Weekend Wrapup: Lehigh Women Cross Off the 'Cross

The Lady Hawks can cross another thing off of their "bucket list": beating Holy Cross at the Hart Center.

It went down to the very end - and two huge defensive stops at the end of the game - but Sue Troyan's squad held on for a gutty 72-70 win in a venue where Lehigh has been 2-18 (now 3-18) lifetime. Balanced scoring - and, yes, unselfish play - has allowed the Lady Hawks to soar to sole possession of first place in the Patriot League.

The Lady Hawks soared to a 6-0 lead, thanks to a pair of treys from junior G Alex Ross (whe ended the afternoon with a game-high 20 points and 7 rebounds) and appeared on their way to a laugher while jumping to a 13 point halftime lead. Sophomore G Erica Prosser failed to break double digits for the first time for what seems like forever - clearly Holy Cross made it a point to pressure her all game - but she responded with 9 assists, including a huge one to senior G Tricia Smith (11 points, 4 rebounds) with 30 seconds to play to increase the lead to 3 points.

17-5 Lehigh (Real Time RPI: 91) now enjoys a week of rest before the final game of their brutal three-game road trip at American.

*****

On the men's side, Lehigh hung tough with a physical Holy Cross team that brought full-court pressure almost the entire game. For about 30 minutes Lehigh hung tough - but finally wilted in front of the onslaught. Tied at 42 with 10 minutes to play, Holy Cross would hold Lehigh to 10 points the rest of the way in a 67-52 defeat in Stabler.

Junior G Marquis Hall led Lehigh with 14 points, but also turned over the ball four times (Lehigh as a team turned over the ball 16 times):

''It was tough,'' Hall said. ''We just didn't execute well down the stretch and they just continued to get baskets.''

''In those situations we just have to be able to come up with stops, and then execute down on our end in order to put ourselves in a position to win. They hit us kind of quick.''

Once again, junior F Zahir Carrington came up big for the Mountain Hawks with 9 points and 11 boards, while sophomore G Rob Keefer also added 7 rebounds on an afternoon where Lehigh would nab 37 rebounds. But aside from Carrington and Hall, no Lehigh hoopster would score more than 6 points on the afternoon - a recipie for a loss against the first-place team in the Patriot League.

13-8 Lehigh (Real Time RPI: 221) will have plenty to prove this coming weekend when defending Patriot League champion American comes to Stabler. Win that game, and Lehigh could prove to be a factor in this Patriot League title race. Lose, and the story of the 2008 Mountain Hawks may very well be set as a team that doesn't has the depth, consistency or physicality to finish basketball games.

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results. In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago . Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth. Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled. Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season. The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season. The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League. In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play. Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ . I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care. Every face was glum. They didn't even seem sad. More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini . The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero. (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people? Here they are, in alphabetical order.

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