Skip to main content

No Game Balls Today; Press Roundup

To reiterate from yesterday's post, my customary game balls this weekend are not going to be given out. There also won't be a press digest of the game. Instead I'd strongly suggest you mosey on over to I-AA.org to read my comprehensive writeup of the game. You're looking for the link? Why, I'll be happy to provide it below, along with all the other links to the online press.

Well, OK, I lied a little bit. I will cut-and-paste from Keith Groller's Monday Morning Call piece, which to me is required reading for Lehigh fans after Saturday's game. There is some good stuff there, as always:

Coach Pete Lembo emphasizes each week that his team can't get distracted by stadium locations, mid-term exams, injuries, or even the worst playing conditions for a Lehigh home game in years.

''No way,'' bristled quarterback Mark Borda when asked if the rain was to blame.... ''We have a sign in our locker room that [lists] controllables and uncontrollables. We can't control the weather, but we still had to come to play. Even if it started snowing, we have to stick to our game plan and play. We needed to put more points on the board, and we didn't.''

Lehigh had 206 rushing yards on 54 carries — 108 yards above their average. Eric Rath, amazingly, splashed through the water for 141 yards and Marques Thompson ran for 86 more.

Those yards should have translated into more points, but the fumbles and penalties (nine for 73 yards) kept Holy Cross within two plays of victory and they got those two plays in the fourth quarter with a punt return and a 34-yard TD pass.



Finally, coach Gilmore said something that's been mentioned in several the press clippings that I don't believe to be true:

Of the TD reception, Holy Cross coach Tom Gilmore said in the press conference “I told my kids the team that wins will be the one that wants it more, and on that play [WR Sean Gruber] wanted it more.”


I-AA.org:
I-AA Diary: Lehigh/Holy Cross: This Ain't Fiction
Allentown Morning Call:
Holy Cross Slides By Lehigh In Opener
Keith Groller: Mountain Hawks Unaccustomed to Losing Games At Goodman
Easton Express-Times:
Crusaders, Elements Put Lehigh On Edge
Brown & White:
Football Loses Patriot League Opener
Boston Globe:
Gripping Victory For Holy Cross (reg'n required)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
40 comments
Read more

UMass 21, Lafayette 14, halftime

Are you watching this game? UMass had this game under control until about 3 minutes in the second quarter, and then got an interception, converted for a TD. Then the Leopards forced a fumble off the return, and then converted THAT for a TD, making this a game. It's on CN8. You really should be watching this.
20 comments
Read more

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though?  Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me?  Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything.  Everything.  The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who
1 comment
Read more