a Salted Maple Old Fashioned Cocktail, but you and I know it’s a Wagner Cocktail, this week’s Drink of the Week. You can find the recipe here! This seems like a really good use for that margarita salt you probably have lying around, like I do.

Scouting Wagner

The Wagner Seahawks are coached by Tom Masella, former Boston University and Fordham head football coach. (Yes, Boston University used to have a football team.) Wagner’s record during the last three years hasn’t been terrific – they’ve been 6-28 over the last three years, and are two years removed from a 0-11 season.

That includes a win last week for the Seahawks. Wagner is 1-0 after beating Virginia University-Lynchburg last week 46-7.

Before that worries you unduly, the 2-9 Dragons in 2023 were everyone’s favorite homecoming NCCAA opponent, losing to Presbyterian, Merrimack, Robert Morris, South Carolina State, Delaware State, and Kennesaw State.

(That’s not a typo – the NCCAA is the National Christian College Athletic Association is VUL’s only sports accrediting body, so VUL is not Division I, II, or NAIA. They are independent.)

And looking at the highlights – yes, there are highlights – it’s hard to know what to make of Wagner, because against VUL’s overmatched offensive and defensive lines, the Seahawks looked more like the Seattle Seahawks than the Wagner Seahawks.

Probably a more realistic assessment of Wagner comes from a combination of last year (3.8 yards per carry, 135 rushing yards per game, 166 yards passing per game, 17.45 points per game), and mixing that with a new crop of transfers to plug some of the holes. The offense mostly struggled, but did have some bright spots.

What isn’t really in doubt are Wagner’s top-line skill players, who are 100% home-grown talent, are quite good.

WR Jaylen Bonelli (627 yards, 4 TDs), a sophomore, and RB Rickey Spruill (681 yards 5 TDs) will help lead the offense, though Spruill and RB Sekou Kamau logged most of the rushing yards last week. Kamau is listed at RB2, but Masella might rotate multiple running backs. Bonelli, though, is a major receiving talent.

Two QBs played last week for Wagner: QB Damien Mazil and QB Jake Cady. Mazil seems like more of a pocket passer while Cady is more apt to take off with the ball. Cady is a graduate transfer from D-II Assumption College based in Worcester. It’s hard to know what Masella will do, but I’d imagine he could either rotate both or use either situationally.

Last year their defense kept them in games early on, but by the end of the season they gave up 34 points to Duquesne and 49 points to LIU in consecutive weeks. Wagner runs a 3-4 with an enormous front three (Wagner’s game notes list NT Najae Hallenbeck at 6’6, 365 lbs).

The Seahawk defense is notable for its large number of grad students and redshirt players – 7 starters are at least redshirt juniors. DE Jorel Liverpool, CB Zachary Ricci and SS Christian Davis stand out on a unit that could be better than most fans think.

LFN’s Keys to the Game

  1. Flight of the Valkyrie. Lehigh’s offense, quite simply, will need to take flight in order to win this game. There have been signs of some potential good things against Army, but they will have to be expanded upon – especially in front of a home crowd – to really get people excited.
  2. Stopping The Run. The Mountain Hawks defense had a real workout last week trying to stop or slow down Army’s triple-option offense, and they’ll have to figure out how to reverse that trend vs. Wagner, or it could be a long day. Masella likes to run more than pass, so making the Seahawks one-dimensional could be a key to win.
  3. Finishing. Coach Cahill told me last week that the team needs to learn to “finish”, and looking at the Army recap, had Lehigh finished a couple drives, they would have been in that game deep into the 4th quarter, and he’s right. The Mountain Hawks need to learn that fine art of finishing.

Fearless Prediction

It feels dangerous to predict Lehigh winning comfortably in this game. In the last three years, in which Lehigh won exactly three home games, two of the games were won by a field goal or less, and there are plenty of instances where Lehigh didn’t score a single touchdown. It feels like that era is finally coming to a close, but the truth is this Mountain Hawk team hasn’t earned that yet, and they have important lessons they need to learn. Plus, they are outlandishly young.

I think Lehigh pulls this out, but it could be the type of game Lehigh barely pulls out rather than win comfortably. They may learn how to coast to a huge win, or finish games, but until that happens, I’ll pick a much more conservative outcome.

Lehigh 20, Wagner 17

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