Lehigh Weekend: Grace and Stabler Rock With Patriot League Foes

Normally I'd do a much more thorough job of this, but considering I've been busy with football recruiting news all week (and not to mention the day job), I'm only going to do a quick preview of this weekend's action - though it's going to be quite a weekend.

Start tonight at Turner Arena at Grace Hall, where 19-1 Lehigh will take on Bucknell in a key EIWA battle. While Lehigh is 5-0 lifetime against Bucknell in duals, that hardly means the Mountain Hawks should rest easy: with two nationally-ranked wrestlers, this won't be a cakewalk. Two bouts stand out: No. 15-ranked junior 149 lb Matt Fisk takes on No. 20 ranked David Marble, and No. 12-ranked junior 165 lb Mike Galante takes on No. 14 Andy Rendos, while junior 184 lb David Craig attempts to add to his No. 9 overall ranking by knocking out unranked David Thompson.

Next up, the 17-5 Lady Hawks (Real Time RPI: 91) will be competing at American at 4:00 p.m. in what could be their toughest test of the year. The 15-7 Eagles (Real Time RPI: 113) are sitting in second place in the Patriot League standings behind the Lady Hawks, and a win here by Lehigh, their third straight road game, could send a message to the rest of the league who the top team is. While sophomore G Erica Prosser has continued to be extremely impressive (14.9 ppg), senior G Erica Ross' emergence the past few weeks (with 20 points against Holy Cross last weekend) gives teams second thoughts about triple-teaming Prosser. This one, without a doubt, will be a great game - and for those of you who have ESPNU, there's an extra treat, as the Lady Hawks will be on national TV on "El Ocho".

Finally at 7:00 p.m. at Stabler Arena, the Lehigh men play against American, which in this reporter's opinion is a game they must have in order to be a factor in the Patriot League tournament. Junior G Marquis Hall, who recently got academic all-District honors, and junior F Zahir Carrington have gotten their points and their rebounds, but it's the bench that has needed to step up for the Mountain Hawks, especially late in the game - against Holy Cross, they only scored seven points in the last six minutes en route to a double-digit loss.

While 13-8 Lehigh (Real Time RPI: 228) has a good record, looking objectively at their record, they've only beaten one team with an RPI below 150 - that's their shocking victory over Rutgers in November. A win over 14-7 American (Real Time RPI: 89) would be not only a win over a quality RPI team - it could be the confidence booster that makes Lehigh a contender.

Lehighsports.com has all the action online. If you get MASN, the Lehigh/American game is also available on that channel as well.

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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