Lehigh Football Nation

Gah! Here I am closing out the last workday in 2006, and I flat-out forgot about my talk on the men's basketball, women's basketball, and wrestling for this weekend! It probably won't by my best posting of all-time, but here goes. The men's basketball team, who last week hung tough with Rutgers of the Big East but fell 76-71, travel to Monmouth, NJ tonight to take on the Hawks. Monmouth is 3-8 and has to be a "statement game" for Lehigh going forward. Two very winnable games loom before Lehigh hits the important part - the league schedule. After Monmouth tonight, it's Columbia (a surprising 7-5) who manhandled Lafayette two weeks ago. Despite the records, Monmouth isn't as bad as 3-8 and Columbia's not as good as 7-4, but our battered team needs two wins here to go into the league with a head of steam. The Lady Hawks are hosting Gardner-Webb (3-8) tonight at Stabler, followed by Yale (3-7) on Wednesday. Both winnable games, Yale has won some

In this holiday time when we're sweeping out 2006 and ushering in 2007, it's a time to look behind, pick Lehigh Football Nation's players of the year, and also to peek ahead a little. 2006 In Review In a season where the Mountain Hawks were picked to finish third in the preseason, you would think Lehigh fans would have been happy with a co-championship in head coach Andy Coen's first year. But in a season with tough losses to the Ivy League and NEC, and Lehigh's third straight loss to Lafayette (and losing a D-I playoff bid in the process), it sure as heck didn't feel like a championship. Yet the fact remains it still was a championship year as coach Coen slowly brought his brand of football to South Mountain, going 5-1 in the league after a 1-4 out-of-conference record. Coming off an offseason which saw the offense and defense have major shifts in phlilosophy, it could have been expected that the Mountain Hawks come out of the gate a little slowly. But after a