Lehigh Weekend: "The Rivalry" Part Three, And Key Momentum for Championships

Most of the weekend action will be taking place a day later than usual, but the women's basketball, men's basketball, and wrestling teams all need big wins - and two of them against "that school in Easton", no less. - to go to the Patriot League (or EIWA) tournaments in shape for a shot at the NCAAs.

The women's team - who enjoyed their first 20 win season in 19 years with a 71-42 domination of Colgate on Wednesday - look to extend their Patriot League lead Saturday over American (who lost 60-58 in overtime to Army on Wednesday) at 1:00 p.m. at Kirby Field House where they take on the 8-18 Leopards. While it's tempting to look at the statistics and project an easy Lehigh victory - with the game notes helpfully pointing out that Lafayette's loss to Lehigh triggered a 7 game losing streak for them, and a "tale of the tape" pointing the advantage to Lehigh on *every single statistic* - whenever Lehigh and Lafayette meet in "The Rivalry", it's a time to throw out the records and statistics and expect a close game. Still, look for senior G Tricia Smith (7.3 ppg, 5.7 rpg) and senior F Haly Crites (5.8 ppg, 4.4 rpg) to try to potentially finish their careers against Lafayette with a bang today.

Speaking of the women's basketball team, it's worth mentioning that the Patriot League women's basketball tournament will be held at Stabler Arena in Bethelhem, PA two weeks from now, announced by the executive director of the Patriot League, the mayors of Bethlehem and Easton, and representatives from St. Luke's hospital in a big press conference this week. Of the highlights, March 7th has been declared "Patriot League Women's Basketball Day" in the Lehigh Valley.

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Sunday is when Lehigh's men's basketball and wrestling teams take over, in their regular season home finales before the Patriot League/EIWA championships.

At 12:00 p.m., broadcast around the world on ESPNU, the 15-10 men's basketball team will be looking to win to keep their chances of a first round home playoff game alive against 7-19 Lafayette. While Lehigh's 49-40 "defensive struggle" against Colgate wasn't even the lowest scoring men's basketball game in the state on Wednesday (Penn State 38, Illinois 33), the win has kept Lehigh's hope of getting to the Patriot League tournament as the No. 4 (or, in the best case scenario, No. 3) intact. Once again, look to the seniors for big games: senior F Phil Anderson (7.7 ppg, 6.0 rpg) and senior G Matt Szalachowski (1.3 ppg, 5 points, 2 rebounds vs. Army) to play big games.

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As if two games against our archrival wasn't enough, the No. 8-ranked Lehigh wrestlers hold their home dual finale against No. 25 Penn - and while Lehigh has clinched the best EIWA wrestling record already, it would be an amazing achievement to go 9-0 against EIWA wrestling foes going into the EIWA wrestling championships. While it should be exciting to see if Lehigh will be able to do it, certainly all eyes will be on No. 15-ranked senior 149 lb Trevor Chinn, no only wrestling his final home dual as a senior but will be facing one of Penn's better wrestlers: No. 11-ranked Cesar Grajales, also a senior. Chinn lost the only time he faced Grajales in 2007 - and it could be a preview of the EIWA championship at 149 as well.

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All games will be broadcast on lehighsports.com, and (as already noted) the men's basketball game will also be broadcast nationally on ESPNU.

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....

Merrimack at Lehigh Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction, 9/28/2019

It's what we do every week: copiously go over the opposing game notes and analyze the upcoming game matchup. I'm starting to call these the "football nerd" previews because it feels like the audience for these detailed team breakdowns are other football nerds like myself. For Lehigh fans, there is no greater need for a "football nerd"-level breakdown of an opponent than Merrimack. Few opponents have been as big as an unknown to Mountain Hawk fans as the school that formed right after World War II in North Andover, Massachusetts. Helping that sense of mystery is that the Merrimack Athletics' website offers no football game notes, and when you click on the link called "Weekly Two-Deep", you get a two-deep from 2018. Merrimack, until recently a member of the Northeast-10 conference in Division II, announced they are going to join the NEC as a full Division I member in time for the 2023-2024 season. “The College’s 2011 strategic ...

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.

Lehigh Football Nation

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