2018 Week 1: St. Francis (PA): My Notes on the Lehigh Two Deep This Week

LehighSports.com released the game notes for the first Lehigh football game of the season between Lehigh and St. Francis (PA).

Below the flip are my thoughts and analysis about the depth chart for the season opener.

1. Kauffman at defensive tackle. Remember when senior DT Harrison Kauffman was a 260 pound DE? I do, but the Kalispell, Montana native has put on some serious weight to get to 270 and is now listed at defensive tackle playing alongside senior DT Julian Lynn. Kauffman, who has been voted as one of Lehigh's team captains this season, looks to be a mainstay on Lehigh's defensive front, and Lehigh Nation is excited about how this unit might look on Saturday.

2. The Return of the Mack. Speaking of team captains, senior CB Donavon Harris returns to action - finally - this weekend as well after suffering a season-ending injury last season. (I know his nickname isn't "The Mack", but I was dying to get in a 90s music reference, so here we are.) He and another voted team captain, senior SS Sam McCloskey, will be traversing the Lehigh secondary together for the first time since the Yale game last season. Again, that's an exciting prospect for the Lehigh defense this year, which is looking to improve dramatically from last year.

3. Jackson Evans Is Out. When I went to practice last week, I had penciled in sophomore C Jackson Evans in on my own personal Lehigh two-deep. However, as it turns out, he is officially unavailable this week with a leg injury. This means that 285 lb senior C Tim Wagner will get his first collegiate start at center, with local New Hope-Solebury product sophomore OL Matt Fest backing him up. Evans is the third projected starter from last season that will be unavailable this week: junior OL Alex Motley (achilles) and senior OL Aidan O'Carroll (no longer with team) are also not on the depth chart.

4. Gurth brings Girth. A true frosh, 280 lb freshman OT Justin Gurth, is starting at right tackle this week, making it two first-time starters on the offensive line. Junior G Nick Rosen, sophomore OT Chris Fournier and senior OL Liborio Ricottilli have all seen extensive playing time last season, however, so among the starters there is still a lot of game experience.

5. The Hawk. Probably the biggest tweak on defense is the creation of the new hybrid front seven position called, appropriately enough, the "Hawk". Junior LB Davis Maxie will play this new spot and he seems like an excellent choice, with sophomore LB Erik Slater backing him up and playing in certain situations. I really like this innovation with the new defense.

6. Cam Richardson makes the two-deep. Finally, it is great to see the hard work of senior WR Cam Richardson pay off, seeing him make the offensive two-deep behind the expected starter, sophomore WR Jorge Portorreal. For two straight springs Cam has played well but had been caught in a numbers game behind two of the greatest receivers in Lehigh history, WR Gatlin Casey and WR Troy Pelletier. Those around the program know how hard he's worked to get here, and it will be great to see him in the mix this weekend.

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

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Mud

I was trying to figure out the worst Lehigh/Colgate game I have ever witnessed. My history goes way back with Lehigh, of course, and I really had to rack my brain. What loss to Colgate that I had witnessed was worse than this one? I wasn't at Andy Kerr Stadium when Lehigh lost 61-28 in 1997 to a Colgate team that would win the Patriot League title - as a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain I didn't even find out about the score of the game until that night on ESPN, since the game wasn't televised where I was living at the time. The win set a Colgate school record for points scored vs. Lehigh - one that still stands today. QB Phil Stambaugh and RB Rabih Abdullah, both Lehigh football legends today, fumbled the very first exchange, and the game snowballed from there after Colgate converted the gift into an early 7-0 lead. I wasn't at Andy Kerr Stadium when Lehigh lost 21-7 in 2007 , but I remember following the game on TV, when an injured QB Sedale Threatt was red

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