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Awards; Polls

Borda snags Patriot League Player of the Week... Again
Oops... Borda did it again.
Patriot League Names Weekly Award Winners

After the second straight impressive week, where he outdueled Yale's Payton award candidate QB Alvin Cowan, Borda snags his second consecutive honor. Most impressive was the 0 interceptions and 0 fumbles.

To think, my pick in August was to have Keating start the season. Congratulations, Mark, for making me happily eat some crow.

Yale Game Balls
You've seen this segway before.. time for LFN's virtual game balls! This week they go to:
Junior QB Mark Borda (Patriot League Off. Player of the Week)
Sophomore WR Lee Thomas (6 catches, 124 yards)
Sophomore RB Eric Rath (117 total yards, 2 TDs)
Senior TE Adam Bergen (4 catches, 45 yards)
Senior P Kyle Keating (4 punts, 41.2 average)
Junior FS Kaloma Cardwell (10 tackles, 1 pass defensed)
Senior OLB Anthony "Graz" Graziani (7 tackles)
Junior ILB Owen Breninger (7 tackles)
Senior DE Tom "Alf" Alfsen (6 tackles)
Senior DE Tristan Lawrence (5 tackles, 1 sack)
Junior DB Andrew Nelson (forcing fumble in last 2 minutes)

Not easy to give out game balls this week - everyone seemed to be a big contributor in this week's win. Congrats to one and all for Lehigh's best game - so far - of this 2004 season.

One Last View from the Nest
Lots of positive press from the regular media, and this blog. But Lehigh, although getting better and better as the season progresses, still hasn't put together the perfect 60 minutes that tells me, "This is a team that will go deep in the 1-AA playoffs".

It seems like the coaches are emphasizing (cliche alert) that it's definitely one game at a time. In this case, it is true. The games during the next couple of weeks will likely determine the Patriot League Championship against the two other teams that arguably are the class of the league: Bucknell and Colgate.

The Bison coming up this week are a tough out. They took Penn, Lafayette and Villanova down to the wire. A few different plays, and they would be undefeated. And they should be coming into Murray Goodman absolutely desperate to win to get their season back on track. For them, it's a playoff game.

As for Colgate, this game the past 2 years has made-or-broken Lehigh's postseason chances. It's our "playoff" game - are we good enough to win? We need to prove it - we haven't been able to the past 2 years.

First, we need to eliminate Bucknell this week. I think Lembo and the staff know that. Time to put the impressive Yale win beind us, and put these upcoming "playoff" games into perspective.

Polls
Lehigh jumped up 2 spots in ESPN/USAToday and SportsNetwork.com:
ESPN/SportsNetwork (16/16)
Dopke.Com (23)
AnyGivenSaturday(15)

The "overrated A-10 teams above Lehigh" mercifully have dropped to 2 (William & Mary and Maine). The Tribe may just drop to Delaware this week, hopefully bouncing us a little higher up in the polls.

Coming up: My favorite 1-AA colmnist; Lehigh/Bucknell Preview

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