The Pieces Continue To Fall Together

Earlier this week, the Lehigh athletic department released the long-awaited spring prospectus, giving us a bit of a closer look at Lehigh's football team for 2006. The first pieces of the puzzle are being put together, and some interesting battles are shaping up - as well as a few surprises.

Here's my take on what I see as the three biggest surprises, and three things to take forward up to the Brown/White game on April 22nd (which, by the way, is free and open to the public).

Biggest Surprises
1. New faces at LB. Some of the talent and depth on the "D" line has made the change to outside linebacker. Rising senior DE Matt Mohler and rising junior DE Joel Kriss are joining a hot battle for the outside spot along with rising sophomores Tim Diamond and Ben Pravata. Mohler has more experience, but Kriss is very athletic, so it will be interesting to see who will be the starters - and you can't count out the X-factors, the sophs, as well. On the inside, rising senior Micah Greene seems to have the edge, with rising junior Calvin LaMont pushing him hard.
2. Wanted: One "O" Line Starter. That Petrucelli, Kehs, Reese and Russell are expected to pave the way forward in 2006 is not a surprise - it's that the battle for that 5th spot at guard is so wide open. Rising sophomores Kevin Bayani and Patrick Casey are being mentioned, as well as rising senior Colin Hewko, to fill the spot, but again it looks like it's going to be a big battle for that spot and the backup spots on the line.
3. Return Team Up For Grabs. The deafening silence on the return units leads me to beleive that it's anyone's game as to who is the leading returner candidates for 2006. The smart money would be on rising sophomore RB Matt McGowan for starters, but there are sure to be more names in the mix.

Things to Take Forward
1. Don't Worry About the Rock. You may have noticed RB Eric "TNT" Rath's departure and worried about who will be running the ball in 2006. With a plethora of options with rising senior Marques Thompson, senior FB Greg Fay, junior transfer Josh Pastore, and rising sophomores Matt McGowan and Rich Forman, we have a variety of styles and depth to the mix. Add in rising junior QB Sedale Threatt's ability to scramble and it's abundantly clear that rushing the ball may be an area of strength, not uncertainty.
2. Depth Abounds. You thought graduating all those wideouts was going to be a problem? Think again. Not only do rising seniors Lee Thomas and Frank Trovato return, but a corps of talented undereclassmen, led by rising junior Pete Donchez and rising sophomores Sekou Yansane and Ben Ivester, are waiting in the wings. Lehigh's depth year in and year out generally is an area of strength, and this year is no exception.
3. Attitude. Two straight losses to Lafayette is probably something that doesn't need to be mentioned here. But it will be interesting to see in the Brown/White game the focus level and the intensity of everyone from the coaches down to the scout team. It's the first time in years that Lehigh may not be favored to win the Patriot League. On April 22nd, we'll see if this group is looking like a team that can bring back a Patriot League championship, not just preseason accolades. A little humbler, a little hungrier. Will we see it?

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

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.

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

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