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Mystery Men

Practice broke today, with the last two-a-days before the season finishing up. And still many questions are left to be answered. Fans are left scouring the message boards for info. How did practices go? Who will the starting linebackers be? Keating, Borda, or Connor?

The boards have been silent. Whoever knows isn't talking. To this completely uninformed observer it looks like camp has been more closed than ever -- tighter than in years past. In Lehigh Football Nation's opinion, this is a good omen for the coming season.

The only media info comes from the following pieces:

Lehigh holds annual Media Day (lehighsports.com):
http://www.lehighsports.com/release.asp?RELEASE_ID=2961

Rath raring to get going again for Lehigh Football (Morning Call):
http://www.mcall.com/sports/all-lehighfeatureaug22,0,1823655.story?coll=all-sports-hed

Media Day took place on August 21, when the team photo was taken, and players and coaches chatted with the media. Today was the last day of practice before camp broke.

Important information from these reports: Sophomore RB Eric Rath is penciled in as the opening-day starter at RB over Marques Thompson, and he's excited to get going on the coming season. He sounds focused on the upcoming season and is eager to get going with the challenge of being the starting RB. If he shows the heart he showed in special teams and in the backfield in 2002, the last time he put on a Lehigh uniform, Lehigh Football Nation will be happy campers I think.

Quoting from the Article, Coach Lembo: "For a guy who's 5-foot-8 and 195 pounds, he's a very durable, powerful runner... He's smart, he's passionate. And, unlike his freshman year, he has totally embraced everything about Lehigh. He has become an excellent student. He had to take one summer class this summer and got an 'A' in it. I'm very pleased with him and I really hope he has a breakout year because he has earned it."

About the running game in general, Coach Lembo: "We need Eric and Marques Thompson, as well as fullbacks Greg Fay and Jason Beck to play well... We have a good offensive line, we have a solid tight end and an improved receiving corps. Whoever we have at quarterback, we hope we can surround him with enough good people to be able to move the ball both in the air and on the ground.''

Lehigh Football Nation couldn't agree more.

But the biggest question - who will take the reins at QB - still remains unanswered. Quoting the Morning Call piece: "Those anxious to find out who the starting quarterback on Sept. 4 will be — Kyle Keating, Mark Borda or Mike Connor — will have to wait longer. 'Outside the team, the quarterback issue is the one that gets a lot of notoriety,'' Lembo said. ''But internally, our guys don't look at it as being different from any other position. We feel whoever we put in there will get the job done. It's tight right now.'"

So you know what that means. We probably won't know who the starting QB will be until the first snap of the Stony Brook game September 4th (only 13 days away). Lehigh Football Nation's choice is the senior Kyle Keating, with the strong-armed junior Borda and Delaware transfer junior Mike Connor close behind on the depth chart. But who knows what is going on in Coach Lembo's mind on the matter... it will be interesting to find out who he picks.

Coming up soon: Lehigh Football Nation's completely unscientific stab at Lehigh's depth chart for the 2004 season.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I can not believe there is even a QB controversy. Lembo acts as if he is starting with three unexperienced QB's. He has a proven winner in Keating, 7-1*, who has put in his time for the past three years and he should be the starter. When Schwenk was coming back for his final year the job was handed to him. I think Lembo is playing to the local kids far too much.
*-the one loss Keating has as a starter was the game against Colgate last year that he was pulled from at the end of the third quarter. Who knows what the fianl would have been had he been kept in the game.
7:29 PM
Anonymous said…
You obviously didn't see the Colgate game. Keating was horrible. I can't believe they left him in the game after the middle of the second quarter. Colgate would have blown out Lehigh had it not been for the valiant efforts of the defense. They gave up a few plays during the game but, by and large, they played their best game of the year. I think the coaching staff stayed true to form by not making the decision to pull the QB sooner when he obviously was overmatched by the opponent. It was the same situation when Lehigh played Furman in the playoffs. Hall was obviously off from his early season form but the coaches waited until it was too late to pull him and the game was lost by the time they put Cianella in. Borda was no better in the Colgate game last year, but by the time he got in, the offense was already shell-shocked by Colgate's defense. Then they were calling passes with Borda sitting in the pocket vs Colgate's blitzing defenses and he was just a sitting duck. What a horrble situation to be put in!
11:26 PM
Anonymous said…
Actually, I was at the Colgate game. I agree the defense played a great game as they usually did last year. I do not however feel the offense was shell shocked by Colgate's defense any more at the beginning of the game as they were at the end. Keating and Borda both played against the same defense and the same offense in the same game. Keating was in the pocket like a sitting duck just as much as Borda due to the virtual lack of a running game. The score at the beginning of the fourth quarter was 17-10. Lehigh had plenty of time to come back and engineer(no pun intended) several drives to score. You are acting as if Borda was put in with 2 minutes on the clock and was forced to throw every play. The reason both QB's were sitting ducks was because of the play of the Colgate defense not either ones ability. All I am saying is that I would have felt better keeping the QB who played the entire game in the game then throwing someone in off the bench who had not played at all, especially in this game. I do not know if you have ever played football, I assume you have, but I always felt that the best kids to have in at the end of close games are the ones who have been playing the whole time. There seems to be more at stake when you have been fighting all day long. Let's face it, Lehigh lost that game because Colgate was a better team. They played tough and fought valiantly but if those two teams played ten games the outcome would lean to Colgate probably 8-2 or 9-1. They were a better team.
10:02 PM
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