Lehigh Football Nation

Now this is the way you want to go into a huge game next week. We survive, and move on to another huge game at Worcester, Mass. Tomorrow I'll be looking at the tape of the game, but I heard the recap on the radio today after I witnessed Princeton win a thrilling 31-28 win over Harvard. Things look like they may just be starting to come together on offense at the right time. What I liked best was the team stats: 0 turnovers, +3 on turnovers overall, 5-for-5 in the Red Zone, and (my favorite) 8 for 13 on 3rd-down conversions. Fewer mistakes and giveaways. All music to my ears. Marques Thompson's nice game was great to see, as was Sedale Threatt's solid game, but I really was glad to see sophomore WR Sekou Yansane get involved in the game with 5 receptions and a TD. All short plays, and a heady grab on his TD. If he emerges as a consistent threat next to Trovato, we could make a run at this thing. On defense, some surprising new names appear in the box score - sophomor

Yes, there is a good reason why today's Water Cooler is not only late, but without its usual water-cooler graphic. That's because today I'm announcing my new LFN Store . What is the purpose of the LFN Store? It's to show your support for this blog and show that you are a fan of Lehigh football. It supplies to you, the hardcore Lehigh football fan, products that you can buy to show the world that you're a fan. There are a bunch of items there: all sorts of shirts (many two-sided), mugs, and other great stuff. It's not only for that: a (very big) portion of the proceeds from all the sales of items from this store will benefit Lehigh athletics through a donation made by myself. At the end of the year, I will make a donation to Lehigh athletics based on the proceeds from this store (even if it's only pennies) and I will publicly post the information here. I'm not in this to get rich. I'm in this to support Lehigh athletics and make some cool stuff for f

We are going to find out exactly what we have in Lehigh football in 2006 this week. It's a week without "mystique" or fanfare, but a week that will tell us what type of team we have. One that will be playing important games in November, or those dreaded words "rebuilding year". What do we have? A team that played great in all phases of the game at Villanova? Or the team that went up 24-7 versus Harvard and let them come back and beat us by 2 points? The team that only gave up a little over 200 yards to Georgetown? Or the team that gave up nearly 500 yards to Yale? The team that only gave up 4 FGs all year, including several blocked kicks? Or the team that muffed three kicks versus Albany? I see that this Lehigh team is a good team with potential that hasn't put it all together yet. Another opportunity presents itself this coming Saturday at home versus Bucknell. The Bison are 3-2, 1-1 in the Patriot League, and will be hoping for a win here to vault them int

Let's hurry up and get this Yale thing behind us so we can focus on the games that will make or break this season. I'd still like to single out some players this week for game balls. On offense (this will come as no surprise) the award goes to senior WR Frank "Al Del Greco" Trovato with 4 receptions for 73 yards. All four of his receptions came in key moments; all four catches resulted in 1st downs, including a key 3rd-down conversion in OT. Every week he does something to help Lehigh get into position to win. He earns a ball this week. On defense the lucky winner is senior NT Eric Rakus. It's rare you see a nose tackle with more than 4 or 5 tackles, but his eight tackles (sometimes coming across the field to make them), a tackle for loss and forced fumble show real promise that our defensive line is coming together. His performance in particular really stood out. I'm going to give our two special teams balls this week. One goes to sophomore RB Josh Pastore

This week's word is "mystique". Why? It's something that Lehigh used to have, but with this weeks' performance, the last vestiges of the Lehigh "mystique" are finally gone. We had "mystique". It was built during coach Kevin Higgins' tenure as head coach, and continued during coach Pete Lembo's tenure as well. When coach Lembo himself chose to leave Lehigh for a new opportunity at Elon, the Mountain Hawks still had it. (Note: If any fans out there are foolish enough to think I helped drive Lembo out of town, I invite you to read my many posts of 2005. I think anyone who has read my blog since at least last year could tell you that I was hardly a harsh critic to say the least.) In order to have "mystique", you have to have success. You have to have streaks. You can't have opponents completely dominate you like Lehigh was dominated last week. A back getting more than 250 all-purpose yads against us, and 200 rushing yards? A