Skip to main content

Men's Basketball: Revenge On Their Minds?

It's a ticket to the Big Dance. And every Patriot League team has a shot at keeping their hopes alive as the first round of the Patriot League conference tournament kicks off tonight.

#4 Lehigh will be hosting #5 Army, and if you're in the Lehigh Valley you can catch the game on Service Electric 2 or on AM 1230/1320 ESPN Radio. If you're out of the area, you can catch the game on Lehigh Broadcast or on Patriot League All-Access for a small fee.

For Lehigh's men's basketball team, it may as well be a return to the "scene of the crime".

Last year, Lehigh was robbed in Stabler in the first round against - you guessed it - Army.

Freshman Josh Miller made a running bank shot after the buzzer sounded (as video from Lehigh's Web site, lehighsports.com, showed) that lifted Army to a 47-46 win over Lehigh in the Patriot League tournament quarterfinals at Stabler Arena. Lehigh coach Billy Taylor, more animated than ever, said he planned to appeal.

''We have to fight the fight because it was clearly after the light went off, so we are going to continue to fight until they say we can't anymore, and then we'll fight some more,'' Taylor said.

...

It was the only Lehigh home game this year against a Patriot League opponent that Service Electric TV2 did not broadcast. Therefore, officials Jeff Smith, Jeff Bryant and Jack Sweeney did not have television video to review.

But Lehigh officials were willing to let them review their online video.

''There was at a courtside monitor at the table,'' Taylor said. ''The officials did not review it. They left the court.''

This year there will be no such controversy - after all, SE2 is picking up the game and will have a video replay available if necessary. But the resulting brouhaha left a bad taste in everyone's mouths, and you can bet it's very clear in the mind of senior F Bryan White and he will be reminding everyone about the incident before the game.

You can also bet that White will be a little bit pumped up that he didn't make the all-Patriot League team despite the fact he led the league in rebounding with 8.1 boards per game. Out of nineteen "slots of honor", an incredible seventeen were taken up by guards (including second-team all-Patriot sophomore G Marquis Hall and freshman of the year in freshman G Rob Keefer). In fact, the entire second-team all-Patriot Team was taken up by six guards... You're trying to tell me that Navy G Greg Sprink's teammate in the backcourt was more valuable than White this year?

Both Lehigh and Army are entering the tournament reversing their late-season slides with two big wins - both teams beat Bucknell, while Army beat Lafayette and Lehigh disposed of Holy Cross. Army has struggled to put the ball in the basket despite the presence of senior G Jarell Brown (18.5 PPG): in their last 15 games they scored more than 60 points only 4 times. They've won a fair number of games, though, with defense: they won six games during that stretch, including a sweep of Bucknell and a win over Navy.

Lehigh's key to the game will be getting just one of their young guards to have a great game. Hall almost singlehandedly took over in the must-win last Friday against Holy Cross, but either if Hall, Keefer, or junior G Matt Szalachowski can emerge with good scoring punch tonight, I like our chances. Keeping out of foul trouble underneath, with White or sophomore F Zahir Carrington, will also be crucial.

The winner of this game will either be travelling to Washington, DC to take on American - or entertaining Holy Cross once again. If there were ever a year where the #1 seed needs to be extra-vigilant, it's this year of parity in the Patriot League.

The madness starts tonight for Patriot League fans. And I can't wait.

Comments

Anonymous said…
See you at halftime tonight, Chuck. Walkway splitting Section 4.

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

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.